Innovation in Language Learning

The majority of reading activities in an EFL classroom focus on the skills of skimming, scanning, intensive reading, and extensive reading. Very little time is devoted to reading critically, which is an essential skill in today’s information rich technological world. This paper looks at implementing critical discourse analysis into an EFL classroom. From our experience of using authentic texts such as newspapers, Internet posts, and taking part in online chats in academic reading and writing courses, we argue that students need to be shown how language is used to position certain ideals and how ideologies are constructed, and how societal power is maintained by deconstructing texts to find ‘hidden’ meanings. The paper will demonstrate how all texts are biased and why there is no such thing as a neutral text. The presenters will show how grammatical choice can be used to show an author’s biases. This paper will therefore demonstrate how critical discourse analysis can be incorporated into an EFL reading lesson to help students fully understand the message that is being conveyed. 

Keywords: Critical discourse, reading skills, power, texts, bias;