What do we know, not know, and need to know about ELT in Mexico?

Abstract

English Language Teaching (ELT) in Mexico covers a wide range of situations and results, from bilingual schools achieving excellent results, through language centres achieving generally good results, to common core English programmes in universities that start students at beginner level for the third or fourth time, after a decade or more of English classes at school, and generally fail to get most students beyond A2 level. Those common core university English programmes and other evidence suggest that most ELT in Mexico, especially school ELT, is failing to achieve worthwhile results. Sadly, we know too little for sure about both the successes and the failures of ELT in Mexico, though we can assume or guess a lot. This article considers what we really know about ELT in Mexico, what we do not know and urgently need to find out in order to radically improve the general situation, and how we might find it out.