Critical Literacy through Critical Documentaries - How Bowling for Columbine and Michael Moore hates America can be used to teach argumentative writing and source criticism to students in upper-secondary school in Sweden.

This essay seeks to illustrate how critical literacy and source criticism can be incorporated in argumentative thinking and reasoning in an assignment based on authentic materials constructed for students studying English 6 in Swedish upper-secondary school. The assignment seeks to, grounded in critical literacy theory, increase the students’ source criticism and improve their argumentative thinking and reasoning. These goals are directly connected to the aims presented in the syllabus for the English subject in Swedish upper-secondary school. The essay will state why authentic texts are suitable when teaching critical literacy skills. The essay will also present different theories to critical literacy and conclude that "the four resources model" (Luke & Freebody, 1990) can be considered most suitable for students assigned to produce argumentative texts. The authentic materials chosen for this assignment consist of three themes identified in the critical documentaries Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore, and Michael Moore hates America (2004), directed by Mike Wilson. The three themes that are selected for the assignment, and presented in this essay are: The NRA, The 2 nd amendment and Is Michael Moore anti-American? The students will get a theme assigned to them and are supposed to, through instructions based on critical literacy theory, develop an argumentative text about their specific theme. Subsequently, the students are supposed to present their argumentative text in front of the class. Additionally, the goals stated in the curriculum for the English subject and the aims from the syllabus for English 6 in Swedish upper-secondary school will be presented and explained in relation to the assignment constructed for this essay and how the assignment will make them to achieve those goals