Teaching and Learning Critical Reading with Transnational Texts at a Mexican University: An Emergentist Cast Study.

Abstract

This dissertation project examines the implementation of a critical reading intervention in a Mexican university, and the emergence of target critical reading processes in Mexican college-level EFL readers. It uses a Complexity Theory-inspired, qualitative methodology. Orienting the selection and design of materials is a deep view of culture that focuses on competing ideologies as a site of cultural production. Also orienting the pedagogical design is a goal to enable readers to infer aspects of a text‘s social and ideological context from deep examinations of its linguistic patterns and rhetorical strategies. The metalanguage and analytic procedures of Appraisal Theory (a subset of Systemic Functional Linguistics), Burkean rhetoric, and Toulmin analysis were used to design activities and discourse organizers aimed at promoting rhetorical inferences and ideological critique. Adapted versions of these concepts and analytic procedures were taught to students. The study focused on investigating the emergence of the target interpretive processes in the student population as well as identifying factors underlying observable student reading practices. Results from these analyses were used to inform the theorizations of learning and instruction underpinning the intervention. Findings show that previous, non-target genre and rhetorical knowledge strongly influenced some students‘ initial implausible interpretations of authorial attitude and audience. However, the intervention was successful in helping students to produce plausible interpretations. Genre and rhetorical knowledge thus emerged as important elements of the theorizations of learning needs and outcomes, which led to modifications in the underlying instructional theory. Students learned to use the metalanguage of Appraisal analysis and reported that it was helpful in improving comprehension. Unexpectedly, students reported the emergence of an awareness of the need to monitor their comprehension. They also showed and reported increased ability to build richer, more plausible representations of texts in general after doing Appraisal analysis. Some students also reported internalizing the learned analytic procedures and applying them to other genres. These results have implications for L1 and L2 reading pedagogy and contribute to understanding the processes involved in making rhetorical inferences and resisting ideology.