The elaboration of a kichwa-english dictionary for english beginners at ‘Unidad Educativa Comunitaria Intercultural Bilingüe Quilloac’ in the province of Cañar

Abstract

This research focuses on the creation of a bilingual Kichwa-English dictionary for Kichwa speaker students of the 8th, 9th, and 10th grades of “Unidad Educativa Comunitaria Intercultural Bilingüe Quilloac” located in Quilloac, Cañar, who to learn English language are forced to learn Spanish language, leaving aside their mother tongue. Consequently, the aim of this research is to provide a dictionary from which these students can learn vocabulary in the English language directly from the Kichwa language, which is their mother tongue. It will benefit students in two different ways; one of them is learning vocabulary in a language as globalized as the English language, and the second is to give the importance that the Kichwa language as an ancestral tongue needs to have. Additionally, the qualitative and quantitative methods were used during this study, resulting in a variety of information to be analyzed. Likewise, this is a non-experimental research, which means that the product (dictionary) was not given in a classroom as a treatment to prove its validity through positive or negative results. The approach of the research was only to create the dictionary as a didactic material. Finally, it was concluded that students do not use their mother tongue when learning English. Therefore, a Kichwa-English dictionary would be of a great help when dealing with this obstacle, and at the same time stand out the Kichwa language.