Reflection 3

Reflection on Goals & Objectives

This chapter provided me an insight into various perspectives of language teaching and learning. I always thought of language teaching only in terms of linguistic and communicative context, but I realized that language can be taught as an intensive and specialized form of social studies as well. Luckily, I encountered this view during the workshop in Hawaii. Dr. Crookes gave us a lecture on Critical Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy, and I was totally amazed. Being exposed to a totally new concept, I couldn’t understand the lecture in the beginning. However, I gradually grasped what critical pedagogy intends for while doing a group work. We were put into groups of four and generated a lesson plan in which social issues and concerns are embedded. Our group dealt with the perception of beauty in Korean society, and other groups touched on issues like racism and violence. In our group’s lesson plan, which targeted for female students at a vocational high school, students were to discuss distorted perception of beauty in our society and the causes for such views. Our intention was to let them discard the wrong perceptions and build self-respects. While this type of lesson could improve students’ linguistic and communicative abilities, more focus lies on social studies. I thought, ‘Wow, this is like catching two birds with one stone!’ Within the framework of education or pedagogy, critical language teaching contains a lot of values. Dr. Crookes mentioned that it’s worthwhile for language teachers to expand their aims or goals to change the world in better way. I think critical language teaching is so wonderful!