The self-access center as a social landscape: the case of a Mexican self-access center

Self-Access Centers (SACs) have spread all over the world. Particularly in Mexico they have been opened in many public universities in the last twenty years and some research projects have been conducted in this period of time. SACs provide users with learning support structures which are designed to promote language learning and foster learning autonomy. Studies about these facilities report on different aspects that contribute to their success, this paper addresses the self-access center as a social landscape where literacy practices with specific features occur. The theoretical framework proposed by the New Literacy Studies enabled us to approach the research of a self-access center in a Mexican university. This study allowed us to identify the types of literacy events that take place there, to characterize the design of this center as a social landscape (i.e., comprised of visible and inferred resources, participants and artifacts), and explain the affordances it provides to students’ language learning and autonomy. The social landscape, its features and the interactions of users and the different elements that comprise the learning structure of this language self-access center will be analyzed in this paper.