Critical Approaches to TESOL

This article was definitely dense, as Dr. Seloni said!  I found myself reading sentences over and over again to understand what was stated.  Even so, I really liked how this focused on such abstract ideas.  I liked the critical view of social and political relations, particularly class, power, and inequality.  Language is so closely tied into one's culture, and then several subcategories under that, that it would only make sense in effective teaching of ESL to take into consideration these elements (social and political, etc.).  Gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic background are also major elements to include in the critical view of TESOL approaches.  Paulo Freire takes these factors deeper and breaks it down into the oppressed and the oppressors.  In terms of pedagogy, Freire has a concept of conscientization, described as "A first step in critical work may therefore be to develop an awareness of the issues; nothing will change unless people know things need to ('if it ain't broken, don't fix it').  I think that especially in a TESOL environment, these factors need to be made aware of personally (our own possible biases) and among students.  We must be careful in that this awareness fosters respect in the classroom, however.