ARTICLE REVIEW 1

Is CDA Difficult to Implement?

A Journal Article Review 1

The title          : Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical Discourse Analysis in EFL teaching

Citation           :

Cots, Josep M. (2014). Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical Discourse Analysis in EFL teaching. English Language Teaching Journal, 60(4), 336-345. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl024

DOI                 : https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl024

The author      : Josep M. Cots

The source      : academic.oup.com/eltj

            The title of the article is Teaching ‘with an attitude’: Critical Discourse Analysis in EFL teaching. The article was written by Josep M. Cots and was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. This article was taken from English Language Teaching Journal.  It further introduces the main principles and notions of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Also, this article aims at demonstrating in a very practical way how CDA can be implemented in foreign language teaching. In addition, this article is going to show that the choices teachers or materials developers make in selecting texts to represent use can be analyzed.

There are two activities presented by the author that can be implemented in foreign language teaching, namely An unusual community and Easy Reading. From the first text, children can develop their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and intonation. The activity encourages students to answer a series of pre-reading questions, to read the text in order to get some detail information, and to complete charts. The point is CDA views that the text gives incomplete representation of language use.

Furthermore, Josep points out the ‘critical’ goals in language education and ‘critical’ attitude to analyzing language use. Critical Discourse Analysis views discourse as social and cultural phenomenon. It considers the relationship between discourse and context as dialectical.  The researcher splits the arguments about the definition of discourse into two; critical view and non-critical view.

Moreover, the researcher then provides a complementary activity for the previous activity, An unusual community. This activity is called An unusual community 2. The organization of text is presented in three stages; social practice, discursive practice, and textual practice.

After providing the complementary task, he delivers a sample task: easy reading. The format of the tasks: pre-task, task cycle, and language focus. The pre task aims at getting students to think about the language according to addressee. In other words, we should use the language based on the situation. The language use is according to the situation, the roles of the speakers, and their relationship. The task cycle; the task includes writing a report on the difference between the original one and the simplified one. It aims at making sure whether they notice them or not. Language task: Students and the teacher discuss on the importance of the presence of several elements in a message to identify the relationship between the speaker and how one speaker use specific keys to construct the another speaker.

To sum up, the article is to present CDA as the complementary model for analyzing language use. Other than that, it is used to design appropriate and applicable learning activities. The researcher also adds provides a bouquet of questions that will be fruitful for teachers regarding to the ‘critical’ attitude.

This article fulfills the necessity of urgency in conducting the research. The author previously says that not many research, especially which focus on this type view of language and education, focus on the foreign language program. It indicates the urgency of this article is considered higher. The additional list of questions in the conclusion will be significantly fruitful for teachers to implement them. The author also employs various sources as the references such as dictionary, book, journal, etc.

Nevertheless, some of the references were written before the year of 2000. It will be having higher relevance if the researcher ensures that the references taken are up to date to the recent situation. The elaboration about the critical goal in foreign language is not explicitly mentioned. This will be confusing for the readers to infer by themselves.

As I see it, the article is considered accessible but comprehensive with its clear elaboration, completeness of the elements of research such as the introduction-conclusion, and the applicable suggestion from the researcher. The provided strategies are really helpful. Also, the references are met the need. This article is almost perfect with the conclusion covering the main points.

Reviewer: Indah Mutiara

17202241045

PBI UNY 2017