Intellectual challenges for improving esl students’ performance during pandemic

This article presents the findings of a research carried out in two public educational institutions in the city of Bucaramanga, in Colombia, where an initial analysis of the English level of the students was carried out.  This analysis showed that English level of students was similar in its linguistic, lexical and grammatical components. Based on this problem, which revealed a profound deficit, an action-research-type intervention with a mixed approach was implemented, based on a didactic sequence that invited students to a series of intellectual challenges whose accompanied and formative assessment invited them to improve during the process. Initially, a questionnaire was carried out with features similar to those presented in the Knowledge 11 test, carried out in Colombia by ICFES. Then, with the characterization of the population, the intervention started: the purpose was to make the tasks complex that were conventionally planned inviting the exercise of rote learning. At the end of the intervention, it was possible to collect and analyze the information to reach some satisfactory conclusions that revealed the importance of taking the pedagogical processes one step forward and articulating the evaluation process in a coherent way: a student aware of his own learning process.