LA PRODUCCIóN DE ENSAYOS EN LA EDUCACIóN MEDIA Y SUPERIOR: UNA EXPERIENCIA SIGNIFICATIVA ALREDEDOR DE LA RELACIóN VERTICAL UNIVERSIDAD – ESCUELA EN EL MEJORAMIENTO DE LAS HABILIDADES COMUNICATIVAS - ESSAYS PRODUCTION IN MEDIA AND HIGH EDUCATION: A MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE AROUND THE VERTICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSITY – SCHOOL WITHIN THE IMPROVEMENT OF COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS

Reading and writing essays are part of daily life in academic contexts, especially media and high education levels. This research shows the design, application and evaluation of a program which tries to strength students skills when writing different kinds of essays, and it is also based on theories from the Functional Systemic Linguistics. As a fundamental of the program, it was taken the book Palabra abierta by Colombi, Pellettiere and Rodriguez (2001), who use language integrating elements, such as genre, register (field, tenor and way), situation context and culture context. Theoretical fundamentals are mainly based in Halliday, Hassan, Martin and Rose. This on-going project is being developed with a high school-student population from two public institutions, and students from the first semesters in Accounting and Psychology in Universidad Simon Bolivar, Barranquilla, Colombia. Partial results reflect a positive transformation, since the diagnosis showed students with problems for composing academic texts such as essays, and through this process, have achieved skills in written communication efficiently.