Learning Critical Literacy in ESL Classrooms

Abstract

In this present article, I intend to interpret and argue that Critical Literacy or Critical Language Awareness is a meaningful concept for ESL learners to transparently understand and English educators need to apply it in their daily educational practices. Through reviewing the relevant literatures, the theoretical knowledge of Critical Literacy is introduced at first. The second part concentrates on explaining the importance of implementing Critical Literacy in the instruction of ESL. Finally, rooted in former researchers' findings and argumentations, I elaborate on the analysis of the predictable difficulties and barriers about the cultivation of Critical Literacy for both native and non-native English speakers. In a meanwhile, some suggestive strategies are provided respectfully so as to assist ESL instructors to cope with these problems at the practical stage.

An Inquiry Study on Teachers’ Beliefs and Knowledge of Critical Literacy Pedagogy in Indonesia Context

“…They not only view literacy as the ability to read and write, but develop these abilities into things that are deeper and beyond the text itself. Their knowledge of critical literacy is in line with what was conveyed by Riley (2015) and Zhang (2015), they stated that critical literacy is the ability to criticize and analyze texts that question the strength, values, and sounds that are not heard from a text. In addition, most of information related to critical literacy that teachers got were from their discussion in class when they were in university, some of them got the information from the article that they had read.…”

“…Participants' explanations about critical literacy were related to how to understand the meaning beyond the text and become a critical reader. In line with this, some proponents of critical literacy stated that critical literacy is related to criticizing and analyzing the underlying ideology that the author's purposes (Zhang, 2015). Moreover, this answer also supported by McLaughlin & Allen (2002) who stated that students who engage in critical literacy become open-minded, active, strategic readers who are capable of viewing text from a critical perspective.…”

“…Additionally, Zhang (2015) proposed some importance of critical literacy implementation. First, applying critical literacy in teaching and learning practices will help students to get critical access to the context of linguistic, social, cultural, and personal related to the text.…”

“…Whereas, the fact is in conducting a critical-oriented class, the starting point is the teacher should become critically literate to open space for students to be critical (McDaniel, 2006;McLaughlin & Allen, 2002;Riley, 2015). Moreover, most of critical literacy researches were carried out in ESL classrooms (Zhang, 2015), only a few researches were done in the EFL context (Gustine, 2013(Gustine, , 2018Ko, 2010), especially in Indonesia (Huang, 2011). In addition, Ko (2010) found that in some Asian country, the knowledge of critical literacy is still lacking.…”

The Paraná Speaks English Program in Teacher Education

“…In other words, the teaching material seems to have some gaps, since it has trouble coping with current trends in language teaching/learning, such as: the status of English in the globalized world (MIRANDA, 2015) and grammar instruction (RODRIGUES, 2005), as illustrated in the excerpts. Nonetheless, this discussion could also encompass text/discursive genres (CRISTÓVÃO, 2018), critical and digital literacy (GIRÓN-GARCÍA, 2015, ZHANG, 2015 and language variation (RODRIGUES, 2005; FRANCESCON; SENEFONTE; BARONAS, 2013), to name a few.…”