Exploring the conceptions about teaching english as a foreign language of two efl teachers in the rural area of Pereira (Risaralda)

El estudio tiene como finalidad observar las concepciones que tienen dos profesores de inglés del área rural de Pereira Risaralda. El objetivo general de este proyecto fue explorar esas concepciones acerca de la enseñanza del inglés en dos instituciones del área rural de Pereira y como objetivos específicos: 1) Comparar estas concepciones expresadas en su discurso con su práctica en el salón de clases y 2) Explorar las concepciones de los profesores participantes en su discurso. Esta investigación cualitativa se realizó a través de observaciones y entrevistas a ambos profesores participantes y a varios estudiantes. Los datos fueron analizados con el Software SQR NVIVO® v10. Los resultados dieron información muy importante en relación con las concepciones que tienen ambos profesores. Se pudo evidenciar que hay una infravaloración en cuanto a las capacidades de los y las estudiantes del área rural; que la concepción de los profesores participantes privilegia las actividades receptivas sobre las productivas; que existe una divergencia entre el discurso y la práctica de los docentes observados y que estos mismos profesores, tienen la concepción de que hay muy poco interés por aprender inglés por parte de los estudiantes del área rural y que no lo ven necesario para su futuro.A great amount of the Colombian population lives in the rural area in difficult social and economic conditions. Education can bring them the development that they need to improve those living conditions. That fact makes it important to know the way in which English is taught in this area. The purpose of this study is to explore what the rural teachers’ conceptions are in order to see what their impact on the teaching practice is. A qualitative study was designed in which the instruments to collect the data were observations and interviews. The data was analyzed with the software SQR NVIVO® v10. Four main findings were obtained: Firstly, the teachers studied have the conception that the students from the rural area are less capable when compared with the students from the urban area. The second finding suggests that participant teachers seem to consider the receptive skills of a greater importance than the productive skills. The third finding points towards the existence of a divergence between the teachers’ discourse and their teaching practices and the fourth finding reveals that the participant teachers have a conception about the low interest that rural students have about the importance of learning English. This study has significant pedagogical implications in the sense that teachers and teachers training programs should be aware of the relevance of conceptions on teaching practices since they powerfully impact what we do in the class. Likewise, this research has implications for further investigation since it was found that there is a lack of studies in this area in relation with the English teachers that could influence the design of teacher training programs to impact the conceptions of this population