<p>This article aims to provide the results of a research focusing on 12^th graders’ attitudes towards English as a Foreign Language in two secondary schools in Puerto Montt, Chile. Attitude towards a language has been considered as an important factor that influences the process of learning a foreign language (Shams, 2008); for this reason, it is fundamental to identify students’ attitudes since positive attitudes towards English allow the students to have favourable orientation towards learning it (Karahan, 2007). Under this premise, this study corresponds to a case study that includes a quantitative method of data analysis. A survey of five dimensions was conducted amongst 154 students in order to measure their attitudes towards the target language. The results show that their attitudes towards English as a foreign language are favourable; however, the dimensions related to learning English, and English as a subject at school obtained unfavourable attitudes. </p>

El uso de un enfoque basado en géneros lingüísticos para enseñar ensayos expositivos a estudiantes universitarios de pedagogía del inglés * Eric Gómez Burgos egomez@utalca.cl Universidad de Talca, Linares, ChileThe following article reports the results of an action research project conducted in a public university in Chile. The project consisted of exposing ten undergraduate students from an English pedagogy program to a genre-based approach to writing expository essays. During eight weeks the three stages of the genre-based approach, namely: deconstruction, joint construction, and individual construction, were adapted and developed with the participants. Results gave evidence that a genrebased approach to teaching expository essays is effective in this context because after the application of the action research project, the students' compositions improved in comparison to the participants' pre-intervention essays.Key words: Chile, English as a foreign language, expository essay, genre-based approach, university.Este artículo informa sobre los resultados de una investigación acción en una universidad chilena, que consistió en exponer a diez estudiantes de pedagogía en inglés a un enfoque basado en géneros para escribir ensayos expositivos. Durante ocho semanas las tres etapas del enfoque basado en géneros: deconstrucción, construcción conjunta y construcción individual se adaptaron y desarrollaron con los estudiantes. Los resultados evidencian que un enfoque basado en géneros es eficaz en un ambiente de inglés como lengua extranjera, dado que tras la intervención los textos de los estudiantes mejoraron en comparación a los ensayos previos a la intervención.Palabras clave: Chile, enfoque basado en géneros lingüísticos, ensayos expositivos, inglés como lengua extranjera, universidad.

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Attitude towards English as a foreign language is a new field of study in tertiary education in Latin-American countries, especially in Chile. However, its importance in the process of learning a language has been reported upon around the world. The aim of the current study was to identify the attitudes towards English as a foreign language of 131 university students from different educational institutions in Chile; the students’ programs included English courses as part of their study plan. The three components of attitude were analyzed by means of the participants’ replies to the statements of a questionnaire. Results gave evidence that university students hold a positive attitude towards English as a foreign language; nonetheless, the behavioral aspect of attitude obtained the lowest average of agreement among the respondents.

Eric Gómez Burgos Occurrences of formulaic sequences in personal descriptions 104 Formulaic sequences are extremely necessary components of language production as they play a crucial role in building genres, not only in spoken discourse, but also in written production. Bearing in mind this consideration, the present article aims to investigate the frequency and occurrences of formulaic sequences in 27 personal descriptions written by 27 students of an English for medical purposes course from a university in the south of Chile. The procedure adopted two phases: first, the most common formulaic sequences used by the participants were identified and categorised, and, second, some examples of the inclusion of formulaic sequences in the genre of personal descriptions were made available. The findings reveal that the participants' selection of formulaic sequences is very similar among them, and their occurrences in personal descriptions are related to the number of words of the text. Furthermore, the investigation reasserts that each genre has its own phraseology; for this reason, 15 formulaic sequences identified in the study seem to be specific features of the genre of personal descriptions.