Critical literacy in the english language classroom

This paper reports the experience of developing teaching materials for public school teachers and students in southern Brazil in a project funded by the Education Department of Paraná State. The materials were intended as resources to be used by teachers according to their needs and those of their local communities, rather than as a textbook per se. The theory underlying this project is based on critical literacy and the idea that language is discourse, i.e. embedded in cultural and ideological values which determine its meaning and establish power relations among texts, among readers and among texts and their readers - Freirean "readers of the wor(l)d". Student-readers are, in this sense, co-constructors of meanings and responsible for making sense of reality. We expect students and teachers who use the materials we designed to become more aware of their possibilities as agents and this way we intend to foster a sense of active citizenship.