A Critical Discourse Analysis of EFL Learners’ Post-reading Reflections in a Critical Literacy-based Class

Abstract

This study examined EFL learners' critical development in a critical literacy-based reading class by analyzing their reflective essays on three articles: one article they read before critical instruction and two after the instruction. The analytical framework was mainly based on Fairclough’s (1992a) Three-Dimensional Model of Discourse, focusing on the dialectical relationship between the students’ discursive practices presented in their reflections and their ideological social practices. Findings show that the students' development of critical consciousness was seen after the critical instruction because in their response to the pre-instruction reading article, almost all of the students reproduced the conservative motherhood discourse, assuming the taken-for-granted responsibilities of a wife and mother, while in their response to after-instruction reading articles, around one third of the students displayed egalitarian discourses that challenge the taken-for-granted ideas about gender differences and admit of diverse ways of being in this world, and liberatory discourses such as the adoption discourse that liberates infertile couples from the domination of the fertility discourse. Therefore, from this study we suggest that critical pedagogy be implemented in EFL language instruction to develop students’ critical consciousness and help them to be active critical readers.