The Practice of Critical Literacy Teaching in EFL Classroom: A Case
Study in a Reading Class in Indonesian Higher Education
Ari Setyorini
English Department, Muhammadiyah University of Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia
Keywords: Critical Literacy Practice, EFL Reading, Critical Language Awareness, Higher Education.
Abstract: This article attempts to frame critical literacy practice in EFL Classroom in Indonesia since it is known that
critical literacy should be implemented by higher education in the 21st century to answer the need of
transformative pedagogy. Using descriptive qualitative analysis, the study was focused on two prominent
points. Firstly, it examined how a higher education teacher in EFL classroom put critical literacy into practice
and challenged her students to be critical learners. Further, applying Critical Language Awareness (CLA)
strategies, this paper took a deeper discussion on how CLA could enhance student’s critical consciousness in
reading a text. Secondly, this study described the challenge of teaching English Language using critical
literacy perspective for higher education in EFL classroom.
1 INTRODUCTION
UNESCO (2004) emphasizes the importance of
teaching critical literacy in this fast growing
information era which often presents text with
symbolic violence in order to avoid the oppression
and preserve the diversity of civic life (Street, 1995;
Wagner 1999). Regarding this notion, Paulo Freire
(1973) says that il/literacy is not a neutral condition.
Thus, he suggests that educational institution should
focus on teaching literacy to awake students from the
domination of the social and economic oppressive
structures.
De Castell, Luke &MacLennan (1989) argue that
today’s technological society has shifted the meaning
of literate from the one who could read and make
literal meaning of the text or known as functionally
literate into the individual who is able to read for
social practices or called as critically literate.
Moreover, this perspective supports the educational
institution to teach reading with critical perspective
by correlating reading with the teaching of cultural
way of seeing, describing and explaining (Luke &
Freebody, 1997). It means that in teaching reading
should be aimed to understand the representation of a
text, ideology embedded in a text, subjectivity and
author’s position about a particular issue. As noted by
Janks, it must be borne in students’ mind that the act
of reading is a matter of knowledge and power
distribution in society. (2000)
In Indonesia, the focus of teaching English as
Foreign Language (EFL) reading especially for
university’s student should get a serious concern
since there is a new curriculum based on Indonesian
Qualification Framework which obligates higher
educational institution to make their students be
perceptive and adaptive toward the global change and
needs. Thus, this is in dire need of placing the
cognitive level of undergraduate student particularly
for EFL learning by not only focusing on the mastery
of language skills in a certain level, but also
considering the need of transformative critical
pedagogy through the EFL teaching. In doing so,
Indonesian university should construct their lesson in
accordance with the need of creating critical students
in this millennial era. It is to prepare the university
student to be the agent of change who must be ready
to take on their participatory roles of being global
citizens by understanding the various socio-political
perspectives of a text.
It is broadly noticed that critical literacy has been
on the spot of light for years ago in Western
Education, particularly through L1 classroom. In EFL
context, Ko and Wang (2009) noted that the theory of
critical literacy and its implication in EFL classroom
is limited. However, critical literacy has been
gradually explored by literacy practitioners in these
recent years. Those researches are mostly conducted
Setyorini, A.
The Practice of Critical Literacy Teaching in EFL Classroom: A Case Study in a Reading Class in Indonesian Higher Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0007161600350040
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 35-40
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
35

in primary or secondary level of education. It means
that critical literacy in the EFL for Higher Education
level has not been explored immensely yet. In Asian
context, Koo’s research (2008) confirms that Higher
Education students still do not articulate what they are
thinking, perhaps reflecting the situation of literary
practice in schooling. He adds up that the low level of
critical literacy of Asian students could be seen from
the EFL examination system and the practice of rote
learning in EFL teaching (Koo, 2008). Further, it is
noted that the lack of critical literacy practice in Asia
is mostly due to the reasons of the insufficient
understanding on the need of critical literacy in this
region and a lack of knowledge and skills on its
implementation in non-Western contexts (Kim,
2012), and the cultural reason of which is typically
marked by hierarchal structure in which student is in
submissive position and it is impolite to express their
critical opinion toward their teacher (Kuo, 2009)
which makes passive culture of the class (Yulianto,
2015).
This article intends to frame the critical literacy
practice, particularly in teaching EFL reading, in
Higher education in EFL classroom in Indonesia by
concerning on the chosen reading material and
teaching strategy. To accommodate the objective of
teaching EFL reading critically, this research applies
Critical Language Awareness (CLA) by correlating
the language figures and critical literacy (Wallace,
1998). The use of CLA strategy is to balance the
teaching material proportion between language skill
and critical reading skill which is exceedingly needed
to be explored in EFL education.
This was a case study in which the teacher was
functioned as the researcher as well. The research was
conducted in Interpretative Reading Class which is
programmed for students of third semester at an
English Department of a Private University in
Surabaya. The participants of this research were 14
students of Interpretative Reading in Class A. The
implementation was conducted for two time meetings
for each meeting was done for about 90 minutes. The
main data was taken from student’s responses on
discussion, student’s worksheet and journal. The
taken data was interpreted qualitatively.
2 THE PRACTICE AND
CHALLENGE OF CRITICAL
LITERACY IN TEACHING EFL
READING
2.1 Teaching Material and Strategy
To find the proper material which meets the learning
objective, teacher should consider a thought-
provoking topic of a passage that would challenge
students to think in a different perspective. In
addition, the chosen topic should be contextual to
today’s social, political, and cultural issue to make
students be familiar with the topic and to be able to
reflect the problem brought by the passage into their
daily lives. As Lewison, et al (2008: 5) highlights a
relation between personal and cultural resources in
critical literacy instruction. It means that the material
used in teaching critical literacy should accommodate
the “transaction among the personal and cultural
resources, the critical social practices we (teacher and
students) enact, and the critical stance that we and our
students take on in classrooms and in the world”.
From this point of view, the material should be able
to make the students understand what happen in the
world.
Another aspect to be considered in designing the
reading material is about the students’ English
language level. For the Interpretative Reading class
which the researcher observed, the student’s English
language level is low-mid intermediate. The learning
outcome of this subject is that the student has to
acquire a good comprehension of various reading text
with critical reading strategies and is able to deal with
600 words of a passage (English Department’s
document, 2016).
Realizing the prominent aspects in designing the
reading material above-mentioned, the teacher took
two kinds of simplified reading passages having
similar issue of ndiscrimination. The first text is about
racial discrimination entitled “Two Ways to Confront
Racism in Indonesia” taken from online news portal,
jakartaglobe.id. The text form is an opinion written
by a columnist, Johannes Nugroho. The second is
entitled “Ahmadiyah Community in Indonesia Faces
Ongoing Discrimination”. This is an interview
conducted by Asian Human Right Commission
toward Secretary of Jamaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia
(JAI) which brings out the voice of Ahmadiyah
followers. This interview excerpt was downloaded
from Asian Human Right Commission website.
Since the course objective was about previewing
and making inference, thus the teacher set up the
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
36

reading material and student’s worksheet which
covered the reading strategies of previewing and
making inference. However, to meet the need of
critical literacy, the main attention was on the figures
of language in the text. Following Wallace in
adapting Hallidayan framework for critical reading
(2003) the teacher designed student’s worksheet into
three layers of identification by identifying the
language figures in the text. Later on, the
identification is to find the interpersonal meaning, the
ideational meaning, and the textual or ideological
meaning of the text. To adjust the framework with the
course objective, the question in the textual meaning
layer was modified by inserting two questions about
the fact and opinion in the text and the inference. Here
are the text analysis that should be identified by the
students:
Table 1: Critical Language Awareness.
Complete the columns below, making reference to the
key text and the Halliday framework for text analysis
1. Interpersonal
Meanings
2. Ideational
Meanings
3. Textual
Meanings
Note any use
of:
1. Personal
pronoun or the
writer and the
main characters
are presented in
the text
2. Mood
3. Languag
e items, such as
adjectives
which reflect
writer’s attitude
Note:
1. Who are the
main characters
and what verbs
collocate with
what nouns
Note what kind
of text this is:
1. How is
the topic
presented, what
fact and opinion
can you find in
the text?
2. What can
you infer from
the presented
topic and the
fact?
The learning steps were conducted following
Wallace (1992, 1993) which were pre-, while-, and
post-reading activity. Pre-activity was designed to
build up students initial background of knowledge
about the topic. While-activity was the main learning
activity in which the students were exposed to reading
material and critical language awareness strategy. At
this stage, the students were directed to answer the
worksheet based on CLA strategy. The last stage of
post-activity was aimed to note students’ learning
experience and reflection toward the learning topic.
2.2 Classroom Activities
In pre-reading activity, the objective of this stage was
to bring initial schematic knowledge to bear in
students’ mind about the topic of passage that would
be discussed at that day. To create visual projection
about today’s topic, the teacher showed three pictures
and asked the students to previewed the pictures and
spoke up the first adjective that came into their mind
after observing the picture. The first picture
illustrated about three burnt Koran which was back-
dropped with burnt Mosque. The students’ responded
by speaking up some adjectives and the teacher wrote
the adjectives in the white board. The adjectives
which students had in their mind were: cruel, sinful,
angry, burnt, sad, racist, Islamic. The second picture
was an excerpt of printed newspaper which entitled
“Rumah dan Masjid Pengikut Ahmadiyah Dibakar”.
The teacher noted students’ response on adjectives of
intolerant, discriminative, racist, defensive,
misguided, wrong, and misled. The next picture
showed a testimony of from a Chinese Indonesia girl
who had lived in Indonesia for about 18 years, but she
moved to USA when May 1998 riot happened. This
girl expressed her feeling of being Chinese Indonesia
who often got verbal bullied from people because of
her racial difference. This picture was captured from
kaskus website. The adjectives that came up were sad,
intolerant, cruel, wrong, racist, and heart-breaking.
After taking note toward students’ adjectives list,
the teacher asked the students to classify the positive
and negative adjective based on the context of the
pictures. The teacher highlighted that the list had
more negative adjective and confirmed the students
about their feeling related to the negative adjectives.
Next, she asked the students to predict the topic of
discussion at that day based on the pictures they saw
and the adjectives they found. The students guessed
the topic as the following:
Student 6: “From the pictures in the slides, my
prediction, ... Mmm... maybe today we will discuss the
bad... bad effect of racism.”
Student 10: “I think ... Maybe... it is about
discrimination happens in Indonesia. If I read some
negative adjectives there, yes, I agree with Student 6.
It is about negative side of discrimination in
Indonesia.”
From those two responses, it can be noted that
through previewing and predicting, the pre-activity
stage was succeeded to build students’ the initial
schematic background knowledge of the topic. The
teacher, then, strengthened the students’ initial
knowledge about discrimination by correlating the
issue of discrimination with the students’ experience
The Practice of Critical Literacy Teaching in EFL Classroom: A Case Study in a Reading Class in Indonesian Higher Education
37

in their real lives. Some students keenly answered by
telling their experiences of being discriminated.
Students 3: In my home country (at this case, the
student is from Southern Thailand) there is religious
discrimination experienced by Muslim in Southern
Border Province like me. The conflict is between
Buddhist and Moslem.
Student 8: Racial discrimination. I often
discriminated because of my accent or you know
about the stereotype because I am a Madurese. I often
get bully from my friends, verbally.
The two students’ responses show that the
students were able to make a link between the reading
topic and their real experiences.
In while-reading activity, the students were
divided into two group which each group consists of
7 students. The first group had a passage about
“Ahmadiyah Community in Indonesia Faces
Ongoing Discrimination”, while the second group
got a passage entitled “Two Ways to Confront
Racism in Indonesia”. Firstly, the students were asked
to find generic classification of the text by stating
text’s title, the author and the publisher.
After finding the genre of the text, the students
were directed to do close-reading and identify the
language features based on the Halliday framework
as written in their worksheet. Here, the teacher
explained briefly the framework to make the students
understand the use of this three layers of
identification. In addition, she also emphasized the
analysis of figures of language can reveal the
representation of particular race, religion, belief, and
stereotype therein a text.
The learning stage was closed with post-activity
where students can reflect the learning material that
day and what they experienced during the teaching-
learning process.
2.3 Assessing Student’s Critical
Awareness
In While-Reading activity, each student had to
classify the language items in the column
individually, even though they were divided into two
groups based on two different articles.
The assessment of the students’ worksheet of first
group shows that 85% of the students (6 out of 7
students) was able to classify the personal pronoun or
the writer and the main characters were presented in
the text, the mood of the text, and the adjectives
reflecting the writer’s attitude. Only one student did
not answer the question about mood correctly due to
the misled concept she had about the mood. For the
second layer question, all students could mention the
main characters in the text who are the Ahmadiyah
community, the Minister of Religion, Indonesian
Ulama Assembly, Regional Government, Indonesia
Police and Court. They also could identify the
adjectives and verbs that follow the characters.
Through this activity, the teacher emphazised the
subject position of each character in the text and the
standing point of the writer toward the issue of the
text.
Finally, the students were able to state the topic of
the passage which is about religious discrimination
and able to identify the fact and opinion. For knowing
the textual meaning, the students were asked to
identify the kind of text and the inferred meaning of
opinion presented in the text. However, when they
were asked to infer the meaning of the fact and
opinion, there were misinterpretation found from the
students’ answer. The percentage of right answer is
57% or 4 out of 7 students who inferred the right
meaning.
The students were realized that Ahmadiyah
community was represented as “errant sect” due to
their different interpretation toward Islamic teaching.
Related to this representation, some of students said
that the identification as an errant sect was based on
Indonesian Ulama Assembly’s fatwa in 1995 which
stated that this community did not follow the official
teaching of Islam. As argued by student 6: “I heard
this community has different interpretation to legal
Islamic teaching. I am not sure what is the difference
in their belief, but I, personally agree to the
classification.. I believe to what MUI said that they
are errant sect. But... I don’t agree if because of that,
they are condemned to do Hajj or they can’t access
public service such as getting health insurance from
government. They should get their right. ”
This excerpt shows the negotiation position in
responding the discourse brought by the text. The
student still believed in his initial knowledge that
Ahmadiyah community is a misguided sect, however,
he thought that Ahmadiyah should have not been
discriminated to get the public access due to their
belief.
For the second group, all of students were correct
in analyzing the interpersonal meaning of the text.
They succeeded in identifying the different
representation of two Chinese Indonesian figures
through the use of personal pronoun and adjectives in
the text. For the second layer, 85% of students in this
group correctly answered the verbs collocated with
three characters in the text (Jaya Suprana, Basuki
Purnama, and Tri Rismaharini).
From the stage of interpersonal meaning, the
students succeeded in finding the subject position of
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
38

each character of the text by looking at the adjectives
which follow them. As expressed by student 9: “The
representation of Chinese Indonesia here are two
images. First, Jaya Suprana is represented as
modesty and non-confrontation Chinese Indonesian.
In contrast, Ahok is represented as outspoken and
plain speaking. However, bu Risma is also
represented with similar image with Ahok. What
makes Ahok, bu Risma different is people relate the
bad representation of Ahok with his racial
background. But not for bu Risma.”
It can be noticed that the student was capable to
explain the subject position of the characters. The
teacher went further by asking the students aboout the
writer’s intention in representing different subject
position of the characters.
The question of writer’s intention is a bridge to
connect the first stage of CLA with the second stage
of the ideational meaning of the text. At this point, the
teacher asked the students to pay attention to the use
of particular verbs which collocate to the nouns. The
students highlighted the use of active verbs and
several modals which indicate the intention of the
writer to emphazise the noun’s action, for instance,
when the text stated: Ahok, uncowed by
discrimination, demands that he be treated and
judged equally as any other Indonesian citizen
regardless of race, the students were asked to focus
on the word of “demand” to know that the noun
(Ahok) requested forcefully and urgently to be treated
equally as Indonesian citizen despite his race. The use
of “demand” here was to show that race was one of
the plausible causing factors of discrimination which
had to be taken into serious action.
After identifying the verbs that collocated with
the nouns, the students were directed to interpret the
writer’s stand point. To some extent, this task was
more difficult to be tackled by the students. They
could make a connection between the use of certain
verb and the meaning behind it, but they still got
confused to sum up the writer’s stand point. Thus, the
teacher stimulated by asking several questions such
as: whose voice was brought by the writer? Or whose
voice was dismissed? By relating these questions to
the language figures used by the writer, it eased the
students to grasp the writer’s position.
The last stage in this while-reading activity was
designed to meet the goal of reading skill.This textual
level of analysis questioned the students’
understanding about fact and opinion. They had to
mention the facts presented in the text and infer the
meaning of the fact and opinion. Similar to the first
group, the students in this second group also found
difficulty in making inference to the fact they found
in the text, 4 out of 7 students answered the correct
inference.
The teacher found two main challenges in
practicing Critical Literacy in teaching EFL reading.
First is the students’ belief on their initial knowledge
about the official Islamic teaching. This belief made
the student doubt what position they should take.
They believed that this community follow a misled
Islamic teaching. On the other hand, they did not
agree to the discrimination experienced by
Ahmadiyah community. Second problem is the
passive culture of students. This was a predictable
problem since being submissive student in the class is
a common culture in Indonesia. For this problem, the
teacher created student’s journal in which the students
could express their thoughts. It is proven that the
students who were not fully engaged to the discussion
were able to express their opinion in the journal with
clear critical argument.
3 CONCLUSIONS
CLA was applied as a way to make a balance
distribution between language skill and critical
literacy teaching. The learning procedure was done
through pre-while-and post reading activity. In pre-
activity, students were asked to preview some
pictures and predict the topic of discussion. In while-
activity, firstly the students were asked to identify
linguistic features in the text to understand the
comprehensiveness and to make inference as well.
Post-activity was in form of student’s self-reflection
about the discussed topic in their journals. From the
observation, it was known that the teacher
encountered two challenging problems which are the
students’ religious belief which sometime made them
be doubtful to which side they should take their
position and the passive culture of the students.
For further research, it will be more
comprehensive if the study takes its focus on EFL
teachers’ perception toward critical literacy practice
in EFL teaching for Higher Education. This study is
needed to frame a holistic practice of critical literacy
for tertiary education in Indonesia.
The Practice of Critical Literacy Teaching in EFL Classroom: A Case Study in a Reading Class in Indonesian Higher Education
39

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
40