Investigación Sobre Icfes En Manizales (2005-2006)

1. RATIONALE

English has always played an important role worldwide; in the last years, its importance has grown because of the phenomena of globalization. Nowadays English is the second official or non-official language of most of the countries of the world, this is why it is considered the global language.
People in Colombia cannot ignore this situation, that is why the government,throughout the ICFES, is promoting a campaign called “Colombia Bilingue” , which aims to promote bilingual education in all the schools in Colombia, considering this, the ICFES has given the status of mandatory to the foreign language test applied at the end of the high school studies.

Taking all of this into account and highlighting again the importance that the government is giving to the learning andteaching of a second language in schools today. It is my objective to design a series of reading comprehension workshops, in order to train the students to become better readers and acquire the competences to take all the different tests administered by the ICFES.
The idea of designing these training workshops came from a previous analysis of the students needs which revealed a lack ofpreparation for these kinds of tests, that is to say, the training the students had received before was not enough to develop real reading comprehension and tests taking skills strategies and competences. With this, I want to give the students basis and tools to take this kinds of tests so that they, on one hand learn to read better and on the other get a better score.

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE SETTING2.1 GENERALITIES
The “Corporación Educativa Los Heroes” is located downtown, Manizales. The particular location and the fact that the Institution functions in an old house does not give the students the chance to have recreational areas; all the time the students are in the Institution in order to avoid accidents in this jammed area.

• MISSION
“The mission of the “Corporación Educativa LosHeroes” is the formation of integral students, based on values and helping the community being fair and honest.” (Taken from the PEI)
• VISION
“To be an institution in permanent construction, where learning is the most important factor. We want to educate our students with love, respect and cooperation between all the educative community and show this to the society.” (Taken from the PEI)FACILITIES
The high school works in an old house on a second floor, the institution has nine classrooms and one computer room. The classrooms are very small; actually, these are big bedrooms that have been adapted as classrooms; the institution does not have an official library, just some textbooks kept in boxes and the person in charge of lending the books is the secretary.

According to the PEI,(Institutional Educative Project) the institution has the basic materials to teach English: books, dictionaries, videos, cassettes, T.V., V.H.S, but reality is different, there is lack of these materials. Students work with photocopies and the T.V. and V.H.S. are usually used in activities different from academic ones, therefore, the learning and teaching process is affected.
The institution haslow financial resources as well as most of its students; they belong to some of the poorest sectors of the city, so most of them can neither take a bus nor have money to buy anything during the break time. This situation affects the performance of the students in their academic duties; this is a growing problem for the reason that the students constantly point the finger at this situation tryingto make of this reality an excuse.

2.2 POPULATION
Students: At the “Corporacion Educativa Los Heroes”, there are three groups composed by 20 students whose ages range from 11 to 19 years old. The groups are not big, from four to eight pupils per group. The institution has two different ways to operate: one is CLEI (Ciclos Lectivos Especiales Integrados) and the other one is a set of normal...