Teaching English in a Mexican intercultural university: analyzing teacher discourses and practices from ELF perspectives

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how English teachers have integrated the concept of interculturality and how they have affected the teaching of English in an intercultural university in southeastern Mexico. Based on the contributions of the ELF approach, biographical interviews with five English teachers were analyzed to explore their discourses on the educational model and its relationship with the sociocultural context of the Yucatan Peninsula. Interviews were analyzed through discourse analysis and three categories were obtained by which teachers make sense of their current professional practice: (1) the creation of intercultural relationships, (2) the interculturalization of ELT, and (3) discursive tensions towards an intercultural approach. Different positions and definitions about interculturality and its implications in the English classroom were found. Through an ELF approach, emphasis is placed on taking advantage of the diversity present in the classroom to develop intercultural awareness. It also explores the need to pay attention to communicative needs rather than continuing with traditional communication patterns and developing critical thinking in their students.