Autonomous Pluralistic Learning Strategies Among Mexican

Indigenous and Minority University Students Learning English

Colette Despagne

The Canadian Modern Language Review / La revue canadienne des langues

vivantes, Volume 71, Number 4, November/novembre 2015, pp. 362-382
(Article)

Published by University of Toronto Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/602288

Access provided at 2 Sep 2019 17:26 GMT from Biblioteca Max von Buch | Universidad de San Andres
 Autonomous Pluralistic Learning
Strategies Among Mexican Indigenous
and Minority University Students
Learning English
Colette Despagne

Abstract: This critical ethnographic case study draws on Indigenous and

minority students’ process of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in
Mexico. The study specifically focuses on students who enrolled in a program
called A wager with the Future. The aim of the study is to identify and under-
stand contributing factors in these students’ struggles with the process of
learning English by focusing on factors that influence their investment in EFL.
The research is framed by (critical) applied linguistics and post-colonial
theories that favour the integration of an understanding of these students’
socio historical context in their learning of English, and question (unequal)
power relationships between languages and cultures in Mexico. The method-
ology was designed to ensure trustworthiness by adopting multiple data
collection techniques, and to decolonize the research process by using partici-
patory methods that featured researcher/participant co-analysis of the data.
On a macro level, findings show that students enrolled in the program experi-
ence a relationship with English that is rooted in Mexico’s colonial legacies (as
expressed through discrimination in the EFL classroom), which has an impact
on their subjectivities; specifically, they feel afraid and inferior in the EFL
classroom. On a micro level, the programming adopted in the university’s
Language Department does not draw on diverse students’ multi-competences
in other languages. Nonetheless, some Indigenous students manage to invest
in EFL by creating imagined communities, and appropriating English through
the creation of autonomous pluralistic language learning strategies.

Keywords: EFL, Mexico, Indigenous and minority students, pluralistic learn-

ing strategies, postcolonialism, participatory data analysis.

Re´ sume´ : Cette e´tude de cas ethnographique et critique cherche a`

analyser le processus d’apprentissage de l’anglais langue e´trange`re d’e
´tudiants indige`nes et minoritaires mexicains. Cette e´tude est spe
´cifiquement axe´e sur des e´tudi- ants inscrits dans un programme appele´
Un pari sur l’avenir. Le but de cette e´tude est d’identifier et de comprendre
les facteurs qui contribuent aux con- flits que ces e´tudiants vivent en
apprenant l’anglais tout en se concentrant spe´cialement sur les facteurs
qui influencent leur investissement dans l’ap- prentissage de la langue. La
recherche se base sur des the´ories de linguistique

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 Autonomous Pluralistic Learning Strategies 107

applique´e (critique) et des the´ories postcoloniales qui cherchent a`

comprendre le contexte socio historique dans lequel ces e´tudiants
apprennent l’anglais, et qui questionnent les relations de pouvoir
discriminatoires entre langues et cul- tures au Mexique. La me´thodologie a
tout d’abord e´te´ conc¸ue de fac¸on a` as- surer la fiabilite´ des re
´sultats en adoptant des techniques multiples de collectes de donne´es,
et ensuite, a` de´coloniser le processus de recherche en uti- lisant des me
´thodes participatives axe´es sur la co-analyse des donne´es par le chercheur
et les participants. Au niveau macro, les re´sultats montrent que les e
´tudiants inscrits dans le programme vivent une relation avec l’anglais qui est
ancre´e dans l’he´ritage colonial du Mexique (exprime´e par la
discrimination dans le cours d’anglais), ce qui impacte leurs subjectivite´s.
Ils ont peur et se sentent infe´rieurs aux « autres » en cours d’anglais. Au
niveau micro, le pro- gramme d’enseignement du Centre de Langues
Universitaire ne reconnaˆıt pas les compe´tences multiples des e´tudiants dans
d’autres langues. Toutefois, cer- tains e´tudiants indige`nes arrivent quand
meˆme a` investir dans l’apprentissage de l’anglais, d’une part en
construisant des communaute´s imaginaires et d’autre part, en
s’appropriant de la langue en cre´ant des strate´gies d’appren- tissage
pluralistes et autonomes.

Mots cle´ s : anglais langue e´trange`re, Mexique, e´tudiants indige`nes et

minori- taires, strategies d’apprentissage pluralistes, post colonialism, analyse
partici- pative des donne´es

Introduction and context

From colonial times to the present, Mexican Indigenous peoples, like
most Indigenous peoples around the world, have experienced exter-
mination, exploitation, segregation, and finally, assimilation policies
(Ogbu & Simons, 1998). In Mexico, results of this oppression and the
colonial discourse – defined as linguistically based practices that cre-
ate and reinforce Western dominance (Hall, 1996) – can be seen in
terms of beliefs associated with racial and social hierarchies (Carrillo
Trueba, 2009). This oppression is also reflected in scholastic asymme-
tries (i.e., lower educational levels) in Indigenous populations and
rural communities in general (Schmelkes, 2006), and in these two
groups’ income levels. Indigenous populations have consistently had
the highest poverty rates in Mexico (Hall & Patrinos, 2005).
My focus in the present study is on a group of 56 students from im-
poverished rural communities in the Sierra Norte de Puebla region
who are enrolled in a program called A Wager with the Future
(AWF), at a private university in Puebla, Mexico that I will call Uni-
versidad Auto´ noma (UA) for the purposes of this paper.
Furthermore, not all students self-identified as Indigenous; some were
bi-/multi- lingual (Nahuatl and/or Totonaco and Spanish) whereas
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others were

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monolingual Spanish speakers. They all received full scholarships

intended to help them overcome scholastic asymmetries. Yet, UA’s
official records indicate that they were unsuccessful in learning
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) compared to their peers not
enrolled in the program, which raises the question, ‘what are the rea-
sons for the discrepancy?’
Both groups of students received exactly the same strategy-based
instruction, the aim of which is to develop language-learning auton-
omy (i.e., the ability to take charge of one’s own learning) over a
period of six semesters, before the students take the final competency
test.
On a societal level, knowing English is perceived as cultural capital
in Mexico (i.e., cultural knowledge that confers power and status;
Bourdieu, 1991). Yet, at the same time, it has been linked to imperial-
ism, exploitation, and loneliness because of Mexico’s historical, social,
and economic relationship with the United States (Despagne, 2010).
Mexico’s sociolinguistic reality and the sociocultural challenges that
AWF students face in learning English as a “global,” international lan-
guage need to be investigated to understand the conflicting EFL learn-
ing outcomes of non-AWF and AWF students in light of the way they
became invested in their EFL-learning process (i.e., how they became
engaged in their learning process by closely listening to the surround-
ing power relations between English and their socio-historical and
sociolinguistic reality).
The methodology selected to investigate this phenomenon is a criti-
cal ethnographic case study. It specifically seeks to understand the
conflicting outcomes through the lens of two main theoretical frame-
works: (critical) applied linguistics and postcolonialism.
The lens of (critical) applied linguistics sheds light on the UA Lan-
guage Department’s micro context and on whether its pedagogical
approach, based on a psychological understanding of language-
learning autonomy (Holec, 1981; Chamot & O’Malley, 1994; Little,
2007), is appropriate for AWF students’ EFL-learning needs.
Autonomy, as it specifically relates to second-language acquisition,
is not a new concept. It has been influenced by global education philo-
sophies. Holec (1981) was the first to use the term “autonomy” when
referring to foreign-language teaching. He defined autonomy as the
“ability to take charge of one’s own learning” (p. 3). However, this
ability can be analyzed from different world perspectives. Most re-
searchers distinguish between psychological and critical views of
autonomy (Benson, 1997; Oxford, 2003). Proponents of the psychologi-
cal perspective perceive learner autonomy as a capacity that has to be

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developed in the language classroom; with teachers mediating student

use of cognitive, metacognitive, and social/affective learning strate-
gies. This view focuses primarily on learners’ internal transformation
(Little, 2007). Viewed from a critical lens, language-learning autonomy
is defined as a “control over the process and content of learning” (Ben-
son, 1997, p. 19). While this view also addresses transformations, the
main focus is on transforming the societal context. The present study
incorporates views from both lenses – using the psychological lens to
examine policy documents related to UA’s language-learning pedago-
gies and the critical perspective of critical applied linguistics to exam-
ine the factors that contribute to students’ investment in EFL learning.
On the critical side, Norton Peirce’s (1995) notion of investment at-
tempts to capture students’ motivation to learn a language, but by
paying close attention to the power relationships between languages
and cultures in their specific context. Used in that sense, her notion of
investment is useful in examining how AWF students manage power
relations with non-AWF peers and teachers in the EFL classroom and
whether those power relations influence their investment in learning
English. The notion of investment in language learning is closely
linked to the notion of identity, defined by Toohey and Norton (2003)
as “site[] of struggle” (p. 69), as students’ sense of self may change
over time and space. This struggle is pertinent to understanding how
AWF students’ in-between (local/rural, national/urban) and global
identities shape their motivation to learn English and how far their
investment in EFL depends on their self-perception in both in-
between and global spaces. Students may create imagined commu-
nities (i.e., communities of the imagination that allow them to expand
their identities and change their sense of self) (Norton, 2001). This
sense of self may also lead them to invest in pluralistic (Camilleri
et al., 2012) or monolithic (Garc´ıa & Sylvan, 2011) perceptions of lan-
guage learning. The pluralistic approach views all of the languages
spoken by an individual “as a whole, comprising a unique and global
set of competences available to an individual for use in different com-
municative needs and situations” (Coste & Simon, 2009, p. 173). This
global set of competences or multi-competences (Cook, 1992) refers to
learners’ plurilingual and/or pluricultural competences. The mono-
lithic approach, on the other hand, perceives the languages known by
individuals as the sum of separate competences in each of their lan-
guages, which cannot be used to learn new languages. In other words,
students’ sense of self, or identity, enables them (or not) to use their
multi-competences (i.e., all their different linguistic and cultural com-
petences) as they learn English.

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The second set of theories, postcolonialism, aims to understand

subaltern identities (i.e., persons or groups that are geographically,
politically, and/or socially outside of the hegemonic structures of
power), which is the case for the participants in this study, as they
come from the poorest communities in the state of Puebla. The notion
of identity is important, not only in critical applied linguistics as sta-
ted above, but also in the broader Mexican context, since culture
cannot be defined homogeneously in Mexico. Hence, the AWF partici-
pants’ identities are examined, in the present study, as an intersection
of cultures, times, and spaces (i.e., between students’ local cultures
and languages, the mestizo national state identity and Spanish, and
the global forces of English). In the view of critical scholars, the mes-
tizo identity (i.e., a mixed blood population of Indigenous/Spanish
people) was used, not only to create the Mexican nation state after
Mexican Independence (1821), but also to institutionalize discrimina-
tion against those who did not assimilate to the unique Mexican iden-
tity, in other words against Indigenous and black Mexicans (Go´
mez Izquierdo & Sa´ nchez D´ıaz de Rivera, 2011).
The study specifically focuses on Latin American postcolonialism
to look for patterns of power relations between languages and
cultures that are embedded in students’ everyday lives.
Postcolonialism exam- ines whether or not students contest the
hegemonic monocultural/ monolinguistic underpinnings of the
Mexican nation-state (one lan- guage, one identity), Western curricula
and teaching methodologies, and the global forces of English within
Mexico. As a result, this part of the theoretical framework
underpinning this article focuses on three main notions.
First, the analysis focuses on colonial legacies, defined by Mignolo
(2005) as relations between the beginning and the current stage of the
colonial historical process. Interviews and observations determined
whether students’ way of thinking integrates the legacy of the colonial
discourse with reference to language and cultural hierarchizations.
The second notion is represented by modernity, seen as rationality,
abstract thought, and science (Mignolo, 2005). This definition is
applied to determine whether students perceive English as being the
language of modernity, and whether they think that by learning
English they can access the “rational,” “modern,” and “developed”
world of Western cultures. The third notion, coloniality of power (i.e.,
the ongoing colonial relationship between Mexico and the West – i.e.,
Europe and North America) (Mignolo, 2005) defines how AWF stu-
dents perceive power relationships in their daily lives at the UA and
how they manage power relationships with their non-AWF peers in
the EFL classroom. The colonial legacy, modernity, and the coloniality

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of power are examined to determine how power relationships operate

in the AWF students’ lives and in the EFL classroom; they also deter-
mine how these relationships influence Indigenous and AWF stu-
dents’ identity construction.
The two major sets of theories mentioned, critical applied linguis-
tics and postcolonialism, are the theoretical foundation upon which
this study is built, and by intertwining both sets of theories in the
methodological framework, the study will be able to answer the fol-
lowing research question:
‘Why is it that non-AWF students respond well to the psychological
focus of language-learning autonomy, but AWF students do not?’
This main question is supported by the following two sub-questions:
1. How do AWF participants view their EFL-learning process?
2. How do AWF participants view their investment in EFL learning?
The two theories serve to provide a link for understanding the
macro and micro connections between EFL learning and the socio-
historical influences underlying the EFL-learning process in Mexico,
specifically among Indigenous and non-Indigenous university stu-
dents from impoverished rural communities.
To answer these research questions, I closely followed the method-
ological design outlined below.

Methodology
As a critical ethnographic case study (i.e., that concentrates on one
specific and situated case), the present study closely examines social,
political, and historical influences (Stake, 2005) and locates the UA
minority stu- dents in their socio-political/historical world (Denzin &
Lincoln, 2005). Following Yin (2006), I used a case study as the
“preferred strategy” because the research questions are exploratory
and the phenomenon is a contemporary event. I drew on interviews
and observations during my year in the field for my ethnographic
approach.
The study is also critical. It aims to achieve its political goals of
social justice by positioning the voice of 15 AWF participants in oppo-
sition to the dominant discourse (i.e., the discourse of Mexico’s socio-
linguistic policies and the university’s ideologies). The 15 students
were divided into two groups. Nine of them participated in data col-
lection and six in data analysis. Participation in data collection or data
analysis mostly depended on students’ preference and availability.
Students were invited to participate in the study in a general meeting
to which I was invited by the AWF coordinator. During the meeting,
I presented the main points of the research (purpose, rationale,

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questions, and methods) and focused on the fact that the study must
be done collaboratively if students’ challenges when learning EFL
were really to be understood. Socio-economic status was not a selec-
tion criterion because all the participants came from poor rural com-
munities and self-identified as monolingual Indigenous, bilingual
Indigenous, or mestizo, as is explained next.

Participants in data collection

Indigenous bilingual students
Jorge is studying Political Science and Leticia Agriculture. Both grew
up in a Nahuatl-speaking context but both went to Spanish mono-
lingual public schools. Both self-evaluated their language profiles and
declared that they had advanced levels of proficiency in Nahuatl. Both
speak Nahuatl with their parents, grandparents, and older community
members. Nahuatl is the first language Jorge learned at home. He
learned Spanish at school, where he had to learn how to read and
write in a language he first did not understand. For him, Spanish is
the language of national assimilation. Leticia’s mother learned Span-
ish to speak Spanish to her children. In this way, she thought she
would avoid her children’s suffering at school. Hence, today, the
mother speaks Spanish to Leticia, but Leticia answers her in Nahuatl.
For both, being able to study at a university is an honour that earns
special recognition in their local communities.
Angel, who studies Law, also speaks Nahuatl, but he always says
that his competency level is not good enough; he always wants to
learn more. In his local community, the Indigenous percentage of pop-
ulation is high, and he clearly identifies with them.
Frida and Blanca speak Totonaco. Frida also studies Law and
Blanca studies Environmental Engineering. Both went to bilingual
(Spanish and Totonaco) primary schools in their respective commu-
nities. Frida has an intermediate level of Totonaco. She mainly speaks
Totonaco with her grandparents and with older people in her commu-
nity, but her parents speak Spanish to her.
Indigenous monolingual students
In Guillermo’s community, hardly anybody speaks Nahuatl anymore.
This is the reason why neither he nor his parents speak it. However,
he feels identified with that language. Guillermo studies Accounting
and Finance. He likes it, but he feels highly discriminated against in
his department and in EFL classes.
Trinidad had many problems adapting to the university when she
first arrived. She was afraid of everything. For her, life in the city was

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too fast. Now, she is about to complete her BA in pedagogy, where

she feels very well accepted by her classmates. However, her dream is
to go back to her community and teach in the local school.
Mestizo monolingual students
Gabriela and Elena both self-identify as being mestizas. When I first
asked them if they would self-identify as being Indigenous, there was
a long silence. Nobody had ever asked them such a question. They
both already knew Puebla before coming to study at the university.
Gabriela adapted quickly to her new environment, whereas Elena had
a lot of problems being accepted. Gabriela studies Marketing; she only
had a few semesters left before finishing her BA. Elena had just begun
to study Business when I first met her. Unfortunately, because of her
low grades and her adaptation problems, the AWF program had to
retract her scholarship. As a result, Elena went back to her community
and to her former life. In addition to the nine interview with partici-
pants who participated in the data collection, six additional students,
as introduced next, participated in the data analysis.

Participants in data analysis

Indigenous bilingual students
Pablo, Hector, and Lourdes speak Nahuatl with an advanced compe-
tency level. They all use Nahuatl at home with family and community
members. Pablo and Hector study Engineering and Lourdes studies
Communication. All three are in the last stages of their BA and have
finished the compulsory EFL levels. However, they have not passed
the university’s final competency exam as of yet.
Indigenous monolingual students
Arturo is the only monolingual student who self-identified as Indige-
nous in the data-analysis group. Even though he does not speak any
Indigenous language, he knows some words in Nahuatl and would
like bilingual students to teach him. He studies Agronomy and has
finished the compulsory EFL levels as well.
Mestizo monolingual students
Marisol and Teresa are respectively studying Marketing and Indus-
trial Engineering. Marisol is still missing two EFL levels and Teresa
finished all the mandatory levels. Both students declared themselves
as not being Indigenous, but that they felt very close to Indigenous
people because of their socio cultural context.

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Data collection
All data-analysis participants were students studying in higher seme-
sters, and nearly all of them passed through all the required EFL le-
vels. Hence, they are more experienced with EFL classes than data
collection participants. As mentioned earlier, data collection and data
analysis participants’ voices were opposed to the dominant discourse.
This positioning was translated as follows:
Data was collected in Spanish, through multiple methods, to cap-
ture the different realities, practices, and interpretations of students’
global, national, and local worlds. They show the “diversity of percep-
tions” (Stake, 2005, p. 454) by combining:
• The dominant discourse, which was captured through (1) the analy-
sis of relevant policy documents at the national and local levels;
(2) unstructured interviews with teachers and administrators, and
(3) informal observations of the setting over the course of a year.
• Data collection students’ voices which were captured through
(1) three semi-structured interviews of the nine participants in data
collection following an outline of questions to cover with four
monolingual and five bilingual students (three males and six fe-
males) enrolled in different levels of EFL study; (2) two observa-
tions of the participants’ EFL classrooms. Observations focused on
what participants shared during the interviews. As a result, student
voice was integrated not only in the interviews but also in the ob-
servations.
Data analysis and criteria for interpreting the findings
The present study claims to initiate a decolonization process of Western
research based on Smith’s (1999) decolonizing methodology, by focus-
ing “on interpreting data from other people’s lives” in collaboration
with “the other” (Dodson, Piatelli, & Schmalzbauer, 2007, p. 822). The
basis of this claim is that participants were not only involved in the
data-collection process (as mentioned above), but more importantly,
they were also involved in the data-analysis process to create colla-
borative, participatory analyses. Even though I am living in Mexico, I
am by no means an insider. I am a Western researcher. I know that I
have to “resist the legacy of the Western decolonizing other” (Denzin,
2005, p. 935). I therefore want to favour an emancipatory decolonizing
discourse that connects post-colonial theories (Mignolo, 2000, 2005,
2008) to critical applied linguistics (Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton &
Toohey, 2004, 2011). By integrating participant voice into the data-
analysis process (i.e., the participants’ analyses of their world based
on their fellow students’ world perspective), the study addresses the

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claim of postcolonial theory that the West has been positioned as the
sole originator of knowledge while other parts of the world have been
passive receptors of knowledge (Castro Go´ mez, 2008). As a
result, I tried to make sense of the data by following two levels of
analysis: inductive and deductive.
In the inductive phase, I first looked for the Indigenous concepts,
typologies, and themes defined by the participants themselves, and
then I introduced categories taken from the theoretical framework that
identified explicit patterns that seemed to remain below the level of
consciousness of the AWF interview participants. As a result, the
inductive analysis reflects my typologies as a researcher and the parti-
cipants’ worldviews. The result of the inductive analysis was a Power-
Point presentation that I presented to the second group of six
participants who did not participate in the interviews.
The involvement of this second group formed the basis of the
deductive analysis phase. Its main objective was (1) to check whether
they felt their views were reflected in the inductive analysis, and (2) to
test and criticize this first analysis. The second group of participants
formed an interpretative focus group (IFG), the inclusion of which is an
innovative approach created by Dodson, Piatelli, and Schmalzbauer
(2007) to investigate the lived experiences of marginalized people.
Each of the four IFGs lasted two hours. During that time, IFG partici-
pants added a layer of information that I had not seen and contested
some of my assumptions, such as my idea that all the students in the
program were Indigenous. In other words, they critiqued and reinter-
preted my Western “misinterpretations” (Dodson et al., 2007, p. 826)
and contributed to the creation of a glocalized knowledge (i.e., the
blending of local and global knowledges), a process clearly linked to
the postcolonial underpinnings of the study. Hence, this final work
aims to be a genuine collaborative effort, as is shown in the research
results that follow.

Results
The following summary divides the findings into two main sections.
Section one answers the first research question, focusing on how the
AWF participants perceived their macro context, modernity, colonial-
ity, and the languages in their environment. Section two answers the
second research question regarding how participants’ imagined com-
munities allowed them to negotiate their multiple identities and how
this negotiation allowed them to invest in EFL. Thus, the findings
reflect both my voice and participants’ voice, both of which were

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member-checked by the participants themselves through the creation

of IFGs, as noted above.
Question 1: How do AWF participants view their EFL-learning
process?
Answers to question one first analyze how students’ macro percep-
tions are linked to and how their linguistic perceptions are con-
structed through Mexico’s colonial legacies; they then analyze the
micro context of the UA language department; and finally, they ana-
lyze how participants’ macro and micro perceptions impact partici-
pants’ EFL learning processes.
Macro context: Colonial legacies and linguistic perceptions
Participant perceptions of their macro context indicate the influence of
colonial legacies. As stated by Elena, “to enter modernity we have to
speak English. English and modernity are the same. They represent
the United States.” Participants generally agreed that, to be part of
modernity (i.e., to have access to the world of technology), they had to
change their current lives. They perceived this change as something
that came from the outside; as Trinidad said: “For me, getting modern
or being part of modernity is like changing, it’s a change because it’s
something which is not in me.” According to Gabriela, “Modernity is
[also] an external change, it does not come from me, it comes from glo-
balization.” Arturo confirmed that, for AWF students, modernity “is
to adapt to globalization.” Trinidad expressed the view that this
change is not mandatory – one is free to accept it or not: “To get mod-
ern requires work, but I also think that this depends on yourself, it
depends if you really want to change, if you really need it. Nobody
can oblige you to do so.” Most participants – like Elena, Trinidad,
Gabriela, and Arturo – related modernity to the United States, English,
technological advancement, and changes imposed on them from the
external world. In other words, the participants felt as though they
had to shift from first a local, to a national, and finally to a global iden-
tity if they wanted to be part of the “modern” world.
The way AWF students defined modernity implies coloniality. As
Elena put it, “I feel that English writers are more experienced and that
they have more knowledge.” Gabriela also added,

I study marketing which is something globalized. Additionally, the United

States is so close and has such a big influence on Mexico. This is the reason
why knowledge comes from there. That’s the way it is and that’s the
reason why I have to learn English.

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Gabriela was clearly aware that English represented knowledge,

and therefore power, a power she did not seem to question at all.
Frida also linked knowledge to power and to English. For her,
“English now is a global and modern language. If I spoke English,
people in my community would recognize me as being someone with
more knowledge.” In other words, participants generally believed in
the superiority of Western over Mexican knowledge (Mignolo, 2005).
As a result, colonial legacies influenced participants’ perceptions of
their macro context because they are embedded in the unequal power
relations between ‘centre’ (i.e., countries that hold the creation of
knowledge) and ‘periphery’ nations such as Mexico, where knowl-
edge is often ‘imported’ (i.e., brought from North America and/or
Europe). These colonial legacies also influenced how participants per-
ceived the languages in their environment. Interview participants gen-
erally considered Indigenous languages as part of both their past and
present; however, no participants perceived them as modern lan-
guages; as Angel stated, “Modernity and Nahuatl? Mmmh, no . . .
Nahuatl is disappearing. Spanish is not.” Blanca confirmed Angel’s
perspective when she expressed the view that “Totonaco is not a mod-
ern language. It’s not current.” As far as Spanish is concerned, Frida
said that “for me, Spanish is a universal language because everybody
speaks it; it’s also Mexico’s official language because only a few peo-
ple speak Indigenous languages. Here at the university, for example,
you can’t speak an Indigenous language. Nobody understands you.
You have to speak Spanish.” As a result, students considered Spanish
as a bridge that allowed Mexicans from different cultures to commu-
nicate with each other, as seems clear in Blanca’s comment: “Spanish
is like a bridge. It connects me with the world outside from my com-
munity. I feel like I am living between both languages, Totonaco and
Spanish.” Students also perceived Spanish as the language of assimila-
tion and of national unity; as Jorge claimed, “I had to learn Spanish at
school when I was five because it was mandatory. My teacher did not
speak Nahuatl.” As far as English is concerned, even if the partici-
pants viewed it as imposed at both the national and local levels
through modernity and coloniality, they still considered knowing it as
their greatest cultural capital; as Angel explained, “When I think in
English, I think of power, in money. When people immigrate to the
United States, they send money back home and in the United States
they have nice houses . . . they have better life conditions, they eat bet-
ter, dress better and have better opportunities.” They also consider
knowing English as a goal they need to reach to become part of the
“modern” world; as Trinidad stated, “English is modernity because it
is something that reached me, to which I have to adapt.” Hence,

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colonial legacies also permeated students’ linguistic representations,

which may have contributed to their perceptions of the micro context,
as is shown next.
Micro context: UA Language Department
Data analysis showed a clear monolingual approach toward language
teaching at UA; in other words, the approach adopted reflected a
belief that the Mexican nation uses only one language (i.e., Spanish)
and has one single identity (i.e., the mestizo identity). Teachers do not
know, nor are they interested in knowing, which other languages
their students speak; as Leticia explained “My English teacher does
not even know that I speak Nahuatl.” When I told the teacher that
Leticia was bilingual, he stated that “Oh, I did not know, I never ask
them if they speak other languages. What for?” As a result, teachers
perceived students as a homogeneous group and did not encourage
AWF students to deploy their varied multi-competences (i.e., diverse
linguistic and cultural knowledges) in their learning of English. In
addition, teachers promote English-speaking classrooms, based on a
monolithic perception of language learning (Garc´ıa & Sylvan, 2011).
As stated by another teacher during an informal interview, “Students
are here to learn English, so we have to speak English all the time.
That’s the only way to make them use the language.” Hence, they did
not show AWF students how to build new knowledge on the founda-
tion of their own former knowledge, contrary to the approach sug-
gested by autonomous-language-learning theories. As is shown next,
both the micro and macro contexts had a direct impact on the AWF
participants’ EFL-learning processes.
Impact of participants’ macro and micro contexts on
EFL learning: Discrimination, inferiority and fear
The main consequence of the colonial legacies permeating the AWF
stu- dents’ macro and micro contexts was that they felt discriminated
against in Mexico and at the university; as Leticia stated, “It upsets me
that there are still people who support inequality (. . .) yes, it upsets
me, not so much because I am an Indigenous person, rather because
they accuse us of being less intelligent (. . .) additionally, they often do
not even say Indigenous, but Indian.” In Mexico, the use of the word
“indio” [Indian] is insulting. Part of Mexico’s colonial legacy is the
per- ception that Indigenous people are inferior to “white” people, so
being treated as an “indio” is offensive. Participants feel discriminated
against in their EFL classrooms specifically. According to Guillermo,
his EFL classmates “think they know everything and that they know a
lot of English. They feel superior. They do not care about us, just

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 Autonomous Pluralistic Learning Strategies 119

because of English, and they make you feel it very clearly.” Jorge
added, “In the English class, some classmates help you and explain,
but others are horrible, they literally turn their back on you. At the
beginning I suffered a lot because of that because I felt very small, I
did not feel recognized anymore. I felt I had nothing left.” Jorge also
linked speaking English to power: “Some of the ‘other’ students
perceive English as a power; a power they impose on us. In class,
always the same students participate, those who want to show that
they can speak. And those who don’t speak English just have to stay
quiet.” Hence, participants felt as though their dominant-group peers
used their abil- ity to speak English to show superiority and to make
clear that they be- longed to the world of modernity, a world which
the AWF participants did not feel they belonged to as of yet. These
feelings of discrimination had an impact on the participants’ EFL
learning because they believed that their dominant-group peers knew
more than they did; as Angel put it, “The truth is, the real problem is
that the ‘others’ know a lot, much more than we do.” AWF students
not only feel inferior because of their lower EFL-competency levels in
their EFL courses but also because their (different) background
knowledge is not taken into account in class. In the same vein,
Gabriela claimed that “I feel inhib- ited by fear, fear of not doing well,
of giving the wrong answers and fear that my classmates will make
fun of me.” Hence, this feeling, a feel- ing of inferiority makes them
feel afraid of participating in class.
In summary, the factors contributing to the discrepancy between
AWF students and their dominant-group peers in the EFL-learning
pro- cess stem from Mexico’s colonial legacies, at the macro level, and
from the pedagogical vision of the UA language department, which
does not encourage students to integrate their linguistic and cultural
multi- competences in the learning of English, at the micro level;
however, the results also show that AWF students who are able to
negotiate their multiple identities are better at resisting discrimination
and becoming autonomous learners who take control of their own
EFL-learning pro- cess, as is shown in the findings from the second
research question.
Question 2: How do AWF participants view their investment in
EFL learning?
Some AWF Indigenous participants in the present research showed a
better ability than others to negotiate the unequal power relationship
between their multiple identities. By doing so, they became social
agents and engaged with EFL. Leticia confirmed this engagement
when she stated, “If we speak English, people won’t say anymore that
we come from poor communities and that we don’t have education.”
Mari- sol also said, in an IFG session, that “they will perceive us as
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poor rural

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 Autonomous Pluralistic Learning Strategies 121

kids, but kids who speak English. Some people see it that way. They
do not valorize you as human beings; they are just interested in what
you possess and what you know. It may be an advantage because it’s
easier to reposition yourself that way.” Lourdes added that “in the
context of the city, it’s normal to speak English; speaking English
repositions you.” Finally, Elena imagined herself by saying, “If I want
to get to know important people and to climb the social scale, I need to
speak English. English is like the key that opens many doors, right?”
Hence, Leticia, Marisol, Lourdes, and Elena created local imagined
commu- nities that repositioned them as competent citizens, both on a
national level and in the EFL classroom where they spoke English.
That is, they view their knowledge-of-English cultural capital as a
form of learning investment and also used this cultural capital to
reposition themselves in the EFL classroom and in Mexico. The result
was that they would be perceived as Indigenous people who spoke
English and wanted to enter modernity. Once repositioned, they were
able to use their linguis- tic and cultural multi-competences to learn
English. Jorge, for example, stated that “I always relate new English
words to words in Spanish or Nahuatl, to something I already know. I
may not participate much in class, but I can visualize and feel what I
am learning.” Angel also ex- plained that he related the three
languages:

With my nieces, we often pretend that we are cooking or that we get

together for gossip, and then we say, “In English we say CAT, in Nahuatl
NIXTON, and in Spanish GATO.” We do the same with colors, animals, or
any other things. In a certain way, it’s easier for us when we relate the
three languages; it’s easier to remember English like this.

Guillermo related that, once, an EFL teacher asked students to write

about a trip they had made. He first did not know what to write. He
said, “I have never travelled anywhere, but I imagined myself going
on holiday to my community.” That is, while, on the one hand, bilin-
gual students like Jorge and Angel create autonomous plurilingual
learning strategies to integrate their knowledge of Nahuatl and Span-
ish into their learning of English, on the other hand, monolingual
Indigenous students, like Guillermo, create autonomous pluricultural
learning strategies for adapting EFL activities to their own cultural ex-
periences. In other words, they are able to build new knowledge by
integrating their former linguistic and cultural background knowl-
edge into their current linguistic and cultural background knowledge,
in spite of the fact that the former knowledge is discriminated against
on local and national levels. Hence, they become social agents and
autonomous learners who take control, not only over the content, but

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more importantly, over the process of their own learning. The findings
detailed above lead to two main discussion points that are summar-
ized in the next section.

Discussion
General findings show that AWF student struggles with English are,
indeed, socially and historically constructed, at both macro and micro
levels, and this leads to two main discussion points.
The first focuses on students who are able to act as social agents
and therefore become autonomous language learners able to take con-
trol over the process of their own learning. As explained above, these
students use their knowledge-of-English cultural capital to reposition
themselves; in their new position, they are no longer marginalized
and can create autonomous, pluralistic learning strategies that allow
them to integrate their multi-competences into their learning of
English; that is, they adopt a pluralistic learning approach such as the
one defined by the Council of Europe (2012). Moreover, their success
in EFL learning cannot be exclusively attributed to internal factors.
Their experiences show that language-learning autonomy cannot be
achieved through the mediated learning promoted by the psychologi-
cal perspective alone (Oxford, 2003). Hence, the integration of a socio-
critical layer of language-learning autonomy with the pre-existing
psychological layer would create an optimal language-learning envi-
ronment for such students at UA (Oxford, 2003; Ribe´ , 2003), an
envi- ronment that would develop cognitive processes based on the
context in which AWF students live and interact (Wenden, 1991).
The second matter for discussion is the socio-historical construction
of AWF students. During my fieldwork in Mexico, I experienced how
difficult it was to erase the colonial divide (i.e., we vs. them) because it
has been deeply institutionalized, both by colonialism and by the
Mexican nation-state. In consequence, I looked for different and addi-
tional ways to decolonize methodology, one of the major concerns of
the present research. I therefore integrated participants, not only into
data collection, but above all, into the analysis of the data itself; hence,
IFG participants not only checked and approved my first inductive
analysis but also contested and reinterpreted parts of it. This colla-
borative methodology allowed us to create a glocalized knowledge
that was aligned with the claims of postcolonial and critical applied-
linguistic theories (i.e., to write from the perspective of subaltern iden-
tities). In sum, in the present study, I tried to overcome the ontological
division inherent in colonialism by involving participants in the analy-
sis and interpretation of their own world.

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Conclusion
Findings from this critical ethnographic case study reveal that, for
AWF students, English is, indeed, rooted in Mexico’s colonial legacies
(Escobar, 2005; Mignolo, 2005). These colonial legacies impose
unequal cultural and linguistic power relationships between lan-
guages and cultures that are expressed in discrimination against AWF
students, whereby knowing and understanding English is used to
show superiority. AWF students have to negotiate between local/
rural, national/urban and a global identity related to English and
modernity, the first of which is discriminated against in the urban
world where the UA is embedded. This discrimination has an impact
on students’ EFL-learning process. Consequently, participants feel
inferior and afraid in the EFL classroom. In addition, the UA Lan-
guage Department does not recognize AWF students’ local knowl-
edges and languages; rather, it favours a monolithic approach to the
teaching of English that does not draw on diverse students’ multi-
competences (Cook, 1992).
Findings also reveal that agency is one of the factors that influences
AWF students’ investment in EFL because it allows them to resist feel-
ings of discrimination and to become autonomous learners responsi-
ble for their own learning process. Some – though not all – Indigenous
students contest and resist their marginalized position (a) by creating
imagined communities that reposition them, on a national level and in
the EFL classroom, and (b) by appropriating the English language
through the integration of their own voices into the learning process
(i.e., they become autonomous learners who create their own learning
strategies) (Pennycook, 2001). Hence, these students develop a plural-
istic language-learning approach that favours the creation of autono-
mous, plurilinguistic and pluricultural language-learning strategies
(Council of Europe, 2000; Despagne, 2013).
Thus, the findings imply that the UA Language Department should
draw on the integration of a socio critical layer of language learning
autonomy with the current psychological perspective as, according to
Oxford (2003) and Ribe´ (2003), the two combined create an optimal
environment for English-language learning. Findings also addressed
the decolonization of research methods and its potential to co-develop
glocalized knowledge (i.e., the blending of local and global knowl-
edges), in line with the theories of postcolonialism and critical applied
linguistics used in the present study. Participants involved in co-
analyzing data voiced their views on my interpretations of the inter-
view data, views that approved, (re) interpreted, and sometimes con-
tested some of my initial interpretations. They also imagined future

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124 Despagne

research projects that could investigate their struggles with EFL learn-
ing from gendered perspectives, as women’s agency with regard to
taking control of their own learning processes may be undermined in
the sexist environment in which they are educated. Overall, partici-
pants became co-analysts of their own world, which injected a more
critical perspective into my qualitative research methods. This critical
perspective is important specifically for teaching English in former
colonial countries with unequal cultural power relationships, where
EFL courses should focus on developing critical language awareness
(i.e., a “reflexive, socially and politically aware approach to under-
standing the role that language plays in society” and to recognizing
how this role affects students’ positioning within society and within
the EFL classroom; Sayer, 2007, p. 348).
Finally, this study confirms the importance of the socio-historical
context in language learning – specifically, in learning English in
Mexico. While some work has focused on mainstream Mexican stu-
dents’ EFL learning, and other work has focused on Indigenous and
minority education, until now, no single work has focused on the EFL
learning of Indigenous and minority students. Thus, the present study
fills a gap in the language-research literature in Mexico and
worldwide.
Please direct correspondence to Colette Despagne, Beneme´rita Universidad
Auto´ noma de Puebla (BUAP), 4 sur # 104, Centro Puebla, CP 72000, Me
´xico ; e-mail colette.despagne@gmail.com

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