Critical Literacy in an English as a Foreign Language Secondary Class in Berlin (PDF)

Scientific Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Grammar, Style, Working Technique, grade: 1.0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Criticality in English Language Education, language: English, abstract: This work deals with the topic of critical literacy in the context of English teaching, analyzing the curriculum for secondary school level II in Berlin and textbooks for teaching English in Berlin.

'Reading the Word and the World' is one of Paulo Freire's most famous quotes. By this he means that only after reading the word and even knowing how to read the word, one can afterwards read and understand the world. The world is full of information, according to Luke there is even a domination of disinformation. Every single day we are overwhelmed with various news, texts, images, different information, and representation of a phenomenon. Hence, we have to learn how to deal with texts and different representations in order to find out what is really going on in the world. Luke stresses the point that one needs to learn to weigh up, which of that information is trustworthy and even valuable.

The school is one of the places where students have the ability to learn, especially this technique mentioned above. Thus, it is important for students to learn to question the received knowledge and to move beyond just accepting the text's message. This is exactly what Critical Literacy demands and what students should be taught in English Language Teaching. EFL allows us to talk about important topics in another language, motivating students to communicate more in class and hopefully having an impact on students through engaging and appealing lessons that consider context and social dynamics. One can now already see the importance of knowing about Critical Literacy at school when teaching EFL.

This is where this paper comes in, by trying to relate this relevant topic of Critical Literacy to school practice by answering the specific question: How can the beginning of a unit from the Camden Town textbook be adapted for high school students in terms of Critical Literacy?