Week 6: Critical language teaching

According to Pennycook (2001), rather than consider classroom in ESOL as a neutral site, a critical approach to ESOL views the classroom as a part of the world that "both affected by what happens outside its walls and affecting what happens there." (p.129) It seems that the curriculum and educator's cultural preferences determine the environment of a classroom. Therefore, we TESOL practitioners need to take a more problematic stance, always questioning the inequality power between language learner and educator.

We need to question the methods that prescribed by our teacher deuction and develop our own methodologies according to different classroom situations and different students; we need to problematise the course materials that may carry cultural and ideological meanings; we need to problematise assessment to avoid the fact that the test takers who share the worldview with the test makers will be benifit, and to enable the test takers to present their talents and abilities unobstrctedly.(Lin, 1999;Penneycook, 2001;)

We TESOL practitioners also need to be aware of the limits of our knowledge, and raise the awarenesses of choising pedagogies based on objective, scientific, rational grounds rather than on political of ideological, as well as make students be concious of the power relationships which lead to liguistic or ideological oppressions. (Pennycook, 2001;Benesch, 1993)

Besides, Lin's(1999) observation reveals how differents ways of teaching, such as the use of L1 Cantonese and L2 English, the ways of asking questions lead to different results on students' response and attitudes of learning target language. The implication should be: we TESOL practitioners need to consider learners' needs, evoke learners' motivation, encourge learners to give their voice in the classroom rather than follow the policy of English only in TESOL classroom and the prescribed time limit.

In a whole, as a TESOL practitioner, we need to set up a critical attitude and a critical way of thingking and teaching in our classrooms.

Reference:

Benesch, S. (1993). ESL, ideology, and the politics of pragmatism. Tesol Quarterly, 27, 705-715.
Lin,A., (1999). Doing-English-lessons in the reproduction or transformation of social worlds. TESOL Quarterly, 33.393-412.
Pennycook, A., (2001). Critical applied linguistics. London:Lawrence Erlbaum.