Introducing Critical Literacy to EFL Teaching: Three Chinese Taiwanese College Teachers Conceptualization

| March 25, 2009
Title
Introducing Critical Literacy to EFL Teaching: Three Chinese Taiwanese College Teachers Conceptualization

Keywords: critical literacy, reading instruction, fairy tales, higher education

Authors
Mei-yun Ko and Tzu-fu Wang
Department of Applied Foreign Languages at National Formosa University, China Taiwan

Mei-yun Ko and Tzu-fu Wang
Department of Applied Foreign Languages at National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, China Taiwan

Bio Data
Mei-yun Ko is an associate professor in Department of Applied Foreign Languages at National Formosa University, China Taiwan. She holds an M.A. in linguistics and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in language education at Indiana University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, critical literacy, reading instruction, and discourse analysis.

Tzu-fu Wang is an associate professor in Department of Applied Foreign Languages at National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, ChinaTaiwan. He holds a Ph.D. in English literature from National Taiwan Normal University, China Taiwan. His research interests include cultural studies, writing instruction, and translation studies.

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.
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Category: Main Editions, Volume 11 Issue 1