The exploitation of case studies in developing critical reading skills

Adopting the action research design, the article reports the ratings and feedback of 80 participants on these early initiatives. The findings suggest that case studies could foster critical awareness, critical reading skills as well as the authenticity of classroom texts and tasks. However, test washback, a lack of recency and coherence across the curriculum stood out as the major obstacles to improving the efficiency of this activity.
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The exploitation of case studies in developing critical reading skillsVNU Journal of Science: Education Research, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2015) 15-26The Exploitation of Case Studiesin Developing Critical Reading SkillsVũ Hải Hà*VNU University of Languages and International Studies,Phạm Văn Đồng Road, Cầu Giấy, Hanoi, VietnamReceived 02 February 2015Revised 26 February 2015; Accepted 22 June 2015Abstract: Despite the significance of critical reading in the new information age in general and Englishlanguage teaching in particular, the demonstration of critical reading skills among the English languageteacher trainees at the University of Languages and International Studies leaves much to be desired. Asamong the first attempts to enhance these vital skills, this article hypothesizes that the use of casestudies would be beneficial for the development of critical reading skills in the Faculty of EnglishLanguage Teacher Education. Adopting the action research design, the article reports the ratings andfeedback of 80 participants on these early initiatives. The findings suggest that case studies could fostercritical awareness, critical reading skills as well as the authenticity of classroom texts and tasks.However, test washback, a lack of recency and coherence across the curriculum stood out as the majorobstacles to improving the efficiency of this activity.Keywords: Critical reading, case studies, reading skills, authenticity.1. Introduction*studies have suggested that only a lowproportion of the students at the Faculty ofEnglishLanguageTeacherEducation,University of Languages and InternationalStudies(VietnamNationalUniversity)(thereafter referred to as FELTE) coulddemonstrate critical reading at a basic level [see[2] for instance]. This conclusion is alarmingbecause many of these students are beingtrained to become English language teachersin Vietnam, whose critical thinking ismandated to be part and parcel of theirprofessional competency in the 21st century[3, 4]. Hence the failure to demonstrateappropriate critical reading skills clearlyindicates a gap to be bridged in their preservice teacher training curriculum.The increasing availability of informationtogether with the easy access to informationsources today have been both a blessing and acurse to the new generation, as put by AmericanEx-President Bill Clinton [cited in [1]] that“The thing I worry most is that people will haveall the information in the world, but they won’thave any way of evaluating whether it is true orfalse, A or B, even if it’s true, how to put it in aproper perspective”. While separating the wheatfrom the chaff in reading requires appropriatecritical reading skills, certain small-scale_______*Tel.: 84-983536788Email: havh@vnu.edu.vn1516V.H. Hà / VNU Journal of Science: Education Research, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2015) 15-26In this context, this article hypothesizes thatthe use of case studies in teaching Englishlanguage reading skills in the currentcurriculum might have positive impacts on theircritical reading skills. Beginning with a briefreview of the literature and the researchmethods, the article provides the feedback ofthe students on this type of activity beforeputting forward certain suggestions for itsimproved efficiency in the future. It isnoteworthy that although the participants in thisstudy are limited to a group of FELTE students,critical reading and case study as classroomactivities are not limited to a particulareducational context. Therefore, the employmentof case studies in developing critical readingskills could provide useful implications for notonly the teacher trainees at FELTE, but alsoother university students who often rely on theimmense and diverse sources of informationtoday for their study and research purposes.2. A brief literature review2.1. Critical readingReading is traditionally perceived as a oneway process. That is, the author communicateshis or her ideas to the readers through a text in a“banking” manner [5]. In this sense, successfulreading occurs when the message intended bythe author is deposited or duplicated in thereader’s mind. More recently, reading has beenperceived as the mediating process of social andcultural factors [6], in which readers and writersare interacting as members of communities in aspecific social context. As the author iscommunicating his ideas through the text, thetext is not neutral but more or less representsthe writer’s sets of beliefs and attitudes, whichare significantly shaped by different political,economicandsocialideologiesandcommunities. Besides, writers always have atargeted group of readers in mind, which meanssome people would become their expectedaudience, while a whole lot of others areexcluded. Instead of being participants, theybecome “overhearers” [6] with certaindisadvantagesinaccessing,reading,comprehending and reflecting on the text.However, readers are not “blank pages” or“empty vessels” for authors to fill in with theirtexts. The Schemata Theory in readingcomprehension elaborates that readers alwaysmatch up incoming data from the text withexisting mental representations of situations,events or phenomena [6]. In other words,readers can bring their previous experiences,cultures, beliefs and ideologies to their readingof a current text. This will make reading notsimply “importing” the meaning of the textslavishly into a blank document. Instead, it is toexamine, to contest and to struggle over themeaning presented and represented by the textto finally decide what to accept, to reject or toappropriate. By doing so, the readers could besaid to read a text critically.To provide a specific guideline for thiscritical reading process, Spache [1964, cited in[7]] conceives of critical reading as a sum ofskillsthataltogetherdemonstratecomprehension and analysis at a high le ...