Best Practices in Language Instruction

For Whom Are They Best?

Abstract

Language teaching has the potential to be transformative, but it also sometimes reinforces exoticization of the Other and cultural stereotypes. In this article, the author employs the Currere Method to analyze her own experiences while learning and teaching Spanish to consider how the language curriculum might encourage students to develop a framework for anticolonial antiracist thought and action. Autobiographical and social analyses show how best practices in language teaching often contribute to neoimperial practices. However, recognizing and deconstructing hegemonic structures of neoliberal educative norms may help instructors devise and implement a more democratic curriculum.