Phương pháp giáo dục phản biện cho lớp học tiếng Anh ở các trường đại học Việt Nam

79Tạp chí Khoa học - Trường Đại học Quy Nhơn, 2020, 14(2), 79-86
Phương pháp giáo dục phản biện cho lớp học tiếng Anh 
ở các trường đại học Việt Nam
Đoàn Nguyễn Thị Lệ Hằng*, Đoàn Thị Thanh Hiếu
Khoa Ngoại ngữ, trường Đại học Quy Nhơn, Việt Nam
Ngày nhận bài: 03/03/2020; Ngày nhận đăng: 07/04/2020
TÓM TẮT
Với mục đích phát triển tư duy phản biện cho người học, gần đây phương pháp giáo dục phản biện đã phát 
triển mạnh trong lĩnh vực giáo dục ngoại ngữ toàn cầu. Tuy nhiên, ở Việt Nam, phương pháp này vẫn còn chưa 
được nhiều người biết đến và vẫn còn rất nhiều hoài nghi xung quanh tính khả thi của phương pháp này. Bài báo 
này sẽ tập trung khái quát những khái niệm và mục tiêu chủ yếu của phương pháp giáo dục phản biện, từ đó đưa ra 
lí do cho việc áp dụng tư duy phản biện vào việc dạy và học tiếng Anh ở các trường đại học Việt Nam.
Từ khóa: Dạy tiếng Anh, phương pháp giáo dục phản biện, tư duy phản biện.
*Tác giả liên hệ chính. 
Email: doannguyenthilehang@qnu.edu.vn
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80 Journal of Science - Quy Nhon University, 2020, 14(2), 79-86
Critical pedagogy for university English language classrooms
in Vietnam
Doan Nguyen Thi Le Hang*, Doan Thi Thanh Hieu
Foreign Language Department, Quy Nhon University, Vietnam
Received: 03/03/2020; Accepted: 07/04/2020 
ABSTRACT
Originally derived from critical thinking, critical pedagogy has rapidly emerged as a promising approach in 
language education worldwide. However, this method appears relatively novel and highly questionable in English 
language education in non-Western contexts like Vietnam. This paper, therefore, presents an overview of critical 
pedagogy as a language teaching approach and some arguments for the implementation of this approach to improve 
teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, especially in tertiary classrooms.
Keywords: critical thinking, critical pedagogy, English as a foreign language, English language education
*Corresponding author. 
Email: doannguyenthilehang@qnu.edu.vn
1. INTRODUCTION
English as a foreign language (EFL) has been 
significantly increasing in importance in Vietnam 
for the past few decades. Teaching English 
has come into the center focus in the national 
educational policy since this country sped up its 
integration into the world market in 2007. As an 
international language, English is considered as 
a bridge to the world outside. English is taught at 
all educational levels, and a certificate in English 
proficiency is required for all graduates.
Nevertheless, English teaching and 
learning in Vietnam, especially at the tertiary 
level is not qualified as expected.1 After 
over ten years of learning English at school, 
the majority of graduates are still unable to 
communicate effectively in English.2 This 
failure can be attributed to different factors such 
as the serious shortage of learning facilities, 
teacher-dominated classrooms, grammar-based 
testing and assessment, and a limited relevant 
curriculum in working for students from diverse 
socio-economic backgrounds.1 Among these, the 
curriculum in use appears to exert a profound 
impact. As a result, there is a strong need for a 
change in EFL teaching in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, researchers who are 
interested in meaningful and locally relevant 
curricula suggest critical pedagogy for an 
alternative approach in language teaching 
and learning.3 Taking learners’ voice as the 
center, critical pedagogy in EFL considers 
English language “as not simply a means of 
expression or communication but as a practice 
that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways 
language learners understand themselves, their 
social surroundings, their histories, and their 
possibilities for the future.”3
With this critical viewpoint in mind, this 
paper will argue that critical pedagogy could 
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serve as a solution for the current teaching 
situation in Vietnam. The paper will first present 
a brief description of critical pedagogy as a 
teaching approach in general and then in English 
language teaching in specific. The next two 
sections provide a review of research studies 
on the practicality and effectiveness of critical 
pedagogy in Asia and how this approach is 
compatible with a Vietnamese national project 
on EFL teaching. The paper will conclude 
with some implications to implement critical 
pedagogy for more improvements in English 
language education in Vietnam.
2. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AS A TEACHING 
APPROACH
First proposed by Brazilian educator Paulo 
Freirein, critical pedagogy is based on the premise 
that the world is always full of contradictions, 
inequality and unfairly distributed power and 
privilege.4 Even educational institutions, which 
are generally expected to work on neutral ground, 
indeed have been long serving as contributors 
to transmission and reproduction of dominant 
ideologies that are out of date and thus do not 
reflect learners’ need in real life.5
Consequently, critical pedagogy attempts 
to develop students’ ability to think critically 
about their own problems so that they can act 
on it and improve their life. Accordingly, a 
meaningful curriculum should include students’ 
life situations as primary contents and take 
dialogue as the center of learning process to 
avoid the one-way transmission of knowledge.6 
Learners therefore can be empowered to act 
as agents for social changes.7 In other words, 
this approach to education aims to promote the 
learners’ life with a focus on action. 
Obviously, this approach is quite 
contradicted to the well-established teaching 
practices in many non - Western contexts, also 
called the banking model of education. This 
traditional model defines teaching merely as 
“transmission of knowledge from teachers to 
students”.6 What is taught in banking education 
is decontextualized knowledge which does not 
reflect students’ own problems and thus may not 
become as useful as expected.
In contrast, in the problem-posing model 
of critical pedagogy, teachers are interested in 
hearing learners’ voice rather than perpetuating 
the power, domination and authority in 
classrooms. The teachers involve themselves in 
critical dialogue with their students and work as 
co-investigators to identify existing problems. 
These problems will stimulate the process of 
collaboratively constructing knowledge, and 
thus the transmitted knowledge is getting not 
only more relevant but also more engaging. 
Further, dialogue, as a key to this problem-
posing approach, can foster critical thinking and 
equality among all participants including teachers 
and students. By striving to resolve the identified 
problems in dialogue, students are familiarized 
with making decisions in classrooms, which 
nurtures their decision-making skills in their own 
life outside the classroom.8 In other words, it can 
be said that critical pedagogy and its problem-
posing model target teaching at “voice, social 
transformation and agency”.9
In order to achieve these goals, teachers in 
critical pedagogy have to adopt two fundamental 
goals. The first is related to reproduction.10 
Reproduction refers to “how students are 
conditioned mentally and behaviorally by 
the practice of schooling to serve dominant 
ideologies”.10 This condition may be imposed 
unintentionally but inevitably result in 
transmission of these ideologies to students, 
leading to their incompetence in their own life. 
Consequently, the first task of a critical teacher 
is to help students recognize this reproductive 
process to challenge it.
The second related theory is resistance.10 
This theory “explains how there are sufficient 
contradictions within institution to help subjects 
resist and subvert such reproduction, gain 
agency, conduct critical thinking and initiate 
change”.10 Accordingly, teachers should take the 
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new role of “Transformative Intellectual” to use 
their knowledge and skills to challenge structural 
inequalities in their own classrooms and to raise 
students’ awareness of current problems to 
address life situations.
3. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE TEACHING
When applied into English language teaching 
(ELT), critical pedagogy has attracted a lot of 
attention because of its identifying common 
misunderstandings among English language 
teachers. As usual, that ELT is increasingly 
globalized is perceived as inevitable and 
contributive to the international communication.11 
Understandably, English language teachers 
tend to believe that the acquisition of English 
is not problematic. However, critical pedagogy 
advocates have seriously criticized this naive 
view. Peirce claims that English as a global 
language is intrinsically political and has 
become an effective tool for its native speakers 
to gain power.12 Hall accuses ELT of “helping 
to maintain unequal core-periphery relations in 
the capitalist world-economy, and suppressing 
diversity of language and thought in the world.”13
Since the increasing globalization of 
English led to the so-called “the international 
linguistic hegemony of English”,14 critical 
pedagogy can take the remedial role to purify 
and free language classrooms from the linguistic 
hegemony. Specifically, critical language 
teachers can raise students’ awareness of 
dominant ideologies constructed in textbooks 
designed by native speakers so that they can 
adopt a positive stance towards both the target 
language and their native language.
Additionally, most of the current teaching 
methods in second language education such 
as Audio lingual, Communicative language 
teaching or Task-based teaching aim only to 
help learners communicate in English. They are 
mainly concerned with what to learn (grammar 
or communicative competence) and how to learn 
(methodology).11 This can be attributed to their 
belief in “apolitical neutrality of English”,15 
and their view of language classes as isolated 
from the large historical and social conditions.15 
Accordingly, language teachers and learners 
are not encouraged to address social issues in 
classrooms. Critical pedagogy practitioners 
claim that these current teaching approaches 
fail to capture “the complexity of language 
socialization, socio-cultural perspective of 
learning and learners’ multiple identities”.11
Sharing the same view, Canagarajah 
adds that methods are not neutral or based on 
empirical research for purely practical reasons.15 
Teaching methods in use are culturally and 
ideologically constructed with political economic 
consequences. Given the mediating role of 
social, cultural and historical context on the use 
of teaching methods, Canagarajah shows strong 
support for pedagogy of post Methodism where 
no particular method is selected for all language 
classrooms.15 Rather, negotiations between 
teachers and students should be conducted on 
the most appropriate teaching approach for their 
own context and learning purpose.
As further clarified by Kumaravadivelu, 
post Methodism formulates three interacted 
parameters in language teaching namely 
particularity, practicality and possibility.16 
Specifically, particularity refers to contextualized 
pedagogy designed with a deep understanding 
of local linguistic, sociocultural and political 
features. It is teachers who are in charge of 
constructing their own teaching method theories 
and put it into practice for high practicality. 
Language learning opens up a wide range of 
possibilities when tapping learners’ social 
consciousness for identity information and 
social transformation rather than confining 
itself to linguistic knowledge achievements 
inside the classroom as traditionally practiced. 
Finally, he emphasizes that students’ linguistic 
needs are always closely linked to social needs 
and teachers’ social responsibility for identity 
formation in language classrooms.
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Evidently, critical language pedagogy is 
aimed both at language learning and at social 
change. Critical English teaching takes joint 
goals, developing both English communicative 
abilities and a critical awareness of the world.17 
Accordingly, critical English language teachers 
use the same themes as critical pedagogy 
practitioners when using learners’ issues as 
prompts and targets to learn speaking, writing, 
reading and listening in English. That is to say, 
critical language pedagogy neither ignores nor 
replaces the well-developed teaching methods. 
Instead, it adds the critical quality to the existing 
practice.
The critical quality in ELT can be best 
identified in its view about language and culture 
choice in classrooms. It has been the case that 
English-only classrooms are increasingly 
desirable since they sound more authentic 
and reflect the usefulness of first language 
immersion in second language acquisition.8 
However, critical pedagogy advocates provided 
empirical evidence for the effectiveness of 
bilingual instructions in second language 
teaching.8 They argue that abandoning learners 
to use their mother tongue is a form of linguistic 
imperialism and a sign of disempowerment in 
language classrooms.14 Further, English-only 
practice can violate the formation of learners’ 
identity, which results in their feeling inferior to 
the target culture.18 Therefore, the use of the first 
language can help maintain English language 
learners’ own cultural identity.
Cultural maintenance is another important 
view of critical pedagogy in ELT. Because 
of the inseparability of language and culture, 
language learners tend to be assimilated into 
the cultures of English native speakers such 
as Britain or America. It is obvious that the 
tendency of monoculturalism merely aims to 
serve the English natives and highly likely to 
downgrade learners’ own cultural values and 
beliefs.16 Therefore, critical pedagogy sets its 
face against this tendency and advocates the 
integration of first language culture into English 
language classrooms. Once learners’ culture 
is paid enough attention in the classroom, 
they can have opportunities to think critically 
about the negative and positive aspects of their 
own life as well as the foreign life. Students’ 
critical awareness will arise, generating social 
transformation and bringing about positive 
changes in their life.19
4. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN ACTION IN 
ASIA
Notwithstanding these innovative orientations 
of critical pedagogy, the mismatch between 
this Western approach and the sociocultural 
context in Asia may cast serious doubts on 
its implementation in Vietnam. As widely 
acknowledged, ELT in Asian countries such as 
Japan, Vietnam, China or Taiwan, etc. has long 
considered learners as passive recipients of 
knowledge, teachers as the center of all activities 
and authority in classrooms, and the banking 
model as the most effective approach. These 
mismatching features that have been documented 
to lead to the failure in implementing the 
communicative language teaching, another well-
known Western teaching approach.20 Despite 
these doubts, this approach, indeed, has been 
successfully put into practice in different Asian 
countries, especially at the tertiary level. 
Typically, in Iran the problem-posing 
approach of critical pedagogy was implemented 
in an EFL class by Sadeghi.11 His study aims 
to find out how this approach helps maintain 
discussions and develop students’ critical 
consciousness. Accordingly, his students 
were engaged in learning activities that could 
increase their awareness of social justice and 
their willingness to make more contribution to 
the society. After one semester, feedback from 
student participants show majority support for 
this approach and their strong preference for 
daily life topics raised by themselves and the 
teacher over decontextualized topics presented 
in the textbooks.
Working towards the same goal, Sekigawa 
and his colleagues studied three different groups 
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of EFL university students in Japan.21 They were 
nursing students, international students and those 
majoring in leadership. The main aims of the study 
are both to improve students’ speaking skill and 
to encourage them to express their own opinions 
for a higher critical consciousness. Findings 
reveal that at first the participant students felt 
anxious about this newly - introduced teaching 
method due to their low English proficiency, but 
later they could convey their ideas in English 
effectively on topics related to their own 
problems.
Revealing the similar positive results, 
a study in Taiwan by Yang and Gamble used 
an experimental design with two freshman 
EFL classes to examine the practicality and 
effectiveness of activities enhancing critical 
thinking.22 While the experimental group took 
part in debates or peer critiques, the control 
group was involved in familiar activities such 
as group presentations and writing process. Data 
were collected from General English Proficiency 
Tests and content-based achievement tests 
for both groups as well as group projects and 
attitudinal questionnaires for the experimental 
group. Analyzing all the data shows that the 
experimental group outperformed the control 
group in both tests and demonstrated a higher 
critical-thinking skill.
More recently, Kuo designed a critical 
thinking activity for non-English majors in 
Taiwan based on the theory of critical literacy.23 
The activity engaged students in using a picture 
book in different learning tasks and then 
evaluating it from different perspectives. In 
order to clarify the effectiveness of this activity, 
the researcher analyzed data from classroom 
observation notes, participants’ reflection papers 
and assignments as well as follow-up interviews. 
Results indicate that learners acquired critical 
competence when investigating multiple 
perspectives and re-examining their real world.
It can be seen from these studies that 
critical pedagogy has proved practicality and 
efficacy in various ELT contexts for higher 
education in Asia. Although similar research 
remains hard to locate in literature in Vietnam, 
these studies have provided support for critical 
pedagogy implementation there given its 
comparable learning culture. Another favorable 
condition can result from the correspondence 
between critical pedagogy and the goals of 
the National Foreign Language Education 
Project launched by the Vietnamese Ministry of 
Education and Training.
5. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND THE 
NATIONAL FOREIGN LANGUAGE 
PROJECT IN VIETNAM
In an attempt to improve English language 
proficiency in Vietnam, a project called National 
Foreign Language Education Project was set up 
in 2008 in order to renovate the teaching and 
learning of foreign languages within the national 
educational system. The project mainly aims to 
enable Vietnamese university students to reach a 
globally recognized level of English language.24 
Noticeably, this national project has some targets 
for the 2017 - 2025 period in accordance with 
critical pedagogy.
Specifically, the ultimate goal of this 
project is to explore new approaches to make 
ELT more relevant, efficient and p