Dr. Xiaochen Hua
South China Normal University, China
Chinese English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners always complain that the reading articles in school textbooks are full of prosaic doctrinal content. Educators also advocate to endow students with critical thinking. To engaging their needs, I conducted a semester of pioneer critical EFL practices in a Chinese university. Drawing on content-based foreign language teaching, and critical literacy, this study reports the impact of practicing this theory-oriented instruction and shed deep light on students’ reflection to it. In two college English classes (98 students in total), the instructor offered students with authentic English readings, videos, and leaded discussions toward the materials. Students’ essays, classroom performance, and interviews are analyzed by thematic analysis. Findings show that, students dislike the Chinese media’s propaganda and information filtered by the censorship. The desire to hear different voices motivate many of them to study English harder than they take the traditional English class. However, after they read and watched that the western media play dirty on broadcasting China, which is way distorted from their daily life, students’ critical thinking aroused. After broke throw the Chines news censorship and firewall, they confronted a biased western propaganda. To fight against the hostile news toward themselves spread in English media around the world, students are strongly motivated to practice English writing. Through a semester critical EFL practice, many Chinese college EFL students realized that English literacy can help them get access to different voices, and also empower them to challenge the western ideology dominated English media around the world.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
