An Investigation of Iranian EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the Use of Critical Awareness Techniques in Reading English Academic Texts

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the Iranian EFL students' attitudes towards the use of critical awareness techniques in academic reading. To this end, 30 Iranian students who were studying English for several years were selected as the subjects of the study. The selected participants were given an introduction to the course. The participants went through a course in which ten reading comprehension passages were covered. In teaching reading comprehension passages to the language learners, a critical-based framework was selected and adopted based on the tenets of critical reading as well as Van Dijk's (2000) socio cognitive model. In effect, in teaching the reading passages the students' consciousness and awareness were raised to encourage the students to get a deeper understanding of the texts. The subjects discussed their experiences from going through a critical-based approach. In effect, the subjects argued about the advantages and disadvantages of the worked model in terms of the learning and retention of the materials. The results of the study indicated that the students had a positive perspective towards the critical awareness techniques utilized in the academic reading passages. The subjects emphasized that English language learners need to learn diverse strategies to improve their reading comprehension rate. Effectively, the results of the study indicated that the students prefer to be taught utilizing a critical-based approach to be able to improve their critical thinking towards the perspectives and ideologies behind the texts. They added that consciousness raising equips them to be able to get access to the profound meanings of the texts.