Processing Critical Reading in EFL Classes: Teaching through Tasks

Guru Prasad Poudel

Department of English Education
T.U., Kirtipur, Nepal
Critical approach to reading prioritizes the development of the learners' capacities to examine the
meaning of text for raising critical language awareness. Critical reading takes a text/language use
as; questionable and problematic; social/ideological processes; and complexity of meaning (Cots,
2006). Critical reading approach, i.e. reading with an attitude (Van Dijk, 2001 & Pennycook,
2001) aims to develop the learners as the user of language, an analyst of texts and talks, and the
master of skills to process the information and comprehend the text as the three basic
competencies. We, as the teachers, should process reading with the aim of helping the pupils
develop their performance skills, internal values and capacity to criticize the world. It was the
workshop which mainly aimed to engage the participants on processing critical reading tasks and
to inform a series of tasks for developing critical language abilities to their learners.

So as to achieve the objectives, I began my presentation by introducing critical reading approach

and the activities for enhancing critical language awareness to the learners. Critical reading
approach has been developed to develop a set of performance skills to the learners. Those skills
include predicting the theme, visualizing the things expressed, connecting the ideas, raising
questions, clarifying the meaning, and evaluate the progress. In such activities, teachers can
encourage the learners try to figure out what might happen out in a given situation. The students
can picture out the people, places and events being discussed. Similarly, they try to connect what
they are reading to other texts and the real world and ask questions about the materials they are
reading. The learners can be encouraged to identify the main points and summarize the text and
further, judge the story/text and the actions of the characters.
After introducing critical reading approach and its focus in a classroom, I involved the
participants in pair work in which they were required to ask and answer in clockwise form. I
distributed a piece of text to each group which included a story of two colleagues who were in a
city for their study. The text included pre-and post-reading questions. I then asked the
participants to do the following things:
 Answer a series of pre-reading questions,
 Read the text in order to find out the things being discussed,
 Interpret the text in terms of representations of social structure and ideological
presuppositions that the author makes and the effects of those representations that may have
on the audience, and then
 Ask them to take into account the aspects related to the production and consumption of the
text such as authorship, purpose, intended audience, source and connections with other texts.
 Finally, ask them to identify how the linguistic structures used in the text contribute a global
meaning representing a particular ideological position.

With above series of the activities, I introduced the participants a task-based model for
processing critical reading in ESL/EFL classroom with reference to the task model by Willis
(1996). The participants got the three-fold activity session as a practical model for processing
critical reading. Starting with pre-task, I handed them another text which was a different from the
earlier text and engaged them in pre-task session. I involved them in group work and asked to
read the text in group, interpret the text in terms of the meaning of each arguments found in the
text. Then, I further let them think about how the text contributes to a particular representation of
the world and whether this representation comes into conflict with their own representations,
how the textual representation is shaped by the ideological position of its production, and more
importantly engaged them to reflect on how it contributes to reinforcing or changing the
ideological position of its reader.
Based up on the task model of Willis (1996) I then, involved the participants in task cycle in
which I engaged them in task-cycle as a part of discursive practice. I went on giving the
questions to specify the communicative situation of text, introduce text types and ask to reflect
on the questions like: where can they find a text like this? What kind of readers is it addressed
to? Is it written for students or non students? What is the author trying to tell us? And what do
you know about the life of people discussed in the text. Towards the end of the workshop I
engaged them in language-focus activities which is the third task given in the task model. It was
basically assigned for textual practice in which the participants were asked to examine and
discuss specific features of the text and identify textual and semantic features including linking
words, contradictory ideas, and attitudes towards the arguments made in the text and positioning
them in the text.
At the end of the workshop, I concluded critical reading tasks focusing up on the social,
discursive and textual practices. I made the participants clear on the goals of three levels
practices as: the goal of social practice is to find out the extent to which the text is shaped by
social structures and discourse influences social structures and the nature of social activities; the
goal of discursive practice is to specify communicative situation taking an account of both
material and cognitive aspects related to the conditions of textual production and interpretation
and the goal of textual practice is to focus on formal and semantic features of text construction
such as grammar and vocabulary which contribute to convey specific message. In my personal
experience of teaching reading texts to the students I used this model as a complementary model
for analyzing language use and for designing language learning activities. Cots (2006) suggested
the three specific roles teachers in processing critical reading approach as to establish trust,
answerability and reflexivity I myself realized such roles of the participants during the workshop.
From this experience, it would be important to note that learners can better process the
information of a reading text through tasks and they should be involved in social, discursive and
textual practices for developing their critical language awareness. In doing so, we as teachers,
support them with questions on what, why, how, who, where, when and what else aspects of the
texts.
References
Cots, J. M. (2006). Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical discourse analysis in EFL teaching. ELT
Journal, 60/4, 336-345.
Pennycock, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. London: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-
283.
Willis, J. (1996). Framework for task-based learning. London: Longman.