The characteristics of the socio-affective relationship between teacher-students in a public and private university in Cartagena de Indias.

Abstract

Teaching English as a foreign language may not be so easy due to some facts. One of the factors that is considered highly influencing on the teaching learning process is the socio affective one, because as Jane Arnold (1999) points out: “stimulating the different positive emotional factors, such as self-esteem, empathy or motivation, can greatly facilitate the language learning process”. This paper aims to help teachers realize how important it is to have a good relationship with the students, and although this research addressed specially college students, researchers believe that their findings could be generalized to students in all levels. Two contexts were chosen to carry out this research in order to make a comparison of the results between a public and a private University in Cartagena, intending to contribute to the improvement of education in the region and in the country as well. This document will include a rationale that will explain why this topic was chosen. Furthermore, it will have chapters that will describe the research questions and subquestions, the objectives and also the methodology followed by the researchers necessary for the entire process. A copy of the instruments used will be attached at the end of this paper. Besides, it will include chapters of presentation and interpretation of the results obtained, the categories found and finally, there will also be conclusions expressing the findings shown by the evidence gathered and how researchers believe they could help the teaching community in general.