Moisés Damián Perales Escudero

The English in Public Elementary Schools Program of a Mexican State: A Critical, Exploratory Study.

The quality of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) instruction in elementary schools worldwide is an issue of concern for language policy and planning (LPP) scholars, as are examinations of power and ideologies operating in policy creation and implementation. This critical, exploratory study blends these two strands of inquiry by examining critically interview data on the implementation of a public elementary school EFL program in a Mexican state. Program staff and parents were interviewed in an attempt to identify instances of power struggle and ideology that would yield an initial description and data for further research. The results illustrate a number of trends in EFL teaching in Mexico that reflect and reproduce neoliberal ideologies. They also reveal the complexity of power dynamics within different government agents and how they affect language policy. It is suggested that a focus on these dynamics, which we call meso-policy, can yield useful data for LPP scholars to engage in actions tending toward the development of community policy.

ACTITUDES DE YUCATECOS BILINGÜES DE MAYA Y ESPAÑOL HACIA LA LENGUA MAYA Y SUS HABLANTES EN MÉRIDA, YUCATÁN

Some linguistic attitudes towards Yucatec Maya held by various groups of speakers have not been examined. This paper explores the attitudes of Maya-Spanish bilinguals living in Merida toward Yucatec Maya. Our findings indicate that attitudes toward Yucatec Maya are generally positive; the language is currently seen as prestigious. However, the attitudes that bilinguals perceive toward their in-group are both positive and negative. We propose that language policy and planning should explicitly attempt to increase the prestige of the speakers and not only of the language.

Teaching intercultural awareness in the English as a foreign language classroom: a case study using critical reading

This paper reports on an educational intervention study that used linguistic and rhetorical approaches to critical reading, in order to teach intercultural awareness. The intervention was implemented with a group of Mexican college students learning English as a foreign language. The study focuses on changes between participants’ pre- and post-intervention articulated understandings of the targeted cultural context, namely the USA. The data was coded and analyzed using a complexity theory perspective and directed qualitative analysis. The results indicate that drawing students’ attention to the cultural situatedness of language use can increase their awareness of the multiple ideological positions existing in a cultural context. Based on these results, the paper argues that the field of intercultural education needs to take a linguistic turn in order to further its goals.

The impact of a linguistic intervention on rhetorical inferential comprehension and metacognition in EFL academic reading: A quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study

espanolLa investigacion sobre las relaciones entre la metacognicion y la conciencia metalinguistica en el campo de las lenguas extranjeras es limitada. Este trabajo reporta una intervencion linguistica que se uso para investigar las conexiones entre las inferencias retoricas, la metacognicion y la conciencia metalinguistica inspirada por la Linguistica SistemicoFuncional (SFL). Se siguio un diseno cuasi-experimental. Los generos meta fueron la introduccion del articulo de investigacion empirica y el articulo de discusion. El grupo de control recibio instruccion tradicional centrada en el conocimiento previo y el vocabulario. Las respuesta al pre-test/post-test fueron analizadas cuantitativamente; las respuestas a un cuestionario fueron analizadas cualitativamente. Los resultados cuantitativos muestran mejoras en la comprension inferencial de ambos grupos, con un tamano del efecto mayor para el grupo experimental. Los resultados cualitativos muestran mejoras en varias dimensiones de la metacomprension para el grupo experimental. Los resultados indican que la conciencia metalinguistica promueve un mayor monitoreo, estandares de coherencia aumentados, y deseo de hacer esfuerzos para procesar el texto EnglishThe connections between metacognition and metalinguistic awareness are underresearched and poorly understood in the field of foreign language reading. This paper uses a linguistic intervention to investigate the connections between rhetorical inference making, linguistic awareness inspired in Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), and forms of metacognition. An intervention inspired in SFL was designed and implemented using a quasi-experimental design. The target genres were the introduction of the empirical research article and the discussion article. The control group received traditional instruction focusing on background knowledge and vocabulary. Answers to a pre-/post-test were analyzed quantitatively; answers to a written, self-report questionnaire were analyzed qualitatively. The quantitative results show gains in inferential comprehension for both groups, but a greater effect size for the experimental group. The qualitative results show gains along several metacomprehension dimensions for the experimental group. Students’ self-reports suggest that metalinguistic awareness promotes increased monitoring, raised standards of coherence, and willingness to engage in effortful processing