| Critical literacy is one of the four interrelated dimensions of language use. It shows us ways of looking at written, visual and spoken texts to question the attitudes, values and beliefs that lie beneath the surface.
Critical literacy includes:
- looking at the meaning within texts
- considering the purpose for the text and the author's motives
- questioning the ways in which texts have been constructed
- analysing the power of language
- emphasising multiple interpretations of texts. (Because people interpret texts in the light of their own values and beliefs, texts will have different meanings to different people.)
- having students take a stance on issues.
- providing students with opportunities to consider and clarify their own attitudes and values
- providing students with opportunities to take social action.
Critical Literacy English Learning Area Tasmanian Education Department More generally, critical literacy is an approach to literacy which emphasizes the external context of the learner and the learner's relationship to that context. Critical literacy often embraces themes of confrontation, power, control, domination, self-construction, awareness, and topics of political and economic analysis. Strong forms of critical literacy equate literacy to understanding the external world. Reading is understanding that world; writing is reshaping it. Glossary Of LiteracyTerms: What Is Critical Literacy? Why am I/are we reading this text?
- Who benefits from the text?
- In whose interest is the text?
- What is the text about?
- What view of the world is the text presenting?
- What kind of knowledge is presented/not presented in the text?
- How do I feel about the text?
- How many interpretations of the text are possible?
- What kinds of social realities does the text portray?
- How does the text depict age, gender, culture?
- How is the child / how are the children constructed in this text?
- How are the adults constructed in this text?
- Why has the author portrayed the characters that way?
- What kind of language is used?
- Why is the text written the way it is?
- How else could it have been written?
- What is missing from the text?
- What questions about itself does the text not raise?
(From Jane Pitt (1995) Not Just After Lunch on Wednesdays Further Reading Critical Literacy
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