Teaching English as a Non-Imperial Language in an Underprivileged Public School in Spain

This article summarizes the processes and findings of a 2-year collaborative action research (CAR) project that analyzed and aimed to counteract some of the most negative educational effects of English linguistic imperialism in the field of English language teaching (ELT) and, more concretely, in the context of English as a foreign language education in Spain. The CAR investigated the ramifications of this phenomenon in a primary school located in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city of València. The pedagogical alternative it embraced in order to reverse the underlying tenets of ELT under present-day neoliberal imperialism consisted in combining art and multimodality through a series of projects; a variety of qualitative strategies were used (classroom observation, journal entries, recordings, student interviews, photographs, etc.) to assess its effects. Evidence showed that the three projects developed during the CAR succeeded in offering a worthwhile educational experience and hence a valuable critical alternative to mainstream ELT, one that brought about a change in the way the socially underprivileged students related to the English language.