Teaching critical reading of literary texts: a Proposal for critical pedagogy in EFL context

The idea to teach critical reading through literary texts comes from the analogy that language and literary works are like two sides of a coin. Therfore, teaching the content (language) can be done through its form (literary work). Literary works as the real example of how language works. Considering the importance of literary works in teaching English, this paper is aimed at exploring the possible literary works which can be incorporated in teaching English critical reading. It stresses on the exploration literary works by encouraging the learners to interact with literary texts based on their background knowledge and to acquire the new one. Such exploration is crucial since understanding the text type by merely reading and answering comprehension questions is not sufficient enough to stimulate EFL learners’ critical thinking. Incorporating reasoning skills in the reading comprehension to some extent will help EFL learners to develop a habit of thinking critically. Accordingly, by applying the seven critical reading strategies as well as the learning prompt introduced in this paper, the goal of critical pedagogy can be achieved