Desafíos a la alfabetización académica de estudiantes de tres carreras de pregrado, Universidad Autónoma de Chile

This article describes some curricular instruments and strategies that Universidad Autonoma de Chile has developed to face the academic literacy challenges of freshmen students, within the framework of a general training subject in the area of communication. Two instruments were considered for the analysis: The first one was an institutional evaluation called "Communication Skills Test" which was applied in three groups of the Providencia Campus belonging to the Law, Kinesiology and Business Engineering programs. A second instrument corresponded to a Reading and Writing Perception and Assessment questionnaire, designed for this research, which was applied in three courses of only two programs: two in Law and one in Business Engineering. The results of the first instrument indicated low achievements, especially in the dimension of structure and expression of ideas in a logical and coherent way. Likewise, the second instrument shows that, although students perceive the importance of reading and writing, these skills are considered instrumental and utilitarian.