PRESENTATION

DOI: 10.17533/udea.ikala.v20n1a01

Presentation

Claudia Gómez Palacio^*

* Directora/Editora Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura Escuela de Idiomas Universidad de Antioquia UdeA Calle 70 N.° 52-21, Medellín, Colombia claudia.gomez@udea.edu.co

Issue 20(1) presents five empirical studies and one methodological article. Fostering Reading Comprehension and Self-Directed Learning in a Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) Setting by Jenny Mendieta, Libardo Múnera, Tatiana Olmos, Clara Onatra, Patricia Pérez, and Elizabeth Rojas is the first empirical study. In the article, the authors discuss an action research study that they carried out at five public educational institutions in Colombia. Students' reading comprehension problems as well as their lack of learning skills motivated Mendieta, Múnera, Olmos, Onatra, Pérez, and Rojas to work on this type of project. The use of CSR showed positive results and students improved their reading comprehension, learning skills, and changed habits positively.

Critical Intercultural Learning through Topics of Deep Culture in an EFL classroom written by Luis Fernando Gómez Rodríguez presents a qualitative research study in which pre-service teachers explore the use of deep topics that belong to the English speaking culture rather than topics about the surface culture. Findings of this study show that students develop "critical thinking and intercultural awareness" when they are exposed to controversial topics in the language classroom that relate to their own personal experiences.

La Caracterización de los Cumplidos en una Población Universitaria written by Sergio Alonso Lopera Medina is an article that presents a study carried out with the community of a public university in Colombia. The participants were students, professors and employees who responded a questionnaire listing the compliments they usually use in a specific situation. Lopera Medina characterized the compliments in the study and shows the findings in this article.

Representaciones Sociales de Docentes de Lenguas Extranjeras sobre el Trabajo del Fonoaudiólogo is an article written by Héctor Iván Guerrero Jiménez, Pilar Mirely Chois Lenis, and Mónica Lised Fuentes Rengifo, all of them speech and language therapists. To highlight the importance of therapist's intervention in an educational setting, the authors conducted a study about foreign language teachers' social representations concerning speech and language therapists. Findings show that foreign language teachers do not know much about the speech and language therapist's work and how much these professionals in charge of speech pathologies can contribute to the field of foreign language teaching. However, results also show foreign language teachers claim they need speech and language therapists at their workplace.

Damien Le Gal and Pei I-Chon, with their article Resistant or favorable? Chinese Learners' Beliefs towards Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching present a study in which English language learners in Asia express their points of view regarding the use of Task-based Language Learning and Teaching (TBLLT) in English as foreign language classes. Findings show that in spite of the fact that Western methodologies are totally different from Eastern educational practices that are teacher-centered, participants in the study agreed on the use of Task-based Language Learning and Teaching in the foreign language classroom.

Generic, Discourse, and Lexicogrammatical Characteristics of a Listening Exercise in an EFL Classroom is a methodological article authored by Anamaría Sagre and José David Herazo. Sagre and Herazo analyzed a 30-minute listening activity highlighting speaking purpose, discourse structure and lexicogrammatical preferences in teachers and students. Results show that a listening activity is more than a moment in which students listen to some information that the teacher has played. A listening activity has different stages: task orientation, task preparation, comprehension task, verification task, and extension task, which Sagre and Herazo describe in the article.

Regarding other topics that are part of the journal, we welcome a new editorial committee member Dr. Gabriel Quiroz Herrera. We also welcome Dr. B. Kumaravadivelu and Dr. Elana Shohamy in our scientific committee. Both professors have been visiting faculty at the Master's in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning offered by Escuela de Idiomas and coordinated by Dr. Doris Correa, also member of our scientific committee. We thank Dr. Juan G. Ramírez Giraldo and Dr. Detlef Reineke for their contributions to the journal. We appreciate the time they devoted to Íkala and wish them the best in their future professional plans.

We invite all our readers to check our new author guidelines. An analysis of the time it takes for the journal to have a manuscript ready for publication has made us modify our author guidelines. We hope they are clear and fit our future authors' expectations. Remember that the journal has always been open to suggestions.

Once again, enjoy the issue!