—Exploring the impact of standardised language assessment on relationality in Indigenous-rooted contexts—

I was keenly aware after my first cycle of ‘participatory action research’ of two of its major shortcomings: One, no action was ultimately taken; two, the more respectably research-like it seemed, the less participatory it became.

The research project ruffled many feathers. I was unexpectedly called into the office of the university vice-chancellor and asked which exam students should be taking: the Cambridge FCE or the TOEFL ITP? I had to sheepishly explain that until my study was complete, I simply couldn’t say. In the back of my mind, I knew neither was ideal. On another occasion, a black SUV arrived outside a language centre where I was giving interviews. I was told a meeting had been arranged with Doctor Modesto Seara Vasquez, Rector of the twelve public universities in the Oaxacan SUNEO system. I spent an evening arguing against linguistic essentialism to a nonagenarian staunchly entrenched in the notion of linguistic nationalism. Doctor Modesto nevertheless conceded the need for changes to be made and instigated a series of online meetings with all language teaching staff at his universities. Yet consensus would never be reached, and Doctor Modesto died just four months later. I was left to reflect on the most shockingly authoritarian of his throwaway statements from our conversation the previous August: “To maintain order in the education system of Oaxaca requires a level of discipline on a par with that of Hitler.”

My research framework had also been a largely positivist one. My first year of studies had left me itching to try my hand at statistical analysis, work with large quantities of data, and provide research findings which would finally win me some respect from co-workers in the hard sciences. In short, I wanted to prove myself as a social scientist. The result was a very convincing set of facts and figures. I hope to publish these soon in English and Spanish, but perhaps the most intriguing takeaways were the following:

1. As a gate-keeping exam, the TOEFL ITP prevented 47% of undergraduate students from graduating on completion of their broader studies over the past ten years.
2. When it came to teaching andf learning, the TOEFL ITP had a significant negative impact on student motivation; Cambridge examinations, however, had an equally significant impact on teacher motivation.
3. Both standardised examinations and accompanying teaching appeared to entrench distinct language ideologies in students, most notably perhaps, the ‘native speaker’ fallacy: the perception that languages somehow belong to specific communities of individuals who act as the final gate-keepers to legitimate use of the language. These ‘native speakers’ also constitute the best teachers, whatever their qualifications.

Before beginning my second cycle of research, however, I wanted to reach out to those most affected by my research: students, teachers, and communities for whom these apparent realities of linguistic imperialism are experienced on a day-to-day basis. I was lucky enough to be invited by Doctor Mario López-Gopar to teach a course at the Universidad Autónoma de Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO). Mario kindly suggested I teach a course on the participatory theatre methods I had developed with other ESOL teachers as part of my Masters degree. Theatre of the Oppressed is a set of games and techniques which can be used within the language classroom to explore obstacles faced by participants, as well as allowing the students themselves to raise specific embodied forms of oppression from their own lived experience.

–Blackout Poetry: “Creative and effective use of English in Mexico create an expert that invoke the ghost of English.”–

Over the course of five weeks, we met twice weekly for two hour sessions for which students were given credit on their broader course of study. We also spent time together exploring the city of Oaxaca, which for some students was as much of an unknown quantity as it was for myself, having come from rural communities where life adopted an entirely different rythmn and set of relationships. When students left for their teaching placements, they invited me to join them at a primary school in a small mountain town where they taught those same games and techniques to young children.

 

–Teaching placement at a primary school in Cuajimoloyas–

The result of five weeks of work in this area would be an immersive piece of participatory theatre which my students were keen to share with their peers. Some of the strongest emergent themes were:

• anxiety (language anxiety, exam anxiety, social anxiety, and most interestingly perhaps, intercultural anxiety);
• the sense of being ignored by teachers (at school rather than necessarily at university level),
• the hierarchies of language (with Indigenous languages perceived as holding significantly lesser status than colonial languages like English, Spanish, or French).

These themes weaved together effortlessly and organically in the narrative they generated. The name chosen for this Theatre Forum would be: ¿Te das cuenta? Its English language title is False Friends. A first performance will be held later this week at the UABJO – all are welcome!