Critical Reading in Language Education

by Catherine Wallace
Palgrave Macmillan 2003
0-333-98579-6 Reviewed by Andrea Mattos

Catherine Wallace is certainly a highlight in the field of Second Language

Learning and Teaching, with several papers and articles published mainly in the area of
teaching reading skills to second language (SL) learners. In Critical Reading in
Language Education, she draws on important authors and research on Critical Thinking
and Critical Discourse Analysis, such as Foucault and Fairclough, in order to discuss the
issue of how power relations are represented in language and how language is used to
legitimate the discourses and ideologies of dominant groups. Her main objective is to
focus on Critical Reading as a means to foster “criticality” in SL learners. Using
Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Linguistics as a framework for text analysis, and basing
her assumptions on Freirean perspectives on Critical Pedagogy, Wallace discusses
several relevant issues related to teaching critical reading to SL learners and to how
critical perspectives may contribute to empower learners in general.
The book is organized around several underpinnings which connect the ideas
presented to the broader fundamental framework of Critical Language Awareness and
Critical Pedagogy. These are presented in the form of assumptions: the need to address
social and political issues through text study; the fact that reading is a public and social
act as well as an individual and private activity; and the idea that texts both reflect and
constitute contemporary social life.
The first three chapters of the book are concerned with the theoretical basis,
whereas the other four chapters focus on a particular Critical Reading course taught by
the author. Chapter one discusses several ideas related to the reading skill and argues for
an understanding of reading as a social process, in as much as the interpretations of any
texts are not built individually, but negotiated by readers as members of interpretative
communities. The second chapter presents and discusses the perspectives of Critical
Discourse Analysis as the basis for Critical Reading. The author focuses more closely
on the idea of criticality, drawing on issues of critical thinking and critical literacy. It is
here that Wallace presents the Hallidayan framework for text analysis, as well as the
principles, purposes and practice of Critical Reading. Chapter three goes back to the
wider issue of Critical Pedagogy, but brings the discussion to the field of language
teaching, especially English as a second language, by approaching relevant themes such
as an understanding of genres and their use in language pedagogy and Critical Language
Awareness.
The rest of the book is devoted to the presentation and discussion of the Critical
Reading course. Chapter four describes the methodology of the empirical study that was
conducted by the author while teaching this course and that has served as basis for the
book. Chapter five more fully presents the Critical Reading course by discussing its
background, objectives and classroom procedures, as well as how texts and tasks were
respectively selected and designed. In chapter six, the author takes on Halliday’s
notions of field, tenor and mode to present a closer look at how the teacher (herself) has
managed to address social and political issues in a course on reading skills. The final
chapter of the book focuses on the students’ perspectives. Through the analysis of
students’ diaries, reading protocols and some interviews, which were conducted after
the end of the course, the author is able to explore interesting themes that are salient in
students’ narratives, such as how students make use of language and metalanguage to
offer opinions and judgement of the issues discussed. This chapter also shows how
students realize the value of participating in the course.
In the introduction, Wallace emphasizes that the detailed discussion of the study
on the Critical Reading course is offered not as a model, but as an exploration of the
issues involved in such an enterprise. In the postscript, she goes back to one of her main
questions: “what does it mean to be a critical reader in a foreign language?”, and
discusses the issues of feasibility, desirability and necessity in implementing critical
language studies for foreign language students. The book is, obviously, not only
relevant to SL teachers focusing on reading skills but, rather, a book that should be read
by any teacher interested in fostering language awareness and empowerment among
students of any kind.

Reviewed by Andrea Machado de Almeida Mattos

Federal University of Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras