A Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideologies in Chilean SLTE Policies

Abstract

Second language teacher education (SLTE), particularly teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), has gained relevance over the last few decades. However, SLTE practices are unquestionably embedded in linguistic and pedagogical beliefs about what this instruction should look like. To explore this issue, the current mixed methods study aimed at reviewing a multi-layered set of SLTE policies in Chile to unmask their hidden ideologies, allowing for deeper levels of reflection into the ways these policies are enacted in the classroom. To this end, the current research employed corpus-based techniques using keywords-in-context (KWIC) to determine the most frequent words and their collocations in three policy levels: The SLTE national standards (macro-level), 35 SLTE curricula and their program’s descriptions (meso-level) and 34-course outlines of a regional SLTE programs (micro-level). This semi-automatic analysis of keywords was conducted using NVivo12 and AntConc and complemented with collocations and selected excerpts. Results suggest the SLTE national guidelines focus on pedagogical elements to understand how EFL is taught and learned from a monolingual and learner-centered perspective. On the contrary, universities mostly emphasize the achievement of higher levels of proficiency and language-based disciplinary knowledge. They foster English-only practices while evidencing a tension between teacher and student-oriented models, with these findings mostly replicated in the regional analyzed SLTE program. Additionally, the learning outcomes and learning attributes in the university descriptions show evidence of the so-called ‘discourse of advertising.’ This is the case as universities promote positive attributes that are not always consistent with the curricula they offer in light of neoliberal ideologies as academic programs would be products to be commercialized in the university market.