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Abstract

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú has been a fixture on Forbes’s list of billionaires since 1991, and for the past three years, he has topped the magazine’s list of the world’s richest men. Although he is exceptionally well-known in his native Mexico, the majority of American college students have never heard of Carlos Slim. This article presents a curricular module built around this charismatic and controversial figure. The module requires students to navigate Internet-supported news media in the target language (Spanish), and engages them in independent, small-group, and larger, teacher-led activities designed to foster critical and comparative skills in cultural competency and analysis through process-based, student-led inquiry. Pedagogically and methodologically, the author engages with the recommendations and conclusions of recent studies by ACTFL and MLA committees, as well as by other leading scholars, regarding both the use of technology in the classroom and the idea of “teaching culture.” The unit’s content significantly deepens and enriches students’ understanding of social, economic, and political issues in modern Mexico. The article carefully situates each stage and aspect of the curricular unit presented in relation to recent studies of constructivism in foreign language acquisition and on the hierarchy of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives.

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