EFL Students as Critics of Capitalism?

Abstract

Grounded in the view that EFL literacy education, like all educational activity, is situated in a network of political, economic and social discourses and material conditions, this study explores how EFL students with low-language proficiency may evolve as social critics. It is a part of a broader research about how EFL students and their instructor in a Lebanese, Public high school engaged in one-year critical literacy instruction. The participants’ responses demonstrate the complexity of developing a critical stance towards texts and discourses that normalize the practices and consequences of the multi-corporate order. They suggest that factors such as individual subjectivities and desires, social patterns, histories, and ideologies shape the students’ critical analysis. Although a few resisted taking a critical stance, many students used their limited language resources to provide creative analyses of the mechanisms and consequences of hyper capitalism and imagined possibilities for a better world.