Mike's week 6 critical language teaching

In writing about critical approaches to TESOL, Pennycook (1999) talks about domains and the connections between the micro issues to do with TESOL and aspects of the ESOL classroom and macro issues out in the wider world -- race, religion, gender, sexuality, and wider concerns of power relations, enequality and inequities.

In my considerable efforts to make this connection to the critical issues of the wider world in my ESOL classroom of adult migrants I have found it can be something of a twin edged sword. Very careful consideration must go into it because of cultural, personal and religious sensitivities of students who may well take see things another way.

For example, in a unit of work on fashion, I suggested that people have very different ideas about what fashion is and how it can serve various intentions, including making polticial statements. So when I showed a TV3 Campbell live piece in which a woman was using topless beach fashion to make a point about women's rights, I got a reaction from a Korean woman in my class who was a devote Catholic. Apparently, women's breast are taboo in her mind. Prayer meetings were reportedly held at 4 am the next morning involving her and a couple of other religious fundamentalists in my class to save my immortal soul.

In another instance, bringing up issues of gender or homosexuality I can see visible reactions of the faces of some of the Korean fundamentalists.

Similarly, talking about women's issues to do with rights, equality and the like can result in indignant reactions from older Korean males. That's when I found out that one of my Korean male students had never even been in a supermarket, or cooked a meal. Such was women's work he exclaimed.

What I take from examples like this is that bringing the wider world in a critical sense into an ESOL classroom with such a wide range of personal and cultural baggage to contend with can lead to unexpected outcomes that the teacher should be sensitive to and give consideration to beforehand so as to be ready to contend with possible negative reactions.

Mind you, generally I have found that integrating a critical approach in my classroom has been quite stimulating and very conducive to getting students to communicate.

But, I now ensure that I carefully consider what I'm about to do in the classroom before launching into it.

Kia ora, Mike

Pennycook, A.(1999. Introduction: Critical Approaches to TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 33(3).