Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

This paper tries to investigate the issue of teaching English as a foreign language in the Moroccan context. The writer of this paper claims that the way foreign languages, in general, and English, in particular, are taught in Moroccan highschools and universities is devoid of any awareness of the social and political loads of the language being taught. For instance, the way English is taught in the Moroccan context does not encourage students to see the social and ideological dimensions of the use of the English language. More specifically, when reading a text, be it a newspaper article, a short story, a poem or a political speech, most students read it passively; they do not question the socio-cultural context and the ideology of the text they read. Students do not analyze the strategies that are used in that text and through which it constructs its premises and conclusions. For this reason, this paper will draw on some quite interesting ideas in Critical Literacy and Critical Discourse Analysis to come up with some useful teaching strategies that could encourage students minimize their passive reading habits and could hone their critical thinking and critical reading skills.