Language Teaching Research

17(1) 91 108
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1362168812457537
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LANGUAGE
TEACHING
RESEARCH
A case study of an EFL
teachers critical literacy
teaching in a reading class in
Taiwan
Mei-Yun Ko
National Formosa University, Taiwan
Abstract
This qualitative case study describes in detail a college teachers experience in teaching critical
literacy to English major students in Taiwan. A qualitative analysis of the data collected from
classroom observation, class discussion and interviews shows that the teacher struck a balance
between language skills teaching and critical literacy teaching. By posing critical questions and
having a critical dialogue with students, the teacher helped students to read beyond the text on
its literal level and raised their awareness of the subtle workings of ideologies in it. The teacher
himself also underwent a change in his professional development, moving from banking pedagogy
to empowering pedagogy. However, in taking a critical literacy approach to reading instruction,
he encountered some difficulties such as a transmission model of literacy, students language
learning beliefs, and teaching resources.
Keywords
Critical literacy, EFL reading instruction, reading
I Introduction
For the past 30 years, the concept of literacy has moved beyond reading the words to
reading the world (Freire, 1970; Freire & Macedo, 1987), that is, from functional
literacy that focuses solely on developing students linguistic skills to critical literacy
that aims to give students a language of critique to achieve equality and social justice
or effect social transformation (Edelsky, 1999; Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Shor &
Freire, 1985). This shift from functional literacy to critical literacy started to influ-
ence educators in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL)
Corresponding author:
Mei-Yun Ko, Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Formosa University, 64 Wenhua Rd,
Huwei, Yunlin 632, Taiwan.
Email: mko@nfu.edu.tw
457537LTR17110.1177/1362168812457537Language Teaching ResearchKo
2013
Article
92 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
in the 1980s (Luke & Dooley, 2011) and has since then sparked some discussions and
research studies on the application of critical literacy in this field, as in the special-
topic issue Critical Approaches to TESOL by TESOL Quarterly in 1999, Norton and
Tooheys (2004) contributed volume Critical pedagogies and language learning, and
Kubota and Lins collection Race, culture and identity in second language education
(2009).
However, most of these studies were conducted in ESL (English as a Second
Language) classrooms (e.g. Benesch, 2001; Morgan, 2004; Wallace, 2003); only a few
were conducted in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) settings (e.g. Kuo, 2009; Shin
& Crookes, 2005b), and accounts of critical practices are scarce (Shin & Crookes,
2005a). A critical literacy approach to EFL teaching is still under-explored. Also, critical
literacy instruction has been considered uncongenial to Asian students with Confucian-
based educational/cultural backgrounds. For example, the cultural appropriateness of
critical literacy pedagogy in EFL contexts in East Asian countries was questioned (e.g.
Hu, 2002). Although there were a few empirical studies that argued for the possibility of
implementing critical pedagogy in EFL context in East Asian countries (e.g. Kuo, 2009;
Shin & Crookes, 2005b), they only focused on the part of the student in the instruction
process, leaving the teachers perspectives and concerns unexplored. It is therefore sig-
nificant to explore how a teacher responds to a critical literacy classroom in terms of his/
her teaching beliefs, his/her concerns, and the challenges that s/he may encounter when
doing the critical in the EFL classroom in Confucian-based pedagogical environments
such as Taiwan. This empirical study attempts a holistic description of how a teacher
teaches a critical literacy oriented reading class in Taiwan, and is guided by the following
research questions:
1. How does a college teacher teach critical literacy in a university-level EFL reading
classroom in Taiwan?
2. How does he or she conceptualize critical literacy and develop critical teaching?
3. What difficulties or challenges does he or she encounter in taking a critical literacy
approach to EFL reading instruction?
II Literature review
1 Critical literacy
Due to different theoretical bases, the term critical literacy has no single unified defini-
tion (Green, 2001). However, it is generally contrasted with functional literacy, which
views literacy as linguistic skills. Critical literacy views literacy as social practices (Gee,
1999). In Mannings (1999) Literacy-as Framework, he distinguished critical literacy
from functional literacy by laying out their respective ideology purpose, literacy curricu-
lum and instruction. The purpose behind functional literacy is to produce skilled workers
for the marketplace. Therefore, the curriculum is prepackaged and restrictive, and the
instruction is individualistic and competitive. However, for critical literacy, texts are
inscribed with power and are not neutral but marked by vested interests and hidden agen-
das. The curriculum is to use materials from the everyday world as text and analytic tools
Ko 93
to deconstruct these texts to lay bare their ideological workings and power relations;
therefore, the instruction is situated, interrogated and counter-hegemonic.
The term critical literacy is seen as critical reading for many reading educators.
However, this kind of critical practice that cultivates the higher level skills and focuses
itself on rational questioning procedures can be detached from the value-laden human
world for its pure reasoning. As Luke (2000) contended:
[S]uch approaches tend to sidestep a systematic analysis of the relation and fields of social,
cultural, and economic power where people actually use texts They are the logical outcome
of definitions of literacy as individual skills within human subjects, rather than as situated
social practices in communities. (p. 451)
Pennycook (2004) even calls this kind of critical practice liberal ostrichism, which
buries its head in the sand of objectivism (ostrichism) and fails to link its questioning to
a broader social agenda (p. 329).
Cervetti, Pardales, and Damico (2001) made a comparison between critical reading
and critical literacy based on their distinct philosophical traditions. Critical reading is
in the liberal-humanist tradition, while critical literacy combines three strands of tra-
ditions: post-structuralism, critical social theory and Freirean critical pedagogy. As
such, critical reading and critical literacy have distinct epistemological and ontologi-
cal assumptions and commitments. Epistemologically, knowledge in critical literacy
is never neutral or natural, but is constructed based on the discursive rules of a par-
ticular community, and therefore ideological. Ontologically, there is no reality out
there that is knowable and can serve as a referent for interpretation, but many situated,
locally constructed realities.
To sum up, critical literacy is viewed as a process of questioning the status quo and of
challenging existing knowledge and the social order (Gee, 1999). Critical literacy to the
reading of the text involves an understanding of how texts and discourses can be con-
structed, deconstructed and reconstructed to represent, contest and, indeed, transform
material, social and semiotic relations (Luke & Dooley, 2011, p. 856).
2 Critical literacy studies in EFL contexts
As mentioned earlier, there were only a few empirical studies on critical literacy prac-
tices in the EFL context in East Asian countries. The following two studies (Kuo, 2009;
Shin & Crookes, 2005b) explored critical practices in EFL contexts in Korea and Taiwan.
Shin and Crookes (2005b) study explores the possibility of critical pedagogy in two
Korean EFL high school classrooms. They made a small-scale intervention in an extra-
curricular English class in junior high school (12 students) and a regular English Culture
class in senior high school (28 students). They introduced critically-oriented materials,
providing opportunities for these learners to develop English language abilities when
they were engaged in critical discussion of topics. Findings of this study suggested that
these EFL learners, in spite of their limited English proficiency, were not resistant to this
kind of materials and were active participants in generating critical dialogues in English.
In addition, the study also called into question the stereotype of East Asian students as
94 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
passive and non-autonomous, dispelling the myth that East Asian classrooms are
inherently rigidly hierarchical.
Kuos (2009) study examined an English Conversation class of 26 non-English
major students in Taiwan. The students were given a shortened version of two pic-
ture books to read and were then asked to create team dialogues based on them. He
analysed the dialogues and students reflection papers based on Lewison, Leland,
and Harstes (2008) critical instructional model, a three-tier concentric model that
moves from personal and cultural resources to critical social practices and to critical
stances. The study found that social-issue picture books can effectively promote
EFL students English learning and engage students, in critical practices. He then
suggested that a critical literacy curriculum progress from personal/cultural
resources to critical social practices and critical stances, but does not have to include
all of them for critical instruction in EFL settings. Though Kuos (2009) study has
explored to some extent critical learning of non-English major students in Taiwan,
the study lacked a detailed description of critical literacy experiences of both the
students and the teacher. To fill up this gap, the present study focused on exploring
an EFL teacher who attempted a critical literacy approach to reading instruction.
3 Critical literacy teaching methods/strategies
Critical literacy is a way of thinking, that is a reading practice that challenges texts
or the taken-for-granted ideas in our everyday life. There is no single method for
reading from a critical stance (McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2004a). Luke (2000) even
cautioned against a formula for doing critical literacy in the classroom (p. 453,
cited in Behrman, 2006), though he still recognized some varied strategies to foster
critical literacy. The varied strategies that encourage students to take a critical stance
toward text include textual analysis, dialogue, and questioning or problem posing
(Cervetti, 2004, p. 6).
For the teacher to take a critical literacy approach to an EFL reading class,
McLaughlin and Allen (2002) suggested that the teacher should scaffold student
learning by using a five-step instructional framework: explain, demonstrate, guide,
practice, and reflect. First, the teacher can explain what it means to be critically
aware and then demonstrate it by using a read-aloud and a think-aloud. During the
process, the teacher provides a critical perspective from which students question
and challenge the text. Questions that promote reading from a critical stance can
include: Whose viewpoint is expressed? What does the author want us to think?
Whose voices are missing, silenced, or discounted? How might alternative perspec-
tives be represented? What material or economic interests were served in its pro-
duction? How are the participants named and shaped? What does it exclude? How
is the reader positioned? (Burns & Hood, 1998; Luke, OBrien, & Comber, 1994;
McLaughlin & DeVoogd, 2004a).
Then, students can work in pairs or in small groups to offer responses as the teacher
guides their reading and as they practice reading from a critical stance. Finally, the
teacher and the students reflect on what they know about being critically aware and
how it helped them to understand the text. Despite these suggestions and guidelines,
Ko 95
critical literacy teaching is dynamic and continually needs to be revisited and refined
(Coffey, 2008).
III Methodology
1 Settings and the teacher participant
The study was conducted in an English reading class at a university in Taiwan for one
semester. The participant was the teacher of the reading course who held a PhD degree
in English literature and had been teaching English for over 20 years at the time of the
study. His English teaching experience started in a military academy, which had led him
to take on an authoritative role in the classroom. Furthermore, without receiving any
instruction in language education he taught in an authoritarian mode, mirroring what he
had experienced in his school years. In other words, his way of teaching had been
didactic lecturing in the past.
Though he did not acquire knowledge of critical literacy in a Western university, the
idea of critical literacy was not totally unfamiliar to him because this education paral-
leled the critical theories he had read in his postgraduate literary studies. He also agreed
with me that English reading instruction should not be limited to the instruction of the
four language skills, and that the English reading class should cultivate students to see
through the hidden assumptions behind various texts. Therefore, he was interested in
adopting a critical literacy approach to teaching EFL reading when I invited him to
participate in this study.
2 Data sources
Data sources included classroom observation, audio-taped class discussion, course
syllabus, two face-to-face interviews and several informal conversations with the
teacher, and individual interviews with four students. A total of five hours of class
discussion data that appeared significant and meaningful were selected and tran-
scribed for analysis. The informal conversations continued regularly throughout the
course, which provided valuable data to capture the teachers understanding of criti-
cal literacy and critical literacy teaching, and the changes in his conceptualization of
them. The two in-depth interviews with the teacher were respectively conducted prior
to the course and after the course. The pre-course interview was about his earlier
teaching experience in reading and teaching philosophies and the post-course inter-
view was about his experience with critical literacy teaching. The interviews with
students were conducted after the course. All the interviews lasted around one hour
and were audio-taped.
IV Findings and interpretation
1 The instruction: Moving toward critical teaching
The teacher usually used four kinds of arrangements in teaching his lesson: group presen-
tation of vocabulary/summary, teacher explanation of the text, and small group discussion
96 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
and sharing followed by teacher-led whole-class interaction. The first two arrangements
were on literal reading, and the other two were on critical reading, which was the focus of
this article as this study explored how the teacher did the critical in the class.
For critical reading, the teacher had students discuss first in small groups. He
adopted a device similar to literature circle (Daniels, 1994), where each group mem-
ber in turn took the role of director responsible for directing the discussion, connec-
tor for making textself, texttext or textworld connections, challenger for
challenging the ideas students mentioned and wrapper for summarizing their discus-
sions. When students finished group discussions, several of them were called to share
in front, and it was mostly during this period that the teacher posed critical questions
and attempted a critical dialogue with students. To understand how the teacher moved
toward a critical approach to reading instruction, I chose three teaching excerpts,
respectively of the second, the fifth and the eighth week. Transcription symbols used
in the excerpts are as follows:
T teacher
Ss more than one student
S1 the first identified student
S2 the second identified student
= = = omitted section of discourse
-- no response
// pause
xxx unintelligible words
continuous tone
[ ] translated words from Chinese
italicized text spoken in Chinese
Note: When the students name is identified, the first two letters of his or her pseudonym are
used.
The first excerpt occurred in the second week that the teacher first introduced to stu-
dents what critical literacy is and why. In this excerpt, he took as an example a well-
known story from Buddhism, Six blind men and an elephant, to illustrate multiple
perspectives to reading. He first started with a series of simple questions to review the
story, for example Have you ever heard about a story (turns 1, 3), that required only
simple answers, which the students gave (turns 2, 4), and he gradually complicated his
questions with questions like can you read any significance of this story? (turn 5).
Though one student responded with a short answer, fable (turn 6), the answer was still
obscured and therefore required further explanation. As he said here, elephant in Chinese
is the word [elephant] but the same word [elephant] also incidentally means
aspects of reality (turn 7). Thus, for Taiwanese students the elephant is a perfect meta-
phor for reality. As a parable, the elephant here represents the whole of reality, in other
words the whole phenomenal world. Just like in the story, the six blind people only
touched different parts of the elephant, which meant they only perceived one aspect of
the whole reality. By giving this parable, the teacher reminded students of the fact that no
one can see the whole reality. People only tend to see reality from a certain angle among
numerous other angles. Therefore reading is always perspective-taking (turn 8).
Ko 97
Critical literacy involves being aware of how texts are constructed in ways that
serve particular interests. The second excerpt presented below is an example of how
the instructor attempted to problematize the text to raise students critical awareness.
This excerpt occurred just after students completed their group presentation, which
started with pictures they had retrieved from Time Magazine online of the McCaughey
septuplets and the Chukwu octuplets. When they first showed a photo of the
McCaughey septuplets, lots of students cried out admiringly because these kids
looked very cute, especially with some milk stains on their mouths. Seeing this as one
opportunity to invite students to interrogate the text, that is the photo, the instructor
first pointed out that it was a commercial picture and then posed the critical question
Whats the purpose of this picture? (turn 1), a question that penetrates into the hid-
den interests of a text. Because students were unable to answer it, he directed their
attention to the captions got milk (turn 3). In this way, the student, Dora, finally
understood the purpose of the photo: To sell milk (turn 4). By making the students
aware of whose interests were involved in the picture, the instructor extended students
critical understanding of the text, that is, to read between the lines.
Excerpt 1: Introducing critical literacy: Multiple perspectives
1 T: Have you ever heard about a story of the six blind people feeling a huge elephant?
They try to understand what an elephant look like, right? This is a story from
Buddhism, right? So can you tell me the reason why we have this fable? // ok, so
six blind people, they do not know what elephants look like, right? They try to
understand the size, the looks of elephants. And they will, the first blind person
will feel the nose of the elephant and he says the elephant looks like a trunk,
right? Uh, probably no, because the nose of the elephant is like a [pipe],
right? Also how about the feet of the elephant?
2 S1: Trunk.
3 T: The feet of the elephant is more like a trunk, a trunk of a tree, right? How about
the ear of the elephant?
4 Ss: xxx (fan?)
5 T: Yes. Its like a fan, right? Can you read any significance of this story, can you
find any meaning from this story?
6 S2: Fable
7 T: A fable? What is elephant? Elephant is er, in Chinese, is [elephant], right?
And is also [phenomena of the world]. So the elephant in this fable
the elephant is the reality.= = =
8 T: Just like in the story, the six blind people feel the elephant, so we can not see
the reality. We only see reality from certain angle, so it is a perspective. So in
reading, any kind of reading, it is a perspective.
(Lecture, Critical Literacy, second week)
Excerpt 2: Penetrating into the hidden interests of a text
1 T: You can see the group eight presented you a picture from the Internet of Time
Magazine. This is how many, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. They
are drinking milk, right? With milk stains on their mouths. Ok, so you think it is.
98 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
Excerpt 3: Debating gender differences
1 T: Because of this physical difference, sometimes we would think that girls are
poor in certain area. This is a prejudice, right? I think this is I also think
so because the author seems to try to tell us that this is a groundless sexism.
Ok let me ask Mark, ok? Mark, is there anything that you disagree with
the author? Well, you can use Chinese if you feel comfortable using Chinese.
The third excerpt presented below records a situation when the teacher resumed a
whole-class interaction after small group discussion on the article Gray matter and
sexes. The authors of the article argued that it is cultural difference, rather than
innate difference such as the size of the brain, that makes fewer women engineers or
scientists. In this excerpt, the teacher first clarified with students the stance the authors
took toward a common phenomenon that males outperform females in science (turn
1) and then called several students to express their opinions about the authors stance
(turns 1, 3). In this way, he encouraged students to take a stance on the phenomenon.
In this excerpt, Mark believed it was the education that made fewer female scientists
(turn 2), and Wendy also supported the idea that it was environment that caused the
difference (turn 6). To further challenge students to think about this topic, the teacher
reframed his question as to whether the gender difference was due to nature or nurture
(turn 7). Debbie believed it was nature that made her a woman (turns 10, 16). Seeing
such an innate difference discourse can be disempowering to women, the teacher
pointed out an excellent Taiwanese physicist who was female (turn 17) and also
reminded students of the possible effects on women if they attributed the phenomenon
to innate differences. Very often, females are acculturated to accept discourses that
privilege males, often at the expense of females, and such an innate difference dis-
course may deprive women of the opportunities to achieve their full potential. By
raising the students awareness of the possibility that such a damaging discourse can
stunt womens opportunities, the instructor attempted to co-construct with students an
empowering discourse that gender is socially and culturally constructed.
So you think they are cute, right? // So this is the kids, right, all happy Actually,
this is a commercial picture. What does that mean? Whats the purpose? // Dora,
what do you think of whats the purpose of this picture?
2 Do: --
3 T: Here we have the captions got milk right? //
4 Do: To sell milk.
5 T: Right. They are making commercial for the milk powder, milk company, right?
Its milk company, so they are being made of by the commercial, by the business
world, right? I mean most companies have taken advantages of these kids, right?
So they are using it as a what?
6 S1: making money
7 T: Their business purpose or profit, right? What about the newspaper? You think
newspaper is doing justice to these kids? They are making headlines out of these
kids, right? Headline. Why are they doing them?
(Text explanation, Eight is too many, fifth week)
Ko 99
The teacher often used three steps to have a critical dialogue with students as found in
the above excerpt:
1. Stance: asking students to respond to commonly held ideas or beliefs by taking dif-
ferent perspectives;
2 Ma: I feel I agree a lot because this is a cultural difference, as the author mentioned,
in Japan and Iceland, the possible reason is they are educated differently.
3 T: Yes. And also parents expectation [parents expectations],
so its culture. So you agree, right? So, does anybody here think otherwise
like I think yes the brain does make difference anybody here would
think brain makes difference? Does the brain have anything to do with the
performance? What do you think? So how about Wendy, what do you think?
4 We: In my opinion, I think it is kind of ridiculous. I think intelligence
performance of male and female are the same. What causes them different,
the performance or their how do I say
5 T: Well, say Chinese It is kind of the case.
6 We: What caused their different performance should be related to their interest
and living environment.
7 T: This is what Mark said, right? It does not mean that you are born with your
brain that determines you are a boy or a girl. It is a cultural thing, right? =
= = So we can also see this article in this frame work, nature vs. nurture.//
ok. Debbie, which is important for you to become a woman? It is nature or
nurture?
8 De: Can you say it again?
9 T: My question is as you reflect upon yourself, do you think what makes you,
you are today? Like we say, you are a woman, right? Is it because of nature
or because of nurture?
10 De: I think it is because of nature.
11 T: Nature, right?
12 De: Yeah.
13 T: So you are born a woman?
14 De: Yes.
15 T: Ok.
16 De: But I do not totally agree with what the authors say because there are
differences between female and male. For example, in some particular
occupations or jobs, women can be better than male, and in some other cases,
it would be opposite. And in reasoning skills, females are better than males,
but in some area, they are worse. Its kind of nature. = = =
17 T: Can you think about some exceptions like, we have a very good physicist
which was female in Taiwan, what is her name? A female, an authority in
physics. Yes, Wu Chien-Hsiung!
18 S1: The name sounds like a male.
19 T: Yes. Like a male. She is the one, excellent in science. That is an exception.
But if you think yes, there is innate difference between sexes, your chances
of reaching your full potential would be limited. Do you know what I mean?
= = =
(Whole class discussion, Gray matter and sexes, eighth week)
100 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
2. Deconstruction: guiding students to uncover the effects of the commonplaces or
stereotypes on people;
3. Reconstruction: encouraging students to reflect on the possibility of constructing the
liberatory or emancipatory discourse.
In addition, to make students feel comfortable in expressing their views or ideas freely,
the teacher sometimes encouraged them to use their first language, Chinese (turns 1, 5)
though he instructed mostly in the target language, English.
As can be seen from the excerpts, question posing is one important strategy that the
teacher used for his critical teaching. The questions he posed in the first few weeks con-
tained mostly literal-comprehension questions that required only a literal response, but
as the course moved half-way through the semester, he was able to pose more and more
critical questions that encouraged students to question and challenge the values, beliefs
and attitudes that lay beneath the surface of the text. Questions like Whose voices are
represented?, What are the intentions of the author? and What other perspectives can
we have on this issue? appeared intermittently in class discussion throughout the course.
To sum up, the teacher approached his reading instruction by encouraging them to see
things from different perspectives (excerpt 1); asking students to consider the purpose of
the text and the authors motive (excerpt 2); supporting them in taking a stance on issues;
examining the implications of world views, values, beliefs and attitudes; and articulat-
ing, clarifying or even changing their own values (excerpt 3).
2 The teachers progressive change in his teaching beliefs
To the teacher, that teaching is learning was never truer than in his teaching of this
course. He has experienced some change in his teaching philosophy. His concepts of
teaching reading moved from teaching language forms to meaning construction and then
to critical awareness. Obviously, his way of teaching has moved from transmission
teaching to transactional teaching (Neilsen, 1989) or, in Freires term, from banking
pedagogy to empowering pedagogy (Freire, 1970).
a From teaching language forms to meaning construction and critical awareness:. In the past,
the teacher used to spend much time and effort in explaining vocabulary and grammatical
structures when teaching reading because he believed students would naturally understand
the meaning of the text after they had understood the grammatical structures and vocabu-
lary (first interview). Besides, it was the way his English teachers had taught when he was
a student. They approached reading as word recognition and information processing.
This concept of form-based or grammar/vocabulary teaching had stayed with him for
many years in his reading class. It was not until he had read some language-related books
for this study that he began to change, moving from teaching language forms to meaning
construction. He noted:
Teaching students reading or writing does not merely mean to teach them linguistic knowledge
or cultivate in them linguistic competence. I came to think of reading and writing in English as
Ko 101
making meaning out of the context in which words are used. I moved from teaching language
forms to teaching the meaning embedded in language. (First interview)
He further realized that teaching that emphasizes the meaning-making activity in
reading was still insufficient because language is not merely a tool for communication;
more importantly, people use language to do things. One of the things people do in lan-
guage is to influence others for their own benefit, and people achieve that purpose
through taking different perspectives in representing things in language. With such
awareness, he started to question his own teaching:
What meaning or whose intention was I helping my students construct out of the text? I found
that more often than not I was helping my students reproduce the meaning or intention of the
author of the text The author may represent things in such a way that it benefits certain group
of people at the expense of other groups of people. (First interview)
It is very true that authors always represent things in a certain way, and therefore, without
teaching students to question the authors position, students would read the text as the
author intended it to be read. He stated:
Students were so submissive, following the line of thought the author had charted for them. But
if we never call in question what the author has said, further questioning why he/she represents
things in this way, not in any other way, well always reproduce the authors thought. What if
the authors thought is oppressive, or discriminatory, or unfair, benefiting certain groups of
people while doing injustice to other groups of people. When students read such texts without
further questioning them, they became accomplices in this oppressive language without
knowing it. (Informal conversation)
Raising students critical consciousness along with their development in reading
helped them see through how language works in the service of different beliefs or value
systems and how different identities and representations are constructed in language, and
thus made them become independent thinkers, not submissive followers who help
maintain the status quo, which could be oppressive or discriminatory.
b Re-conceptualizing critical literacy:. Critical literacy was new to the teacher when I
invited him to participate in the study. Therefore in the beginning of this course, I could
see his idea of critical literacy was much influenced by his background in literature stud-
ies, which views the rationality and the independent thinking of an individual as the
fountainhead of critical literacy. But as he taught this course and explored the concept of
critical literacy more, he gradually realized that focusing on students individual ability
to think critically would miss the important part of critical literacy agenda that is more
humanitarian than humanistic. He noted:
The more I teach this course, the more I find out that critical literacy is social and political.
Critical literacy does not aim to train people to pass judgments on certain moral precepts or to
do the hair-splitting analysis based on logic. Rather, it aims to raise peoples consciousness of
their social situations, asking questions such as why do certain groups of people suffer from
prejudices and lack of social resources while other groups of people enjoy privileges and
102 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
affluence, and what are the underlying discourses or ideologies that bolster such oppressive
social structures. (Informal conversation)
This re-conceptualization that critical literacy is not so much aimed at training logical or
high-level thinking as at raising critical awareness in students prompted him to encourage
them to examine the oppressive systems or social structures that are created by certain
groups of people for their own benefit, who tend to believe the ideas they hold to be truth
or reality. When students have understood that the ideas that had governed their way of
seeing the world are not essential or intrinsic but socio-culturally constructed, they can
likewise construct a just discourse to impact the world and consequently bring about
changes in society, thus creating a better society for people to live in (informal
conversation).
In conclusion, the teachers conceptualization of reading instruction and critical
literacy shaped his teaching of this course, which in turn made him grow and change.
3 The teachers concerns and challenges
Though the teacher himself gained a better understanding of reading and critical literacy
through the teaching of this course, he had some concerns and also faced challenges
while implementing ideas of critical literacy in an EFL reading class, including a trans-
mission model of literacy, language learning beliefs and reading materials for EFL
learners.
a Transmission model of literacy (banking education):. A critical literacy classroom
demands active participation and constant reflection on the student part which most Tai-
wanese students were not accustomed to from their past learning experience. To engage
students in critical literacy, the teacher used dialogues instead of the one-way lecturing,
and it presented a challenge for him as he had been accustomed to lecturing in class,
where students listened silently, and he also believed students had been used to listening
to the teachers lectures. He said:
Students may have the idea that the more the teacher talks, the more they learn. If a teacher
reduces his/her talk in the classroom, they seem to think that they are not learning enough from
the teacher and the teacher is not doing his/her duty because they think it is the teachers duty
to give them knowledge and the knowledge a teacher gives is through his/her mouth. (Informal
conversation)
Therefore, it was difficult for him to transform himself from a teacher as informa-
tion transmitter to a teacher as learning facilitator in the beginning. He found he had
difficulty in eliciting responses from students during class. He said, Students only
waited for me to provide the answers to the questions (second interview). Though
students became more responsive as the course went on, their participation still
didnt measure up to what he had expected from a critical literacy classroom that
should be a forum for many different voices. I wanted to make students feel the
atmosphere of democracy in the classroom, but I somewhat failed in that respect
(second interview).
Ko 103
The phenomenon that students did not actively express their ideas or answer their
teachers questions until they had been called on to do so might partly result from a
transmission model of literacy that they had been accustomed to and partly from a lack
of English proficiency. In the transmission model of literacy, students value the knowl-
edge of their teacher more than their own, which is contrary to the spirit of critical liter-
acy that encourages dialogues between students and the teacher. In critical literacy, the
teacher poses problems and engages students in dialogue and critical reflection, and
knowledge is collaboratively constructed, involving the transformation of traditional
teacherstudent roles (Auerbach, 1995, p. 1, cited in Shin & Crookes, 2005b). Therefore,
a Taiwanese teacher might experience frustration in the beginning, but this situation can
be changed with the teachers patience, constant encouragement and skilled guidance.
Students need time to get used to the new model of teaching that values their different
voices. For example, in this class, the student, Mark, whose attitude toward the course
was negative in the beginning but turned positive in the end, said:
I couldnt accept this way of teaching in the beginning the teachers [I had in the past] at most
asked us some multiple-choice questions or easy-to-answer comprehension questions in the
end. We never read like this. But I later got used to the teachers teaching and liked the group
discussion or whole class discussion more and more because my classmates had great ideas and
I learned a lot from them. (Interview with the student Mark)
Though the teacher experienced difficulty in initiating a dialogue with students and
facilitating whole-class discussion, students liked the small group discussion and whole
class sharing activity. Most of them believed these activities had expanded their thinking.
One student, Debbie, said in the interview, You can find others who have very different
ideas from yours or some ideas youve never thought about. People from different back-
grounds look at things differently. In this study, the teacher adopted the form of a litera-
ture circle to engage students in participation. In this way, he created a space for students
not only to make links between their lives and texts to deepen their comprehension of
text, but also to encourage discussions of multiple answers, perspectives and interpreta-
tions for students to foster their critical literacy. Therefore, the small group discussion
activity could compensate for EFL students non-expressiveness in whole-class teacher-
led discussion.
b Students beliefs in language learning:. The second challenge came from students
perceptions of learning a foreign language such as English. The teacher said:
They seemed to think that critical stance has little to do with the language itself. Many of the
students think that all they need to learn is vocabulary and grammar, which constitute the
building blocks of their English proficiency. (Second interview)
This concern was particularly true with the students who were struggling for basic
linguistic competence:
I personally hope that we can learn a larger vocabulary during the reading course because
vocabulary is the key point to help us to get information. I also suggest our teacher emphasize
104 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
the usage of the vocabulary to help us improve our writing ability as well. (Interview with the
student Jenny)
Such language learning belief comes from students past experience in the English
reading class in which vocabulary development, grammatical knowledge and reading
skills were usually the focus of an English reading course. Concrete, tangible readings
and discrete reading abilities were what most students had been accustomed to. However,
a critical literacy-oriented instruction emphasized critical ways of reading which were
intended to produce readers who can identify texts as crafted objects, to be alert to the
values and interests espoused by the text, and recognize their position as compliant or
resistant readers and perceive texts as motivated, rather than innocent (McDonald, 2004),
which is different in nature from the English reading course that most EFL students had
previously experienced.
To overcome this difficulty, the teacher has to make students understand the nature of
language use in their daily lives. Language use in social contexts is not as neutral as they
would think. The use of language in fact is political because some persons interests are
at stake in these literacy practices. Only when they understand this will students adjust
their beliefs in language learning and hence adopt a new belief in learning, which
consequently makes them benefit from a critical literacy class.
In addition to convincing students of the fact that language use is political, the teacher
can balance language skill teaching and critical literacy teaching as was the case in this
class, which did not receive much resistance from students. As the teacher explained:
I know my students consider themselves as English learners. They come to the class with a
mindset that theyre going to learn something from the class. That something can be knowledge
of English such as vocabulary and grammar or reading skills like skimming and guessing the
meaning through the context. I cant ignore such learner needs, so part of my effort in teaching
this course goes to helping my students understand the reading materials at the literal level,
emphasizing words and grammar. (Informal conversation)
Even though students expectations for a reading course were to increase their knowl-
edge of vocabulary and reading skills, they welcomed such a critical literacy-oriented
reading class because they also felt the need to equip themselves with critical thinking
ability. For example, Mark, a student who was still struggling for English proficiency and
more conscious of the need to improve his proficiency in the English language, also
emphasized the importance of critical literacy by quoting a saying from Confucius: study
without thinking is labor lost; thinking without study is perilous. James, an advanced-
level student, similarly viewed critical literacy as a very important tool. He commented:
Without critical awareness, you dont judge. You have no idea of your own. You just
follow others Critical awareness is really important, not only in learning English but
also Chinese, in logical thinking in daily life. He even highly valued this class:
The course has a positive effect on my way of reading in English. After the whole semester, I
have some understanding about critical awareness. Now, I do not put the authors view as the
only perspective when reading a given article. (Interview with the student James)
Ko 105
The other high-level student, Jennifer, had a high opinion of this course. She said:
In the past I did not know how to read critically and how to ask critical questions. This course
helped me to do so. In this course, I determinedly tried to learn it. I feel I was really learning in
this course. Every writer has his/her stance, so one needs to have the ability to judge. I found
the author had their own stance and they wrote from their own position, particularly for TV
commercials or newspaper advertisements. (Interview with the student Jennifer)
c Appropriate EFL reading/teaching materials:. The third challenge the teacher met
with was concerning teaching materials. The teaching materials he used for this
course were from one of a four-level ESL reading textbook series. Though the reading
materials in this textbook were mostly authentic news stories from American newspa-
pers and were appropriate for his students English proficiency level, they were con-
sidered to be inappropriate for the critical literacy classroom because one of the most
important tenets in critical literacy instruction is that texts students use in class should
be connected to students lives and experiences (Shor, 1992). The teacher, after teach-
ing this course, also admitted: these reading materials still are not ideal materials
because some of the issues discussed in those new stories are not culturally relevant
to students lives here (second interview). Therefore, how to create teaching materi-
als that are relevant to students lives and personal experiences is a problem a critical
teacher needs to solve for a successful critical literacy-oriented reading class in the
EFL setting.
V Conclusions
This study depicted an EFL teachers growth in critical literacy teaching in a Taiwanese
college, and found the teachers pedagogy moving from a traditional didactic classroom
to a critical dialogic approach or, in Freires term, from banking pedagogy to empower-
ing pedagogy (Freire, 1970). Such a finding is significant, given that Taiwan has pro-
gressed from an authoritarian state into a democracy in which many different ideologies
are competing with one another. In such an open society, critical approaches to EFL
learning are needed because they reflect the inseparable relationships between language
learning and social change. This innovative notion is well expressed by Norton & Toohey
(2004), who view the use of language as a practice that constructs, and is constructed by,
the ways language learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their
histories, and their possibilities for the future (p. 1).
The teachers growth explored in this study has yielded some insights for teaching
and learning from a critical perspective and contributed to a greater understanding of
critical literacy practices in East Asian classrooms. These countries under the influence
of Confucian ideology are supposed to be incongruent to critical teaching (Kubota, 1999,
cited in Shin & Crookes, 2005a). However, as the study showed, the teacher has to some
extent transformed himself from an information-giver to a critical facilitator who,
through dialogues with students, raised their critical consciousness about the text and
unjust social practices, and the critical consciousness raised through critical pedagogy
will empower them to be active agents for social change in the future.
106 Language Teaching Research 17(1)
Though such teaching is different in nature from that of the traditional English courses
that students had previously experienced and from a school system where knowledge
transmission is highly valued, the students in this study were not generally resistant to
critical discussion. They especially welcomed the group discussion and the sharing activi-
ties in which they felt their critical thinking was motivated and expanded. Though the
teacher was awkward in engaging in dialogue with the students, and the students long
accustomed to transmission pedagogy were also not very expressive of themselves in
the beginning, they soon enjoyed critical literacy teaching and apparently benefited from
it. This indicates that critical pedagogy can still be done in East Asian classrooms.
As the teacher plays a key role in the critical classroom, what is needed is a teacher
training program me to cultivate a critical mind in the teacher and to develop those criti-
cal teaching skills of the teacher that are culturally congruent. As found in this study, we
can see that posing critical questions impromptu and having a critical dialogue presented
a challenge to most of the EFL teachers, especially when students had long been accus-
tomed to a transmission style of instruction, and valued the opinions of the teacher
more than their own. To overcome this difficulty, teachers must themselves be critical
thinkers in order to help their students become critical readers. As McLaughlin and
DeVoogd (2004b) stated, When examining the teachers role, it is important to note that
we cannot just become critical. It is a process that involves learning, understanding, and
changing over time So the teachers role in helping students to become critically
aware actually begins with personal understanding of and engagement in critical literacy
(p. 55). Only when the teacher is critically aware will teaching students to read from a
critical stance be a natural process.
Finally, some pedagogical suggestions are provided for the teacher to implement criti-
cal literacy in an EFL reading class: First, balance instruction in basic language skills and
critical literacy. Though the teacher may perceive it to be important to immediately
engage texts at the discursive level, a successful teacher does not neglect students practi-
cal needs. Second, use locally-relevant or student-lived experience-related texts as sup-
plementary materials. When using the ESL/EFL textbook is unavoidable, the teacher can
supplement this with locally-published English newspaper articles related to topics that
have been covered in class or that have immediate relevance to students lives. Third,
create a supporting environment where learners can consider a variety of perspectives.
Classroom activities such as small group discussion can not only create opportunities for
students to voice their different perspectives, but also build rapport and establish a com-
fortable learning environment. Fourth, model a questioning stance towards texts. The
teachers guidance or modelling is vitally important when the students are not clearly
picking up on it.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Note
This paper was revised from a part of the authors dissertation Critical literacy development in a
college-level English reading class in Taiwan, and underwent substantial revision based on two
anonymous reviewers comments. The author owes a great gratitude to them.
Ko 107
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