Abstract
This study mainly explored Taiwanese EFL teachers’ perception of the importance of critical literacy in EFL teaching, the feasibility of critical literacy in an EFL class at Taiwan colleges, and an ideal critical EFL class in Taiwan. Participants were three former EFL Taiwanese teachers who have newly learned critical literacy at American universities. The methods employed in this study were in-depth interview techniques and elicitation interviews by means of a lesson plan task. All the interview data was tape-recorded, transcribed, and then categorized into several themes for analysis. The results showed that the participants considered it feasible and even important to have critical literacy in EFL teaching although each perceived a different dimension to critical literacy. In the lesson plans, all three raised gender issues, attempting to disrupt the common place in the text or interrogating multiple viewpoints. However, students’ English proficiency, students’ autonomy, teaching resources, cultural difference, and political labeling should be taken into consideration when the teacher brings the idea of critical literacy into EFL teaching. This study not only throws lights on how to incorporate critical literacy in the EFL context but also evidences the importance and effectiveness of member check in conducting a qualitative study. In short, this study offered a new perspective for students, teachers and researchers from which to re-think how critical literacy can be implemented in an English-as-a-second-language reading class.
Key words: critical literacy, reading instruction, fairy tales, higher education
Introduction
This study attempts to explore how EFL teachers perceive the idea of introducing critical literacy into EFL teaching in Taiwan colleges. It investigated how Taiwanese EFL teachers who have newly learned critical literacy at American universities perceive the importance of critical literacy in EFL teaching, the feasibility of critical literacy in an EFL class, and an ideal critical EFL class they envision.
Critical literacy has gained much importance at the Anglo-American educational institutions in recent years, with much discussion of its theoretical underpinnings (Fairclough, 1989; Freire, 1970; Gee, 1990) and abundant studies of its classroom practices such as those by Damico (2003), Edesky (1999), Lander (2005), and Lewison, et al. (2002), just to mention a few. However, it remains little explored in Taiwan, especially in EFL classrooms. The 2001-2004 proceedings of ETA (English Teachers’ Association), a primary conference of English-teaching in Taiwan, contain no research papers on critical literacy (Kuo, 2006). With a paucity of critical literacy practices in EFL teaching, critical literacy can therefore be viewed as a new perspective in teaching English as a foreign language. Given that critical literacy is a new way of teaching, we wonder how Taiwanese EFL teachers think of the idea of introducing critical literacy into EFL teaching in colleges or universities in Taiwan.
Exploration such as this is important because Taiwan has politically moved from an authoritarian country into a democratic one, and Taiwanese society likewise has changed from a monolithic one into a pluralistic one1 where different voices are trying to gain a hearing and many different ideologies are competing with one another. Therefore, a pedagogy which trains students to think critically and then transforms their thinking into some practical action to make a better society seems to be important. With a view to making pedagogy synchronize with the changed society, the present topic which aims at exploring a new perspective, i.e., critical literacy in EFL teaching, is therefore highly significant.
Literature review
In this section, we review the related literature of what critical literacy is, what it means in reading, and one key study that examined a critical literacy classroom in Taiwan.
Notions of critical literacy
Notions of critical literacy have emerged in recent years, particularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, what constitutes critical literacy differs within the literature (Green, 2001). There are several versions of critical literacy each of which is underpinned by a different theoretical perspective. Lewison, et al. (2002) reviewed 30 years of professional literature on the definitions of critical literacy and synthesized them into four dimensions:
(1) Disrupting the commonplace, for example, interrogating texts by asking questions such as “how is text trying to position me?”
(2) Interrogating multiple viewpoints such as trying to understand experience and texts from our own perspectives and the viewpoints of others.
(3) Focusing on sociopolitical issues, for example, challenging the unquestioned legitimacy of unequal power relationship by studying the relationship between language and power.
(4) Taking action and promoting social justice, like engaging in reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.
McLaughlin & DeVoogd (2004) used four principles to elaborate what critical literacy means. These four principles are: (1) critical literacy focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action; (2) critical literacy focuses on the problem and its complexity; (3) techniques that promote critical literacy are dynamic and adapt to the contexts in which they are used; and (4) examining multiple perspectives is an important aspect of critical literacy. Despite various approaches to critical literacy, the notions of “text and literacy as social practices” are usually highlighted within critical literacy (Green, 2001).
Critical literacy in reading
In critical literacy, readers are viewed as active participants in the reading process to question, to dispute, to examine power relations (Freire, 1970). Reading is defined as understanding the words on the page and examining political and cultural assumptions underlying texts (McLaren, 1999, cited in Lander, 2005). A reader is not viewed as someone who can decode and make sense of printed words, but as someone who is aware of underlying assumptions in the text, ways in which texts are constructed, and how such constructions position readers (Lankshear, 1977, cited in Lander, 2005).
Therefore, taking a critical literacy approach to reading, we read underneath, behind, and beyond texts; we do not consider texts to be unbiased; we explore alternative readings; we focus on the beliefs and values of the authors; and we work for social justice and change (McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2004).
Study of critical practice in Taiwan
Though studies or accounts of teachers’ critical practice abound in the West (Cervetti, 2004; Damico, 2003; Edesky; 1999; Lander, 2005; Lewison, et al., 2002), only two studies explore critical literacy in EFL contexts: Falkenstein’s (2003) critical writing class in Taiwan and Kuo’s (2006) critical conversation class.
Falkenstein’s study examined critical literacy practices in a university EFL composition course in Taiwan. In this study, Falkenstein employed an action research approach, collaborating with the course professor, a native speaker of English2, and using pre-writing strategies as small-scale interventions to promote critical literacy among 37 university English-major students. Through analysis of students’ writings, observation field notes and interviews with the course instructor, this study evidenced that many EFL students were able to be critically literate in conveying matters of personal, local and global concern through the use of various sign systems. This study also revealed some obstacles to using a critical literacy approach in Taiwan colleges such as lack of time on the teacher’s part, insufficient classroom time, large class size, and cultural expectations of education.
Instead of a composition class, Kuo’s study examined an English Conversation class taught to 26 non-English majors. Like Falkenstein’s study, he employed a collaborative action research. Kuo and the course instructor, i.e., his collaborator, designed the conversation class from a critical perspective, using six different activities based on social-issue picture books, local news, hop-hop songs, pantomime, prose and an episode of an American situation comedy. Through analysis of the instructor’s journal entries, students’ comments on the class weblog, students’ midterm and final reflection papers, interviews with the instructor and selected students, classroom observation, field notes, this study shows that EFL students were able to reflect on classroom texts by incorporating their lived experiences into their team dialogues. Therefore, Kuo argues that English learning is not only a matter of the four skills but also of students’ lives and identities. In short, both studies support that EFL students are capable of taking a critical stance towards language learning.
Conceptual Framework/Research Questions
The conceptual framework for this study is Luke and Freebody’s Four Resources Model of reading (1990). In this model, they posit four necessary but not sufficient roles for the reader: code breaker (coding competence), meaning maker (semantic competence), text user (pragmatic competence) and text critic (critical competence). In their later account (1999), the notion of “roles’ has been subsumed in that of “resources” in that literacy learning is more appropriately understood as “a family of practices.” The four practices are:
(1) code-breaking practices: key questions like “How do the sound and marks relate?”
(2) text-meaning practices: “What are possible readings that can be constructed?”
(3) pragmatic practices: “What do I do with the text here and now?” and
(4) critical practices: “What is the text trying to do to me?”
Each family of practices is necessary for literacy learning and none in isolation is sufficient. Luke and Freebody (1999) argue that readers need to be able to interrogate the underlying assumptions and embedded ideologies in the text.
Now that it is not only needed to have coding practices, text-meaning practices, pragmatic practices but it is also essential to have critical practices, I wonder whether the EFL college teachers would like to bring critical practices into their classroom. Thus, the research questions addressed in this study are:
- What do Taiwanese EFL college teachers, who have newly learned critical literacy at Western universities think of introducing critical literacy into EFL teaching at colleges or universities in Taiwan?
- What do they think of the feasibility of critical literacy in an EFL reading class? More specifically, what difficulties do they think they might encounter while implementing critical literacy at the college level?
- Will they adopt a critical literacy approach in teaching a college-level reading class? If yes, what will a critical EFL reading class be like or what strategies will they employ when teaching such class?
Methodology
Participants
The participants in the study were three former EFL Taiwanese teachers, who are currently working for a Ph.D. degree in the language education department at a mid-western university in America. They all taught English at the college in Taiwan after they had obtained a master’s degree in TESOL in the US. Their teaching experience ranged from one and half to five years. They came to the university in the fall of 2005 and all have just acquired some knowledge of critical literacy at the time of the study3. For the purpose of this study, I used pseudonyms, Cathy and Shelly for the two female participants and Frank for the male participant.
Data Collection
In order to gather information that addresses the research questions, we conducted an in-depth individual interview in Chinese. We sent a few questions to them before the interview so that they could think about them beforehand and would be able to fully express their ideas during the interview. These questions are about their concepts or feasibility of critical literacy in EFL teaching and their ways of teaching a reading class in the past and future. This interview took around one hour.
Right after this interview, we gave them the traditional version of the text “Cinderella,” and requested them to produce a brief lesson plan to show how they might go about teaching this fairy tale to college students. After the task, we went over the lesson plan with them to document details. The whole process also lasted for around one hour. All the interviews, totally 6 hours, were tape-recorded, transcribed, and translated into English. Besides the interviews, we had several follow-up phone calls and e-mail correspondences with the interviewees for clarification or for elaboration.
Trustworthiness
In respect to the methodological trustworthiness of this study, we used different sources of data, including interviews, lesson plans, and e-mails, for triangulation. Besides, we member checked by e-mailing to each participant the selected translations and my interpretation. We asked them to underline the part that misrepresented what they had said. Two participants showed no problem with the selected data, but one participant clarified a few misunderstood points. He also refined and changed some quotes that we had selected and translated from the tape-recorded interview.4
Data analysis
In this section, we presented, analyzed and interpreted the collected data under the following themes basing on my research questions: (1) concepts of critical literacy, (2) concerns of critical literacy in EFL teaching, (3) past teaching vs. future teaching, and finally (4) reasons for critical literacy.
1. Concepts of Critical Literacy and Feasibility in EFL Teaching
Although the three participants have been acquainted with critical literacy as mentioned above, it is reasonable to know their understanding of critical literacy before examining their ideas of introducing critical literacy to EFL teaching. Surprisingly, all the three participants show willingness or even enthusiasm to incorporate critical literacy in EFL teaching despite that each has somewhat different concepts or definitions of critical literacy:
Cathy: “Critical literacy is to develop students’ ability to have their own ideas when reading. They can give their comments or opinions after reading an article. In this way they can be creative and critical. To be creative and critical is the most important thing for a reader.”
Shelly: “We can not just read the surface meaning. When reading an article, we need to read the intended meaning behind because language is never neutral. I think we need to infuse critical literacy in our teaching because in this way we can stimulate student thinking.”
Frank: “Critical literacy is about revealing social inequalities and bringing about social justice. A major part of critical literacy deals with the problem of capitalism for capitalism creates tons of social inequalities. . . . We need to find out the oppressed and the oppressing represented in an article or an issue. After we detect an inequality, we need to take action to redress it. Actually, oppression is quite obvious in some articles.”
After analyzing their concepts of critical literacy, we find critical literacy, for Cathy, means to develop students’ ability to have their personal views on reading. She places importance on reading comprehension with “reader’s response” in that a reader not only has a factual perspective, i.e. an “efferent” stance, but also has a more emotional perspective, i.e. an “aesthetic” stance (Rosenblatt, 1978). Cathy’s idea of critical literacy seems close to Luke and Freebody’s “semantic competence” in which readers play the role as “meaning makers” (1990). For Shelly, her idea of critical literacy is that readers play the role of “text critics” (Luke & Freebody, 1990) in that readers comprehend beyond literal level and have the power to envision alternative ways of viewing the author’s topics or intentions. She reaches the dimension of disrupting the common place and interrogating multiple viewpoints (Lewison, et al., 2002). Holding a stronger view of critical literacy than Shelly, Frank regards it as a tool for social justice. It is insufficient just to uncover the taken-for-granted. For Frank, critical literacy should be able to engage students in action aimed at challenging existing structures of inequality and oppression, which is in the fourth dimension according to the four-dimension framework of Lewison, et al. (2002).
Each according to his or her idea of critical literacy holds a positive view toward critical literacy in EFL teaching. They all think critical literacy is important and can work out in the EFL context to some extent. However, they also have a few concerns while implementing critical literacy in their teaching.
2. Concerns about Implementing Critical Literacy in EFL Teaching
Cultural difference is Cathy’s major concern about implementing critical literacy in Taiwan. “Unlike American students, students in Taiwan are used to accepting what teachers said to them. They usually do not have their own opinions,” she confessed. She then took herself as an example. “As a student, I was not critical myself. It was not until I became a teacher that I would read critically because I had to prepare some questions for my teaching.” Another concern Cathy has about implementing critical literacy is students’ English proficiency. Nevertheless, she does not consider it an insurmountable problem:
“It can be solved if the teacher carefully designs his/her teaching or chooses reading materials. For example, the teacher can first list some key words or sentences before discussion. The teacher can also pay more attention to and help those students at low English proficiency level to express ideas in English. The teacher should choose discussion issues that are related to students’ life experience, but never to choose issues that could be embarrassing or unfamiliar to the students or the teacher himself/herself.”
Shelly also shares the similar concern with students’ English proficiency. And like Cathy, she thinks this difficulty can be overcome: “We can adopt alternative literacy for students at the low English proficiency level. Take writing class for example. If students are unable to write a complete paragraph, they can draw pictures with some known English words to illustrate their ideas.” Shelly then gives her concepts of literacy corresponding to students’ language proficiency.
“Literacy is not linear, a stage followed by another stage. It is not an act of linguistic decoding. Rather, literacy is viewed as a continuum. For the familiar context, we can have students do a little more thinking. For the unfamiliar context, we can focus more on decoding. Similarly, for students at the low English proficiency level, it doesn’t mean they can only do decoding. We still can add a little critical literacy flavor in our teaching. It is just a problem of more critical literacy or more decoding skill.”
In fact, what seems to trouble Shelly the most is how we can be sure that students are thinking in English when reading. “If students think in Chinese when reading, then we do not completely reach the goal of critical literacy. Although thinking in Chinese is related to critical literacy, then literacy in this case means mostly Chinese literacy, not English literacy.” Therefore, according to Shelly’s opinions, critical literacy in EFL teaching means that students can not only discuss in English but also think in English.
Frank was concerned with students’ autonomy. He elaborated this point in his e-mail correspondence. He illustrated his own experience in Freshman English class when he was an undergraduate student:
“In Freshmen English class, my professor did not talk about vocabulary, grammar, or other language elements unless we asked him. The professor spent most of the time discussing the readings in English with us. I had never heard my classmates complain of him because we were autonomous learners. We knew how to learn English by ourselves. . . . For autonomous learners, we [teachers] don’t have to pay much attention to teaching the language. For other students, they may need more instruction on language. They may need some time to adjust to critical literacy in the beginning, but I think given enough time, students will learn that critical literacy and language learning can complement each other”
In addition to students’ autonomy, another concern that he has is about politics and teaching resources. “I had no problem with teaching critical literacy when talking about the social issues that happened abroad. However, when talking about domestic issues, I had to address them with caution, maintaining multiple perspectives.” Besides, he did not talk of social issues in Taiwan as much as those in the U.S. because he found few reading materials about domestic issues that were written in English.
To conclude, the three participants raised several concerns or problems of English language proficiency, cultural difference, students’ autonomy, and teaching resources. Among these problems, student English proficiency can be overcome as long as the teacher will make efforts in their teaching design and pay more attention to students’ level through scaffolding or by using various sign systems. As for a culture that values submission over confrontation, thus hindering students from doing critical literacy, Frank suggested we may start with simple critical literacy techniques, making use of culturally familiar texts or various sign systems to foster student discussion. Since one of tenets of critical literacy is to redress social inequality through action, controversial political or social issues will make perfect materials for teaching critical literacy. However, the teacher should be optimally open-minded, thus allowing different voices and tolerating different opinions.
3. Teaching EFL Reading: Past vs. Future
In this section, we summarize how each of the participants taught reading in the past and will teach it in the future, and then compare their past and future teaching. Then, we also display each participant’s lesson plan for teaching the text “Cinderella.” The lesson plans serve not only as triangulation to see how consistent their lesson plan is with the future teaching that they described, but also as a way to investigate how they will infuse critical literacy in EFL teaching.
3.1. An Overview of the Three Participants’ Past and Future Teaching
In the past, Cathy usually divided students into small groups. Each group prepared a handout for group presentation. Students’ handouts generally featured the meanings of the unknown words and listing of sentence patterns. After group presentation, she reviewed vocabulary and sentence patterns, explaining or translating the sentences that might be difficult to students.
In her future teaching, Cathy says, “I will focus on the content, on the comprehension, on the main ideas of the reading.” Like what she did in the past, she will still divide students into small groups. But instead of a handout with a list of new words or sentence patterns, each group will present a poster that will present any ideas, topics or important information they make out from the reading. “In this way, students will become creative. But it’s not enough just to be creative. I will still have some focus on language learning. Students have to present posters in English so that the language learning part will not be ignored.” In short, her past teaching focused on explanation of vocabulary and sentences, but in her future teaching, she will focus more on comprehension of meaning than on linguistic knowledge.
Shelly usually explained reading strategies and then engaged students in practicing the taught strategies in her “Reading Skills” class. However, she felt that students were suffering from the boredom of strategy-based teaching. If she will teach the same course in the future, she will still highlight strategies, but instead of strategy-focused teaching in the follow-up discussion, she will give some thought-provoking questions for discussion. Instead of choosing reading materials for strategy-teaching purpose, she will choose the articles that can inspire students to think and to discuss.
In “Freshman English” class, she used to ask students to skim the article and circle the unknown words, and then had them discuss the highlighted unknown words in small groups. She then had whole-class discussion to help students comprehend the reading. “My purpose of highlighting new words is for comprehension, not for teaching vocabulary.” Though she sometimes posed one or two open questions on the website for students to discuss, she found “students could answer and elaborate on these questions without having actually read the article.” So in the future, she will be careful in giving her discussion questions which will require students not only to think but also to read. “In this way, I will be able to balance English teaching with critical literacy.” In sum, Shelly focused on comprehension and reading strategies in the past, but in the future she will help expand students’ thinking and enlighten their perceptions.
Frank often talked about issues on inequality in “Writing” class where he also taught reading. However, he paid attention to the structure of the text such as the thesis statement or topic sentence with supporting detail to help students generate writing topics and help them to write a certain type of genre. However, the materials he often chose were related to social issues like homosexuality. Although he taught critical literacy in the past, in the future he will discuss more social issues that happened or are happening in Taiwan and move a step forward to the level of taking social action:
“I would encourage students to e-mail to Vice-president Lu expressing their opinions about her statement that AIDS is God’s punishment. . . I will discuss why our government supported Iraq’s war. What is the power behind the support and for whose benefit?”
Apparently, all the three participants expect to change their ways of teaching, moving toward critical literacy. Cathy will move from teaching decoding skills to comprehension; Shelly from comprehension to critical thinking, and Frank from just uncovering inequality to taking social action. If we view literacy as a vertical line with decoding skills at the bottom and social action at the top, then each of them will have moved one step upward. Therefore, their newly acquired knowledge of critical literacy obviously had certain impact on each of them.
Besides the expected change, another characteristic commonly shared in their future teaching is that they all attempt to strike a balance between critical literacy and English language learning. Cathy emphasized having students present their poster in English and Shelly, carefully giving the discussion questions that require students actually to read the materials, and Frank also mentioned of his balanced teaching in his e-mail correspondence.
3.2. A Lesson Plan for Teaching the Text “Cinderella”5
To teach “Cinderella,” Cathy will first have students preview the story through brainstorming some key words or discussing the content of the story. Then she will have students prepare a group poster presentation. After presentation, she will spend some time reviewing new words and sentence patterns, and then have students rewrite the story such as giving a different ending or setting. She said, “In this way, students will realize that a story can be read from a different perspective.” Finally, she will have discussion on questions concerning gender roles; for example, why it is females that have to do the housework, or what roles that males expect from females and females from males.
Shelly will first have students skim the story individually to highlight the difficult words, and then have them discuss the content of the story, the highlighted or difficult words in small groups. After that, each group will summarize the story for the class and explain the possible meanings of their listed vocabulary. Then she will have students discuss comprehension questions and extension questions such as “what if Cinderella is a man, how would the story possibly develop?” Finally they will have group work such as rewriting the story supposing Cinderella is a man, and share their versions of the story to the class, and have a whole-class discussion on gender bias and stereotypes.
In teaching “Cinderella,” Frank will use student-facilitated literature circles--each member in the group responsible for one of the four roles, vocabulary introducing, grammar explaining, quotation sharing, and question raising. After literature-circle discussion, he will have whole-class discussion and also review the key words. The reason for reviewing the key words is that “Otherwise for students who haven’t achieved autonomy yet, they might feel that they did not learn anything about the language.” After he is sure that his students have no problem with the new words and comprehension, he will raise issues on feminism. For example, he will ask:
“Why Cinderella needs a prince to make her life perfect? Why is it not a man who needs a princess to make his life perfect? Why in most fairy tales, it is always that a woman needs a man to fulfill her life? What message does this kind of text send to us? What does society expect the roles that women can play?
After discussion, he will ask students to find other fairy tales that involve gender bias.
Clearly, their lesson plans are consistent with their description for future teaching in that all of them will infuse critical literacy in EFL teaching by raising students’ awareness of gender bias in the text “Cinderella.” Through the use of such strategies as discussion, problem posing, role playing, and poster creating, they help students examine the text from multiple perspectives, challenges students to expand their thinking and discover diverse beliefs, positions and understandings. More interestingly, they all try to instruct in a way to strike a balance between critical literacy and English language learning, for example, spending some time on vocabulary. From their description of future teaching and lesson plans, it is obvious that they all are willing to introduce critical literacy in EFL teaching. But why do all of them want to bring critical literacy in their EFL class? This is a question worth exploring and I will discuss their reasons below.
4. Reasons for Teaching Critical Literacy in Their Future Teaching
One reason that all three participants will incorporate critical literacy in EFL teaching is that it can motivate student learning, thus creating a meaningful learning situation. Shelly says, “Students will feel their learning is meaningful.” Frank also holds the same view, emphasizing the importance of thinking in learning:
“Language skills are important for students to get a better job and lead a better life in the current socio-economical system. However, I think education is more than teaching job-related skills. We should also help students think about what kind of life and socio-economical system they want.”
In addition to the reason for boosting learning motivation, they also believe in the importance of critical literacy and regard it more as teaching philosophy than as teaching method. Shelly believes,
“It is useless just to train a group of students that are merely good at grammar, usage, and vocabulary but are unable to express their thoughts to our foreign friends in an international setting simply because their thinking has never been stimulated. . . I do not mean it’s wrong to take communicative language teaching (CLT). It is just not enough. Communication should be combined with literacy. Literacy is the foundation on which communication skills can be built. . . . I’ve been recently influenced by social culture theory. Language itself is not the learning goal; it’s just a tool. So we don’t have to deliberately teach English. We just need to help them solve their problem with language. However, the ultimate goal of teaching is not language itself. The goal is thinking. . . . For me, critical literacy is a kind of philosophy, not a method. So it’s not to bring the method but to bring the idea to Taiwan”
Similar to Shelly’s idea of CLT and critical literacy, Cathy also thinks that CLT mainly focuses on speaking, but “a person who can communicate fluently does not mean he/she has his/her own ideas. Literacy should be seen as a kind of communication tool and English as a learning tool.”
For Frank, it is definitely necessary to teach students critical literacy:
“I want to teach my students that capitalism is not the only option and that they can do something about the inequalities in the world. It is OK to imagine a better world and critical literacy is a good tool for moving us toward that imagined world. Taiwan is moving farther and farther away from the ideal world mostly because of our corrupt government. We need critical literacy to help our students see what is going on in Taiwan.”
In sum, all three participants regard critical literacy more as an educational philosophy than as merely a pedagogical method. They think critical literacy is an educational philosophy because it is more instrumental in achieving the ideal aim in education; namely, cultivating responsible citizens of the world who can think critically and independently and thus will not fall an easy prey to propaganda in the system of capitalism. Also, they all emphasize the importance of thinking, or having one’s own ideas, in foreign language learning. In this way they are moving beyond the traditional objectives in EFL that emphasize basic language skills but to some extent ignore a higher skill, thinking. By infusing critical literacy in EFL class, they can re-emphasize the importance of critical thinking in foreign language learning and make students understand that in learning a foreign language they are not just learning the words but also the world through critical literacy.
Conclusions, Discussion and Interpretation
This study explored three former college teachers’ perception of critical literacy in EFL teaching, delineating what critical literacy means to them, the feasibility of critical literacy in EFL teaching at Taiwan colleges, and finally what critical literacy in EFL class might be like. The findings show that the three teachers, each representing a different dimension of critical literacy, all consider it feasible and even important to bring critical literacy in EFL teaching. By taking students’ English proficiency into consideration and having a well-paced and carefully designed teaching, the teacher can achieve certain success in bringing critical literacy in their teaching.
In addition, they all have balanced instruction between critical literacy and language learning by first solving their vocabulary and comprehension problems and then going to critical discussion later, employing certain kind of critical literacy strategies. These strategies include what McLaughlin and DeVoogd (2004) called problem posing such as switching gender or setting, and alternative perspectives such as character perspectives or juxtaposition.
These findings unexpectedly highlight the impact of their acquired knowledge of critical literacy from Western universities. The education they received in the US has changed the way they think about language teaching. All of them will teach differently from the way they normally taught before. They no longer consider it sufficient just to equip students with the four language skills in EFL teaching. Shelly believes in the importance of enabling students to develop a perceptive mind to see through the assumptions or positions hidden behind the reading. Frank believes in the educational goal of raising students’ awareness of social inequalities and of fostering social action.
Furthermore, this study also points out different challenges in teaching critical literacy in Taiwan from those in the West. In the US, the challenges or barriers mainly arise from standardized testing, administrative hierarchies, district curricular expectations (Lander, 2005, p. 30), or students’ resistance, teachers’ discomfort, and the disapproval of colleges (Cervetti, 2004, pp. 7-14). However, in Taiwan, the main concerns are students’ English proficiency, students’ autonomy, teaching resources, and culture. For students with limited English proficiency or without autonomy, teachers may provide students with more code-breaking practices and fewer critical practices. As Luke and Freebody indicated, each family of practices is necessary but not sufficient (1999). As for cultural concern—in a culture where students are usually perceived as quiet respectful listeners and teachers as a conveyor of knowledge and wisdom, the teacher may need to use some of discussion-fostering techniques and culturally familiar or student-life-experience texts.
However, this finding about the difference of challenges in Taiwan and in the West might be due to the factor that the study examined critical literacy in the university setting, not in the primary or secondary school setting as most studies did in the West. Besides, these challenges are anticipatory. They are not from the actual classroom implementation. Therefore, to get a better understanding of how critical literacy works in EFL teaching and what adaptations or modifications we need, we may investigate a case of actual teaching of critical literacy in EFL contexts or examine the teachers who are trying or have tried critical literacy in EFL teaching.
Finally, one methodological finding is worth mentioning here. This study evidenced the importance or effectiveness of member checking. In this study, through member checking, we corrected some misunderstanding points. For example, we misunderstood that Frank did not discuss any social issue in Taiwan in his past teaching. With member checking, I realized he did talk about domestic issues, although not as much as those abroad. Through member checking, we found that participants’ thought may change over time, especially for a topic that involves some abstract concepts. For example, Frank changed the entire quote that we had literally translated from the interview data, for example, from the quote “If we just teach students’ four language skills, it is more like vocational school. Students will feel they have nothing to learn. School becomes a boring place. For university students, they should have their own thinking, not just listening, speaking, reading and writing” to “Language skills are important … and socio-economical system they want” (see p. 188 for the whole quote). Therefore, for a research topic that involves conceptual complexities or abstractness, member check is particularly important because it not only provides the participants with the opportunities for clarifying their thinking but it also promotes further re-thinking on the topic.
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