PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES FOR TEACHING ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE:

TEACHING CRITICAL READING

(CHAPTER 15)

CATHERINE WALLACE

In Alsagoff, L., McKay, S. L., Hu, G, & Renandy, W. A. (Eds). (2012). Principles and ractices for Teaching English as an International Language. New York, NY: Routledge.

Presented By: Entisar Elsherif

The chapter examines the role of critical reading in the teaching of English for the global age.

What is critical reading pedagogy? Why teach critical reading? How to teach critical reading?

WHAT IS CRITICAL READING PEDAGOGY? Critical reading pedagogy, … , centers around the

texts and discourses which embody .. global events and phenomena [such as immigration or supply of global resources]. Because critical reading aims to challenge conventional choices of texts for teaching and ways of reading which privilege the center-based native speaker, it has particular resonance for the teaching of English internationally, where both texts and readers are coming from a range of different perspectives and where learners have different needs, knowledge, and cultural assumptions.

(p. 262 – 263)

TRADITIONAL PRACTICES & PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING READING

An Incremental view Skills and strategies The strategic reader The sociocultural challenge Social practices and social roles A social view of text: genre

PRACTICES & PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING READING IN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXTS

Reading as a sociocultural, interpretive process: identity, disposition, and stance. Reading becomes more a matter of

interpretation than comprehension A useful bridge into a conceptualization

of what is meant by the critical reader

Reading as a sociocultural, interpretive process: identity, disposition, and stance. Reader identity allegiances, linked to

gender , nation, social class, or religion, come into play both what we opt to read in the first place and how we process text.

Disposition will be affected by factors such as personal taste, life experiences, and cultural expectations

We take up a stance to the particular text we are faced with

Critical reading involves drawing on a set of identities and dispositions which come into play as we adopt a stance to the text which confronts us.

WHAT WE MEAN BY CRITICAL?

Different understandings of “critical”: addressing the logical coherence of texts

and the credibility of argument Considering texts from a perspective of

power, drawing on a discourse view of reading

challenging existing views of the relationship between the self and “the other”

Taking a position of resistance

TOOLS FOR CRITICAL READINGA Freirean Perspective

Reading the word as “reading the world”

Image, visual, or key word act as triggers or prompts to explore aspects of reality

Enhance reflexivity, especially around social justice

Empowering community techniques REFLECT

Texts as codes that problematize aspects of social life

TOOLS FOR CRITICAL READINGA Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

Provides some tools to dig deeper into texts Answers: how can texts be taught as

discourses? Grammatical choices reveal discourse

choices that link to wider ideological tendencies

The process of noticing language choice and of making metalinguistic judgments allows L2 students to exercise both knowledge of grammar and their own critical judgment

WHY TEACH CRITICAL READING?

The position of English as the world’s major language for the foreseeable future means that it becomes more important to teach English language learners to read critically.

The consequence of commercial domination online English medium print media is a need to alert students to the option of resistance to powerful and pervasive texts.

CRITICAL READING PEDAGOGY AT BEGINNER LEVEL

Explore uses of English, both written and spoken, in their environment.

Use a critical orientation through activities around fiction and non-fiction texts which highlight the way in which gender stereotypes are presented in texts.

Use simple texts or visual to generate key words, in the Freirean spirit of encouraging learners to read the world through reflecting on key words which represent aspects of their experience.

CRITICAL READING PEDAGOGY AT BEGINNER LEVEL

Encourage students to be aware of the intended readership of texts and how it varies in different cultural contexts by ask them to bring into class a range of text genres, such as newspapers, and answering the following questions:

1. who is the producer of the texts? 2. For whom are they produced? 3. why have they been produced? 4. Is this type of text of relevance or interest to you?

CRITICAL READING PEDAGOGY AT ADVANCED LEVEL

Critical pre-reading activities Critical while-reading activities Critical post-reading activities

CRITICAL PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

Students pose their own questions of a text, after a quick survey of the text and its context.

Students consider the range of discourses available to describe the issue in hand.

Intercultural pre-reading activities can encourage learners to reflect on how universal phenomenon and accompanying discourses are differently inflected across different cultural settings.

CRITICAL WHILE-READING ACTIVITIES Use graphs, grids, tables, or images to help

students reconstruct the text by reflection as a starting point

Students can identify parralel discourses in some texts.

Critical cloze or gap filling activities involve students actively thinking of how changing the choice of words, particularly their connotative value, will impact the overall effect.

CRITICAL POST-READING ACTIVITIES

Revisiting the text by rewriting it from another point of view

Students can be asked to collect texts on the same theme but written from a different perspective for a different context and readership.

students might be presented with post-reading activities which highlight different features of contrasting versions of stories of sexism or racism.

CONCLUSION

There are no easy steps to critical pedagogy

A critical reading pedagogy has the potential to support L2 learners’ access to the global debate of the age by planning critical consciousness raising activities which involve simple observations of literacy practices and discourse tendencies in texts

Any Questions?