EXPLORING CRITICAL LITERACY WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: AN EXAMPLE FROM AUSTRALIA

Abstract

This paper intends to present a suggestion of how to practice critical literacy with pre-service teachers (PSTs), and their students, in order to fulfill the aims of the Australian Curriculum of English. Therefore, using notions of systemic-functional grammar found in Halliday (2004), Halliday & Hasan (1976), Halliday & Matthiessen (2014), and Martin (1992), we analyze a set of nine newspaper articles related to gender issues, social behavior and adequacy at the workplace. By discussing structure of that genre (narrative with an Orientation, Complications and a final Resolution), grammatical performance (Modality, nominalization, cohesion, voices of verb), and their implications in the social use of language, we point out ways through which our choices regarding textual configuration and the linguistic system are used to achieve certain communicational purposes. In this sense, we demonstrate how useful is, to the speaker, acquiring grammar knowledge, so he/she can have the right to active participation in post-modern societies, arguing and evaluating the other‟s arguments.