The voice of an EFL teacher before, during and after adapting a syllabus in a group of 9th graders

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to describe the English Foreign Language (EFL) teaching experiences, perceptions, and reflections of a 9th grade English teacher at a public school in Cúcuta, Norte de Santander, which was going through an adaptation process of the English course syllabus bearing in mind the methodological and pedagogical guidelines proposed by the Ministry of National Education (MEN) and also the documents proposed by the educational institution according to the characteristics of the student population. The design of this study was the narrative investigation since the intention was to know the narrative of an English teacher in the middle of an adaptation process that another teacher of a public institution can also be going through. Non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews were a source of data collection to achieve the objective. To conclude, the teacher’s perceptions of the proposed by MEN (2016) influenced the adaptation process. Therefore, the materials and activities that the teacher adapted were made from that position because she adapting what was proposed in the syllabus course was contextualized to achieve positive results such as increased motivation in students due to the application of the methodological approach Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) suggested by MEN (2016).