INDIGENOUS LITERACY IN MÉXICO:

CRITICAL ISSUES ABOUT THE SECOND

LANGUAGE LEARNING

Learning Conference 2007

Johannesburg, South Afric, July 2007

MÉXICO COUNTRY

Extension: 2 millions Km 2

105 MILLIONS OF
HABITANTS

77% urban population

23% rural population
12 millions of indigenous
people

22 millions en USA
CHARACTERISTICS OF EXCLUDED*
 Population: 15 years old & older:
68 millions (100%)

o Adults without basic education:

30.1 millions (44%)

Illiterate: 5.7 millions (8.4%)

Less than 6th. Grade: 9.8 millions
Less than 9th. Grade: 14.5 millions

Source: Conteo de población 2005. INEGI

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
 12 millions: 11% of total population
 62 ethnic groups

 More than 130 diversified languages

 Illiteratte: 33% (National 8.4%)

POLITICAL FRAMEWORK

INEA, for more than two decades, has made

constant educative efforts, directed to the
population young and adult native of the country.

Nowadays INEA develops an institutional policy

towards the indigenous population, that takes
shape in the Indigenous and Bilingual Educational
Model for the Life and Work (MEVyT-IB)
WHAT CHARACTERIZES THE EDUCATIVE
MODEL
 Includes three educative levels: initial, intermedium
and advanced
 Offers two routes of learning in the initial level,
depending on the linguistic condition of the people
 Emphasizes the intercultural approach
 Incorporates bilingual and pedagogical strategies
 Allows to choose and transit across diverse levels
and modules
 Favors the educative continuity
 Orientated to lifelong learning
Curricular organization
MIBES route, Spanish like second language: monolingual
people
Intermedium level
MIBES 1 MIBES 3
Beginnig to read
Read and write
and
In my language
write in my language
MIB 1
Using the
MIBES 2 MIBES 4 writing language
Beginning to read (two languages)
Speak
and write
Spanish
In Spanish

Initial level MIB 2

Numbers
and
calculations

MIB
Let’s live
better!
MIBI route: bilingual integrated: efficient bilingual
people
Intermedium level
MIBI 1 MIBI 2
Beginning read Write and read in
and write in my my two
two languages languages
MIB 1
Using the writing
Language

Initial level (two languages)

MIB 2
Numbers
and
calculations

MIB MIB 3 + 2D
Let’s live I write my
better! language
LITERACY
 Initial level=literacy
 Much more than only to decipher and to repeat
 Notion of functional literacy focuses on how these skills are
applied in relevant ways*
 Literacy as transformative: an active process of learning
involving social awareness and critical reflection*
 Literacy is viewed as a continuum of skills*

Basic
Basic education
education

Inicial
Inicial level
level

*UNESCO. Literacy for life. 2006

SECOND LANGUAGE
 The teaching of indigenous language contributes so much to
the learning of the second language (linguistic transference)

 Acquisition of the oral communicative competition of the

second language, is previous requisite for the acquisition of
abilities of reading and writing in this language

 The education of one second language in its oral and written

aspects depart of a functional and communicative approach

 The learning of the second language occurs like a gradual

process of communicative competitions development

 When the learned write in the mother tongue language and

speak in one second language, then it is possible to read and to
write this second language
 The competitions that allow a person to communicate
efficiently: to speak, to understand, to read and to write,
are developed in different spaces and moments

 The situations in which one or another language as well

as one or another code (spoken or written) are used, are
determined by the specific context in which the persons
lives and works

 The learning of one second language is not equivalent to

the translation from a language to another one, but that it
implies the recognition of the meaning and senses that
keep the languages in concrete situations.
THE METHODOLOGICAL WAY
 To recognize the spaces of use of the languages
(indigenous and spanish) in real communicative
situations
 To consider the structural characteristics of the
spanish and the indigenous language
 To identify and to recognize the linguistic elements
of the second language, the context in which it is
used and possible meaning of the words in the new
language in real communicative situations
THE PROCESS
 Identificación of the young or adult person with the
communicative situation

 Oral/written text/dialogue presentation (with discussion

and anticipation activities in mother tonque language)
 Practice of the oral text/situation

 Reflection both languages about (structure, meanings,

phonetic)
 Modification of the text/dialogue

 New text/dialogue production

CRITICAL ISUUES
 The bilingualism can be only
apparent. Really, many persons
only use elementary aspects of  We need simple but very thin
the second language in some instruments of valuation
practical daily situations  We need both languages with
 The persons need 4 or 5 years of simultaneous work in an
study of the second language to extensive framework of basic
learn in this second language in education
efficient way*, but the  We need develop rich literate
educational processes of
environments both mother
bilingual literacy cannot be so
tongue languages and Spanish
extensive.
 In the indigenous communities
do not exist literate environments

*In the meaning of Cummins, 1994

CRITICAL ISSUES
 There is sufficient
evidence about the
linguistic transference, but
the times of literacy in
mother tongue language
are very small
 There is sufficient
evidence about the
existence of different
ways of thinking and
different styles of
learning.
 In cultural contexts
specific solutions are
needed, but the public
politics are orientated to
the massive solutions
 We need to re-formulate the criteria
of curricular development and of
literacy evaluation, in order to
recognize it as a process along the
basic education and to favor
formally his continuous development
 Different styles of education are
needed to deliver to every specific
person the possibility of learning and
of growing in social and cognitive
terms.
 Bilingual programs must be alert
and sensitive to social and individual
differences in order to provide the
most adequate pedagogical
assistance to help persons acquire
the second language; they need to
function adequately in a multilingual
setting as well as to perform
efficiently at educative spaces.
 THANKS!
www.conevyt.org.mx/cursos/indigena.htm
smendoza@inea.gob.mx
saraelenamendoza@yahoo.com.mx