Promotion of Critical Reading through the Use of Political Cartoons

Main Article Content

Willian Alexander Mora-Menjura
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4446-1349

Abstract

Critical exploration of socio-political issues has been a topic strongly carried out in English classrooms in the last decades. This article is the result of a research study that shows what the use of political cartoons reveals about the promotion of critical reading in an EFL classroom at a private university in Colombia. The study was developed with fourteen students under a qualitative case study method. Workshops, teacher journals and focus-group interviews were used to collect data. The emerging categories show the positive results of using political cartoons and the change that the students had in their thoughts and actions in both the academic and social context. In the results, the students portray how they have perceived the ELT classroom, the importance of being a critical reader of texts and contexts, and how the different activities helped them construct their own critical awareness concerning social and political issues.

Article Details

How to Cite
Mora-Menjura, W. A. (2021). Promotion of Critical Reading through the Use of Political Cartoons. HOW, 28(2), 121–140. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.28.2.564
Section
Research Reports
Author Biography

Willian Alexander Mora-Menjura, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia

He holds a BA in Modern Languages and an MA in Language Teaching from Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia -UPTC. Currently, he is a full-time teacher and a member of IMCLE research group in UPTC, Sogamoso Campus. His interests focused on critical literacy, curriculum design, and applied linguistics.

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