Critical Literacy is the theoretical underpinning of this course What does it mean to be positioned within a culture? How does hegemony control your responses to texts?

As Clark Stroup says what is "the role of language in what psychology calls synthetic happiness. To what extent can our language production (and our production of readings) generate happiness within the producer?

Read the Sapir-Whorf theory and consider the role that language has in the construction and evolution of cultural values.

Questions to ask when reading a text include:

Power:
Who has power? Who is powerless or oppressed and how do I know?How did the author construct this group in this way? Who is silent? Who speaks for who? How do we know if one character is more powerful than another? Which elements of our own lives and context position us to see that character X is more powerful than character Y? An example of this is Stanley and Stella in Streetcar Named Desire by T. Williams through dialogue, movement and body language we can see Stanley's dominance.

Racism/Sexism:
Which group is isolated and ignored? Which group is powerless or dispossessed? Which group is stereotyped and or feminised? How do we know? Once again the behaviour, actions and responses of Stanley, Stella and Blanch in Streetcar Named Desire by T. Williams demonstrate how women and men act and are portrayed in different ways. How are the characters in The Things They Carried by T. O'Brien portrayed? Or in Translations by B.Friel? What about groups in graphic novels where pictures can tell a thousand words? Which pictures, which angles, which point of view is favored or highlighted?



Add ideas and links to resources that you think will help us to understand and teach this concept.

Watch this you tube clip for ideas about critical reading and literacy







Critical Thinking is evaluating analysing and reaching decisions about problems and issues




Effects of Hegemony on the production, reproduction and reception of a text.


What is Hegemony?

It is like an onion, layers of contextual factors that surround us from birth, who we are, our identity, our family, community, all the institutions of society such as family, marriage, Law and religion that overtly and covertly control us, that is hegemony.

However, it is not a permanent state, time can change hegemonic views, the courtly love of the 12th to 14th centuries is markedly different to modern views of love. The hegemonic view of one culture India for example with its caste system is markedly different from the USA.

A comparison of how a text can be read from the perspectives of different readers from different cultures and time periods can lead to interesting analysis.

What is Critical Literacy? According to Heather Coffey

Critical literacy is the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships. For the purposes of critical literacy, text is defined as a “vehicle through which individuals communicate with one another using the codes and conventions of society”.1 Accordingly, songs, novels, conversations, pictures, movies, etc. are all considered texts.
The development of critical literacy skills enables people to interpret messages in the modern world through a critical lens and challenge the power relations within those messages. Teachers who facilitate the development of critical literacy encourage students to interrogate societal issues and institutions like family, poverty, education, equity, and equality in order to critique the structures that serve as norms as well as to demonstrate how these norms are not experienced by all members of society

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4437 accessed December 4th 2010

In this course students are encouraged to read texts as constructions and consider the ways in which they are positioned in relation to the issues they are reading about. The students’ own contextual background means that they are active readers of a text and are constructing a sense of reality as they read. In effect no two readers will have exactly the same response to or understanding of a text.



Developing Textual Analysis skills using Bloom to Analyse a Novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Mishima

Blooms’ Taxonomy	Task	Action Words	Quotations/Comments
Knowledge Learning information	Multiple answer quiz on characters, setting, theme Using varying levels of questions: Who is the main character? What is his mothers’ name?	Who what where when why how Which Identify Select show	This would check their immediate knowledge and whether or not they have read the text
Comprehension Understanding information	What is Noborus’ response to the Sailor? What is the Sailors’ main cause for concern?	Define, explain, interpret, illustrate, summarise	This would allow you to see what areas of the text they do not understand. It allows for literal and evaluative answers.
Application Using Information	Write an essay: What does this novel reveal about social values in Modern Japan?	Adapt, model make, using..discuss	By applying the knowledge from the text to an essay about Japan this extrapolation reveals their understanding and responses.
Analysis Examining parts	A textual analysis/commentary essay A student should “read into” the text and note inferences, structure and how literary devices position the reader to respond.	Examine, Inspect, break down, analyse, discover	This makes it obvious which students are literal readers and which have the ability to ‘unpack’ the meaning of the text.
Synthesis Using information differently	Write a book review Write an article about Modern Japan Write an essay about the social alienation of young people in Japanese culture as shown in Sailor.	Build, make, imagine, predict,improve, develop	This requires putting information together in different ways.
Evaluation Judging Information	Write an essay or an exam answer Why did the boys punish the Sailor? How did Mishima gain your response to their actions and why?	Judge, decide, rank, determine, Assess, appraise, disprove, justify, support, estimate, interpret	The students can apply their knowledge of prose techniques and the narrative to this question.

Venn Diagrams as analytical tools

Draw two circles overlapping. One circle can be a major character and the other circle can be their fate.

For example put the Sailor in one circle and his death in the other circle
In the middle the students have to write the actions, symbols and images that foreshadowed or led to his death:





The students can do this in pairs and report to the class.


Mind Maps

Each group can have one concept or theme e.g. Glory and Honour, East and West, Men and Women, Life and Death.

You can differentiate by asking them to do different things:
How is Glory and Honour created through actions? OR
How does imagery create Glory and Honour
How does the setting create East vs West? OR
How do the character represent the values of East vs West?

Note taking

Level of Thinking	Questions	Notes
Recall	List 4 facts you have learned
Comprehension	Summarise the main ideas of the novel
Application	Write a book review for yr 11 students
Analysis	Which theme or conflict do you think was the main point of the novel?
Synthesis	Create a mindmap using the imagery in the novel
Evaluation	What criteria would you use to judge this novel as being a worthy choice for World Literature?

Plus Minus Interest by Edward de Bono 1987

Students can break down a topic using a framework for their ideas: Using this question as a starting point: “ Is Sailor an effective representation of modern Japan?’

Plus (good points)	Minus (bad points)	Interesting (why it might work)
Yes it reveals many of the cultural changes such as the changing role of women Yes it portrays the clashes in the values of the past and the present Yes it allows us to see some universal traits in Japanese culture	No it paints a negative nihilistic view of modern Japan No it is confusing and very violent No it is stereotypical in its attitudes to women	It does reveal underlying conflicts between past and present and the growing influence of Western values in Japan.

This PMI framework can be broken down and used as an essay plan using the Interesting column for the conclusion:

Plus (good points)	Minus (bad points)	Interesting (why it might work)
1.Yes it reveals many of the cultural changes such as the changing role of women 3.Yes it portrays the clashes in the values of the past and the present 5.Yes it allows us to see some universal traits in Japanese culture	6. No it paints a negative nihilistic view of modern Japan 4. No it is confusing and very violent 2. No it is stereotypical in its attitudes to women	7. It does reveal underlying conflicts between past and present and the growing influence of Western values in Japan.