The response pieces and students’ reflection papers suggest that the inclusion of a critical lens in the EFL course yielded positive results in the development of a critical perspective towards reading and writing for the students. Findings also provide several insights into how a critical literacy perspective can be better implemented in EFL courses. Pedagogical implications are detailed below.
Engagement with a Critical Literacy Stance
Although some students were able to critically examine texts for gaps and inconsistencies, others did not demonstrate such a keen awarenes. Even with those who did, their reflection papers suggest that they shared a superficial understanding of what a critical stance is and how such a stance relates to the critical questions as possible angles through which to consider texts. It may therefore be necessary
for the instructor, rather than merely explaining what critical literacy requires of a reader, to actively engage students in discussions and reflections of the different ways to approach texts and their underlying assumptions about the reader and what it means to read.
The instructor should also explore with students the consequences of reading critically versus reading passively.
The instructor should also spend time to demonstrate what each of the critical questions aims to illuminate about the different aspects of texts. One way to focus students’ attention on the meaning and implications of the critical questions might be to work with one or two questions at a time using short passages so that students can concentrate on each question and the perspective it represents as well as the assumptions it aims to reveal. At the same time, the instructor needs also to make explicit the importance of and the ways to consider the critical questions not just individually but also as a whole, i.e. to emphasize that these questions, rather than prescriptive guidelines or comprehension questions for every piece of article, represent and remind readers of a particular disposition towards texts.
This is perhaps particularly pertinent in cases where students misunderstand the critical questions as composition exercises or when their writing implies resistance to the course emphasis on the critical literacy. Even with students who already demonstrate a critical awareness, such emphasis can further illuminate how their questioning of texts reflects a different orientation towards what it means to read and write.
Choice of Topic
The choice of topic seems to affect students’ response to texts.
Some topics encourage more critical reflection than others while some topics bring forth students’ personal and local concerns. The topic of urban development was the one topic which students were familiar with and could relate to, yet one in which they did not have an emotional investment the way they had with the issue of education.
This topic allowed the students to exert a deeper level of critical engagement than the other two. Conversely, on the topic of education, an area which occupies a great part of students’ lives, they were more eager to share their concerns about educational issues rather than to engage critically with the content of the article. The topic of eradication of poverty for women in developing countries is more distant and removed from the students’ everyday experiences. Perhaps due to the relative lack of exposure to such issues, most students were less capable of resisting being positioned by the text in the way the author intended, mostly showing praise and admiration for the two financial programs.
However, it is important that the instructor encourage critical engagement with a variety of topics, including topics in which students have a greater personal involvement as well as topics with which they are less familiar. The instructor may need to work with these types of topics in different ways. With the former, the instructor might first allow a group or whole-class discussion through which students can voice their personal opinions. After that, students may be in a better position to consider the topic from a distance that enables the critical lens.
On the contrary, with topics that are more foreign to students, the instructor should first allow time for students to explore and
familiarize themselves with the issues. The instructor could provide background information, and students could also be asked to search for contextual sources that would help to enhance their knowledge of the topics. When students have adequate understanding of the subject matter, they are in a better position to consider the issue through multiple viewpoints.
Source of Material
Luke et al. (2001) suggest that community texts are preferable to textbook materials because working with authentic materials enhances students’ interest in the subject matter. Authentic texts also help to transfer learning in the classroom to students’ everyday lives.
Textbooks can have a disadvantage because their articles seem to stand still in time, devoid of any information as to the circumstances which brought about their existence. Contextual information is an important element in developing a critical stance towards texts because it emphasizes that texts are embedded in social, cultural, historical, and political relations. However, results from this study suggest that textbook articles worked well with EFL students who are novice critical readers. The use of a textbook seemed to have provided students a familiar and safe place from which to experiment with ways to cast a critical lens on the articles they read. Textbooks also ensure that the articles are at a reading level that is appropriate for students so students can concentrate on the critical examination of texts rather than on difficult vocabulary and sentence structures.
In addition, although textbook materials are devoid of contextual information, they benefit the novice critical reader, as an overload of information may serve to confound them. In this study,
because each piece of reading focused on one topic at a time, students were able to concentrate on the one issue without having to take into account a multitude of variables. The instructor could therefore work with both textbook materials as well as authentic texts. It may be helpful to begin with textbook articles when seeking to introduce and familiarize students with the critical stance. Then when students become more experienced, proceed with authentic materials where the emphasis includes contextual social, cultural, historical, or political influences on an author’s textual choices. Alternatively, the instructor could work with paired texts on each topic, beginning with an examination of textbook articles before moving on to authentic texts.
Reading and Writing Connection
One of the purposes for the response piece assignments was for students to author a response to another author’s writing. Green (2001) reminds us that the connection between reading and writing is an essential component in the development of critical literacy, and writing is the most effective way to develop critical readers. Therefore, in addition to responding to others’ texts, a possible follow-up activity is for students to compose essays on the same topics as the articles they examined, but from perspectives which they identified as having been neglected. That is, through their own conscious and deliberate effort at constructing texts, readers/writers can better understand how different constructions of texts aim to position readers differently, and gain insight into “how language works, the ways in which various individuals and groups use literacy to their own ends, and the reasons behind such use” (Green, 2001, p. 10). This allows students to
experience firsthand how an author’s deliberate choices regarding what to include or exclude in a piece of writing depend on the purpose of constructing the text.
Beyond Textual Analysis
The response pieces demonstrated students’ keen concern for local and global affairs. Students seemed eager to extend from the text to real world issues, not only to examine texts critically but also to examine their world critically, moving from reading the world into a place where they can start to “re-write” the world. Therefore, even though critical questions provide an angle from which to introduce students to the critical stance, novice critical readers deserve more than merely textual analyses. This study has demonstrated that an action stance should not be an afterthought of reading the word and the world, but should be a simultaneous and necessary part of any critical literacy curriculum.
Therefore, apart from the critical questions, it may be a good idea to examine textual connections, including text to self and text to world connections (Calkins, 2000). The instructor could follow such discussions with written assignments in which students share their thoughts on their own roles and local situations in relation to the topics discussed in the texts.
CONCLUSION
The current study has shown that rather than being positioned
by the authors’ intended ways of understanding the texts, the students were able to “read against” rather than “read with” texts (Janks, 1991).
Instead of reading solely for purposes of acquiring knowledge, the critical questions prompted students to seek inconsistencies in the texts and gaps in the way information was presented. The critical stance also enhanced students’ understanding that what is not written is also equally a part of the author’s message and also needs to be
“read.” In addition, it gave students an arena to consider how others’
actions have solved social problems and changed people’s lives, and made them consider how they themselves can become agents of change. The texts also prompted the students to examine situations in their own cities and country, and to consider possible directions and actions towards change. By directing their attention to local situations and their own possible roles, the students were not merely reading the world but were embarking on the first step toward re-writing the world.
The inclusion of critical literacy in EFL courses does, however, require the instructor to exercise creativity. As the dominant ideology of EFL courses is to focus on the technical aspects of the language, the instructor needs to simultaneously satisfy the students’ needs and introduce another perspective. When an appropriate balance is achieved, students can develop not only a view of reading and writing as social practices but also a positive attitude towards the critical stance. This study demonstrates that it is indeed possible and valuable to include a critical literacy framework in the teaching of English in EFL contexts.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
REFERENCES
Albright, J., Church, S., Settle, S., & Vasquez, V. (1999). A conversation about critical literacy. In C. Edelsky (Ed.), Making justice our project: Teachers working toward critical whole language practice (pp. 144-162). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Arnaudet, M. L., & Barrett, M. E. (1990). Paragraph development: A guide for students of English. (2nd ed.). White Plans, NY:
Pearson Education.
Bomer, R., & Bomer, K. (2001). For a better world: Reading and writing for social action. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Brown, K. (1999). Developing critical literacy. Sydney, Australia:
National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.
Calkins, L. (2000). The art of teaching reading. Boston: Allyn &
Bacon.
Canagarajah, A. S. (1993). Critical ethnography of a Sri Lankan classroom: Ambiguities in student opposition to reproduction through ESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 27, 601-626.
Chou, C. (2004). A study of critical literacy in EFL writing. Journal of Language Arts, 11, 245-258.
Cox, M. P., & Assis-Peterson, M. A. (1999). Critical pedagogy in ELT:
Images of Brazilian teachers of English. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 433-451.
Donald, R. B., Moore, J. D., Morrow, B. R., Wargetz, L. G., & Werner, K. (1999). Writing clear paragraphs. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. New York: Routledge.
Falkenstein, A. T. (2003). Critical literacy in an EFL (English-as-a-foreign language) context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Ferrance, E. (2000). Action research. Providence, RI: LAB at Brown University.
Freire, P., & Macedo, D. P. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word & the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers.
Green, P. (2001). Critical literacy revisited. In H. Fehring & P. Green (Eds.), Critical literacy: A collection of articles from the Australian literacy educators’ association (pp. 7-14). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Hartmann, P. & Kirn, E. (2007). Interactions 2: Reading. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Hood, S. (1998). Critical literacy: What does it mean in theory and practice? In A. Burns & S. Hood (Eds.), Teachers’ Voices 3:
Teaching critical literacy (pp. 11-19). Sydney, Australia:
National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.
Janks, H. (1991). A critical approach to the teaching of language.
Educational Review, 43, 191-199.
Kempe, A. (2001). No single meaning: Empowering students to construct socially critical readings of the text. In H. Fehring & P.
Green (Eds.), Critical literacy: A collection of articles from the Australian literacy educators’ association (pp. 40-57). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Ko, M. Y. & Wang, T. F. (July, 2007). Teachers’ perception of critical literacy in EFL teaching. Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Paris, France.
Kuo, J. M. (2006). Collaborative action research on critical literacy:
Investigating an English conversation classroom in Taiwan.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Luke, A., O’Brien, J., & Comber, B. (2001). Making community texts objects of study. In H. Fehring & P. Green (Eds.), Critical literacy: A collection of articles from the Australian Literacy Educators' Association (pp. 112-123). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Morgan, W. (1997). Critical literacy in the classroom: The art of the possible. New York: Routledge.
Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities, and the language classroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 159-171).
Harlow, England: Pearson Education.
Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Shannon, P. (1995). Text, lies, & videotape: Stories about life, literacy,
& learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Van Duzer, C., & Florez, M. C. (2004). Critical literacy for adult literacy in language learners. Retrieved August 9, 2007, from http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-1/critical.html.
Wallace, C. (1992). Critical literacy awareness in the EFL classroom.
In N. Fairclough (Ed.), Critical language awareness (pp.
59-92). New York: Longman.
Wallace, C. (1999). Critical language awareness: Key principles for a course in critical reading. Language Awareness, 8, 98-110.
Wooldridge, N. (2001). Tensions and ambiguities in critical literacy.
In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp. 259-270). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.