Media literacy education in English as a foreign language classroom

Abstract

Media has become an inseparable part of our lives whether we are children, young people, or adults; we all have our share of media-related exposure on a daily basis. Being literate in the 21st century requires a change in pedagogy of the current education system. Thus, teachers perceive a need for media literacy education in their classrooms. Including media literacy education as part of the school curriculum is imperative as a way to challenge students’ critical and creative skills in order to assimilate the diverse codes involved in the contemporary media system. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine the manifestation of media literacy education in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom by focusing on EFL teachers’ ML perceptions and classroom practices. This study relies on a qualitative methodology; structured interviews with EFL teachers of secondary school. The findings show that the Moroccan teachers of EFL agree that media literacy is not recognized as an official and fundamental part of the national curriculum. Besides, this study presumes that the Moroccan education system is not offering to both educators and learners the necessary requirements in order to realize a working and fruitful media literacy project.