The syntax in the discursive competence of university students in non-humanistic areas: a pedagogical proposal

Abstract

One of the recurring activities faced by the student population during their stay at the university is the composition of academic texts. For this, this population must have a developed discursive competence. However, those who belong to the non-humanistic areas have many deficiencies when they write. For that reason, we conducted a quasi-experimental research and qualitative interpretation. Our objective is to show the effectiveness of the use of a basic syntax of the Spanish language in the learning process and, in this way, to write coherent and cohesive texts. For this purpose, we selected a sample of 50 students belonging to the Engineering and Architecture areas of the National University of Engineering (Peru). Of this sample, 25 students of the specialty of Economic Engineering form the control group and 25 members of the specialty of Architecture constitute the quasi-experimental group. After taking a pretest test to the whole sample, we applied to the quasi-experimental group the aforementioned methodological strategy. This strategy consists of organizing short texts through the use of a basic syntax. In addition, sentence sequences should be linked through cohesion mechanisms such as repetition, substitution and elision to control thematic progression. Once the application of the proposed strategy is completed, we take an exit evaluation (posttest) to know the results obtained. The conclusions included in this article allow us to corroborate the effectiveness of this strategy to strengthen the discursive competence of the student.