Foreign language students’ views on FL and critical literacies

Abstract

This study reports on the journal entries written by undergraduate students (N = 42) after participating in Spanish as a foreign language classes with a critical pedagogy orientation which unfolded from the exploration of homophobia in a poem by Luis Cernuda. Students were requested to express their views on how the lessons had impacted their FL competence and critical literacies. The teaching proposal was held to successfully activate an increased awareness of the issue of social justice, empathy towards marginalized groups, and a desire to take social action. As for perceived benefits in FL literacy, while learners confirmed that lessons were useful for enhancing language skills and linguistic competence, they also highlighted issues which to date had remained uninformed in critical pedagogy (CP) research: a demand for more explicit instruction of grammatical forms, and the role in critical FL pedagogy of specific FL methodological principles such as the dynamism or the student-centredness of the lessons.