The purpose of this article is to share with English teachers the findings of a research project whose main goal was to describe the impact of developing students' linguistic competence through listening and reading short stories. It was carried out among third-semester students at Universidad Santo TomasTunja (USTA). The main theoretical aspects that support this study are: English teaching and literature, teaching English through short stories, and encouraging student speaking by using short stories. The study was carried out within the framework of collaborative action research. Hence, the instruments used to gather information were: student artifacts (written compositions and oral reports), the teacher's journal, and a survey. Some of the most important findings were: that students showed a significant gain in vocabulary and expressions through reading and listening; that reading was useful for improving their oral competence; and that the students' exposure to the target language engaged them to improve their language acquisition and practice. This research also fostered students' awareness of literature.

This document contains therequired theoretical support to developa project whose objective is to know the effects of applyingtask based learning (TBL) workshops to scaffold critical thinkingin IV levels of English at Universidad Santo Tomás, Tunja.Critical thinking is a concept that has been developed throughseveral years and which entails important skills to be developed.It is associated with reasoning, interpreting, analyzing, and evaluatinginformation or situations to give true or possible assertions regarding a specific topic. Hence, this construct is proposed in order to develop critical thinkingunder the parameters of the TBL approach as a way to motivate collaborative and independentwork in students.

<p>El propósito de este trabajo es observar y describir los efectos de aplicar lectura extensiva a un grupo de estudiantes de quinto nivel de Inglés de la Universidad Santo Tomás, dirigido a hacer parte del programa de Inglés. Este proyecto proporciona a los estudiantes un ambiente adecuado para el desarrollo de lectura extensiva por medio de textos reales, que se caracteriza por la práctica de lectura libre y controlada, en la cual los estudiantes tienen la oportunidad de tomar sus propias decisiones bajo la supervisión del profesor. La información fue recolectada a través de los diarios de los profesores, de los reportes orales y escritos de los estudiantes y de las entrevistas realizadas a éstos.</p>

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This article analyzes the effect of working with the abridged version of some novels in order to promote students’ communication in English. Two fourth semester English courses, from a private university, were randomly chosen to develop the different activities during one semester. The data was collected through students’ written papers, the researchers’ journal and a questionnaire. The findings show that students’ constant work with this kind of literature, as well as the teachers’ feedback, were factors that motivated their language use improvement; thus, they learned new expressions, did written and oral training, and acquired knowledge thanks to the contact with other cultures through literature.