Resumen en inglés

Reading comprehension is considered as the construction of the information from a text in a new knowledge. Thus, it is considered one of the most important skills due to its relevance to the other skills. In a public school of Monteria- Cordoba, 10th graders presented low levels regarding reading comprehension skills levels (literal, inferential and critical) understanding main ideas, identifying characters and their roles in the text. In order to address this issue, this study is aimed to explore the use of Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and its semiotic functions through short stories to develop reading comprehension skills in 10th grade students. The course selected were students of 10th -grade, group second. It has a total of 28 students in the classroom. The study focused on one of five groups of a public school in Monteria - Cordoba. To this end, this action case study employed data collection techniques such as reading tasks, semi-structured interviews and observations in a specific group. When the data was obtained, it was read several times in order to group similar characteristics that emerged from the information taking into account that the qualitative approach was inductive. Thus, software called Nvivo was used to analyze the data making coding to classify the information, which was a helpful tool for sorting, organizing, and analyzing qualitative data. Lastly, the information was organized through mind maps to align themes with coded data to analyze the relevant aspects that were found in the results and help us to extract the themes. In short, after the analysis of the information obtained we could conclude the extent of the use of short stories-based SFL improvement of reading comprehension skills, due to the students could use the chart about the features of the theory of language to analyze the short stories applied. The results obtained show an improvement in the identification of the characters and their roles through the story that are aligned with the tenor feature. In addition, they could recognize the plot of the short stories implemented that were key to comprehending the role of the characters. Through the interviews made to them, the outcome analyzed allowed us to understand their perceptions about the application of the study, which reflected the increasing confidence at the moment to develop the tasks. At the end, there were some struggles that students still faced when reading, such as; vocabulary and their meaning in a specific context.