Steve,

 

EFf Equipped for the Future http://eff.cls.utk.edu/

 

On your question, it would depend on the context of the course and background/interest of students, although Freirain-based critical pedagogy has been implemented at varying levels.  A  close reading of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed wouldn't be a bad start, if nothing else than to get an unvarnished picture of Freire's perspective.

 

I took quite a bit of French in college, including courses in French literature and culture, in which an exploration (in French) of the content and context of the literature and historical in which themes and background info related to the history and literature we read were fair topics for discussion.  What I would add to this is the importance of adult education and the role of life experience and personal knowledge, including the immigration experience potentially could become part of and ESOL curriculum.  I don't think there are any hard and fast rules on this and I certainly wouldn't want to be overly dogmatic in reinforcing one pedagogical methodology or strategy over another.  Context is important; that of the teacher as well as the students.


 

I would also reinforce Andres' point that ideology (world view) is inescapable and we are enacting it all the time. Of course, not everyone agrees with this 

 

George Demetrion 


Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:55:07 -0700
From: steve at thelinguist.com
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4713] Re: Critical thinking vs. critical pedagogy

I do not know what EFF stands for, but I have three questions.

1) If you took a language course in, say, Spanish, German or Chinese, would you expect to be taught critical thinking skills?
2) If you wanted to learn critical thinking skills, would you enroll in a language course, or would you take a philosophy course?
3) If you are teaching EFL/ESL, at what level do your students need to be in order for you to teach them critical thinking skills?

Steve


Steve Kaufmann
www.thelinguist.blogs.com
www.lingq.com
604-922-8514
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