Publications
Publication details [#62986]
Tupas, T. Ruanni F. and Honey Tabiola. 2017. Language policy and development aid: a critical analysis of an ELT project. Current Issues in Language Planning 18 (4) : 407–421.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge
Journal WWW
Annotation
This article highlights the political and ideological entanglements of language policy and English language teaching with neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and development aid. It does so by exploring the explicit and implicit aims and practices of an educational development aid project in Mindanao, Philippines. The US-funded Job Enabling English Proficiency (or JEEP) project claimed to ameliorate the standard of English in the region through the introduction of imported educational materials and classroom configurations. However, it is displayed how English-only policy, “native-speakerism,” and the use of repetition as a dominant language learning practice in the classroom are all implicated in the politics of neocolonialism in Mindanao. The article makes a case for language policy as a lens through which the intricacies of development aid in neocolonial conditions may be tracked, critiqued, and transformed.