Teaching Nahuatl Through Poetry: A Didactic Intervention Using the Genre- Based Pedagogy Reading to Learn

Abstract

The social, cultural and educational disadvantage suffered by the indigenous population in Mexico has been extensively documented. The country lacks a clear educational policy on indigenous education, which is evident in a methodological and instrumental gap within the classrooms. For this reason, the Master’s program in Academic Literacies and Discourse Studies at Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, favors interventions that address this problem and contribute to change this adverse panorama. One of these interventions is presented here. Its objective was to teach náhuatl as a second language by using the principles and methodology of the Reading to Learn program from systemic functional linguistics through contemporary poetic texts written in náhuatl. The results of this implementation suggest the didactic unit confronted the participants with a new way of understanding the pedagogical actions of languages, which led them to be more participative and experience meaningful learning in the classroom. Additionally, this exercise highlighted the importance of explicit and situated scaffolding processes to achieve the construction of more authentic and efficient intercultural learning environments that reappraise the indigenous language, as promoted by this methodology.