Creating Critical Spaces for Meaningful Education through Newspapers: Drawing Best out of Waste in EIL Classrooms

Authors

  • Vijay Singh Thakur Dhofar University
  • Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam University of the Western Cape
  • Moosa Ahmed Ali Suleiman Dhofar University

Keywords:

authentic materials, critical spaces, deep learning, EIL, interaction, newspapers, research skills

Abstract

According to Patil (2012), a course book should be used as a source book rather than a forced book (p. 67). Students’ learning needs to be enriched by supplementing the text book with the help of authentic materials. One of the readily available and easily accessible authentic materials is the newspaper, which is generally read casually and discarded as a waste material. The use of this educationally rich resource of newspapers is not given a serious attention in the pedagogy of English as an International Language (EIL). Incidentally, EIL is a wide-ranging field meant to examine how English language teaching and learning is structured, how meanings and ideas are formed and encoded, how they are communicated and represented, decoded and interpreted, and also taught and learnt across the Globe. Drawing on the wide-ranging educational possibilities that the use of newspapers can offer, we propose to demonstrate, in this paper, how EIL teachers can fruitfully exploit the neglected resource of newspapers to promote language skills, sharpen critical thinking skills, and develop research skills of EIL learners.

Author Biographies

Vijay Singh Thakur, Dhofar University

Dr. Vijay Singh THAKUR, Associate Professor of English Language & Linguistics, in the immediate past, has been Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Applied Sciences at Dhofar University, Salalah, Oman. He serves the Editorial Board of the Journal of English as an International Language (EILJ) as Associate Editor. He holds a doctorate degree in Applied Sociolinguistics. His academic contributions include: publication of 3 books and 2 jointly edited books, 38 research papers, 25 presentations at international conferences and delivery of 10 webinars in faculty development programs in the fields of Applied Sociolinguistics, EIL Pedagogy, Discourse Stylistics, Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and research. Email: vijay_oman@yahoo.co.in

Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam, University of the Western Cape

Dr. Sivakumar SIVASUBRAMANIAM is currently Extraordinary Professor and past Head of Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa (RSA). He is a rated researcher of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.

He has served the Editorial Board of the Journal of English as an International Language (EILJ) as Chief Editor since 2011 and he is committed to promoting locally relevant practices and pedagogies aimed at democratizing and dehegemonizing the teaching of English and researching into it across cultures and continents. He has been a foreign language/ second language educator for over thirty-eight years now and has taught English in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bahrain, Armenia, and U.A.E prior to relocating to South Africa. He has presented papers, conducted workshops and delivered plenaries at prestigious conference forums abroad. His research interests include response-centred reading/ writing pedagogies, literature-based language pedagogies, constructivism in EIL, second language advocacy, narratives in language education and text-based approaches to academic and social literacy practices.  Email contact: ssivasubramnaim@uwc.ac.za and sivakumar49@yahoo.com

Moosa Ahmed Ali Suleiman, Dhofar University

Dr. Moosa Ahmed Ali SULEIMAN earned his BA in TESOL at the University of Leeds, M.Ed. in TEFL from SQU, Oman and Ph.D. in TESL from UMS, Malaysia. His doctoral work is in the field of TESL Pedagogy. Currently, he is the Director of Foundation Program at Dhofar University in Salalah, Oman. His research interests, in which he has published papers and presented at international conferences, include vital aspects of Socratic Questioning, Critical Thinking, TEFL/TESL Pedagogy, Pre-service & In-service Teacher Preparation, and Testing & Evaluation. Email: moosa@du.edu.om

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Published

2023-04-30

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2023)

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Articles

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