Collaborative action research on critical literacy: Investigating an English conversation class in Taiwan.

摘要

The study examines an English Conversation class taught in Taiwan in the spring semester of 2005 in an attempt to determine how the teacher, students, and I changed our perceptions of language learning and teaching. In particular, this study investigates the extent to which the goals of a critical literacy (CL) approach were achieved in the class and arrives at some implications for the implementation of CL practices in Taiwan.; The study is a qualitative case study of action research, recording and exploring the instructor's teaching activities and his 26 students' learning process in order to document and analyze these practices from a CL perspective. An instructional model of CL is used as the analytical framework in the study because this model sees language learning as a social practice moving from the personal to the social. Data include instructor's journal entries, students' comments on the class weblog, students' midterm and final reflection papers, interviews with the instructor and with nine selected students, classroom observations, field notes, etc.; The findings of the study are that these EFL students were able to reflect on classroom texts by incorporating their lived experiences into their team dialogues. That is, English learning is not only a matter of the four skills but also a factor in students' lives and identities. It follows that a higher aim of English learning in EFL settings should be to promote students' awareness of themselves within their society and to equip them with the ability to see the world differently before they can change it. In addition, the study indicates that students in the class were highly satisfied with the curriculum, in which students were engaged in various types of input such as social-issue picture books, local news, hip-hop songs, pantomime, an episode of an American sitcom, etc. Finally, the activities discussed in the study suggests multiple and fertile possibilities of implementing critical literacy across different teaching contexts in Taiwan.