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Literature’s role in the foreign language classroom has been extensively researched, and the benefits of enjoyable reading firmly established. But could teachers benefit from a new perspective in the form of Critical Literacy Pedagogy when choosing and teaching literary works? Critical Literacy Pedagogy, CLP, is a method of critically examining literature to detect possible power structures e.g. concerning ethnicity and gender. This study examines how teachers and students value a number of criteria and aspects in connection to what literature is used in the class. Two empirical web-based questionnaire surveys were conducted on a total of 23 teachers and 42 students in upper secondary school in Sweden. The results are primarily presented quantitatively with the complement of excerpts from the written answers to the open-ended questions, and has then analyzed with the help of CLP, to see if the method has a possible role in EFL-teaching in upper secondary school in Sweden.   In the present study, the participating teachers valued practical characteristics, such as level of difficulty, higher than conceptual characteristics, such as the sexual orientation of an author or character, when choosing what literary works to teach. These ratings were seen as problematic when compared to the teachers’ concrete exemplifications of taught works. Moreover, both teachers and students rated the possibility of critical and ethical discussion very highly in regard to the chosen works. A comparison between the ratings and the exemplified works indicate that CLP could be a valuable method when choosing what literature to teach.

In 2016, “post-truth” was chosen as the word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries. This is a concept that has come to be associated with a type of political discourse in which objective facts are less important than factual inaccuracies which appeal to emotion to influence people’s attitudes. Due to this recent increase in post-truth politics, critical thinking becomes an important skill to master. Yet, studies have suggested that students often lack the necessary skills for critical thinking. One way of approaching this problem is through the reading of literature. This essay specifically argues that George Orwell’s 1984 provides teachers with an excellent opportunity to develop critical thinking skills among upper secondary English as a foreign language (EFL) students, with the novel as an excellent platform to also promote student reflection on current post-truth politics. In order to work with 1984 to foster critical thinking, this essay utilizes a literature-based, pedagogical model developed by Bobkina and Stefanova that draws inspiration from elements of reader-response theory and critical literacy pedagogy (CLP). To show how 1984 can be used to discuss current post-truth politics, a thematic analysis was performed where central themes and concepts from the novel, such as doublethink, Newspeak and telescreens, were compared to current trends in post-truth politics. The analysis itself was structured around the following themes: the distortion of truth for political gains, the use of language as an instrument of political power and the use of technology to spread misinformation. Following the analysis, a lesson project based on Bobkina and Stefanova’s four-stage model was constructed, focusing on different pre-, while- and post-reading activities aimed at making the students develop their critical thinking skills as well as their awareness of the three themes mentioned above. While this approach is deemed suitable for working with 1984 to discuss post-truth politics, a suggestion for further research would be to use Bobkina and Stefanova’s model together with more contemporary dystopian novels in order to discuss other topics that are more relatable to young adults, e.g. identity issues and social stratification.

This essay applies a critical lens to Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf. The aim of this essay is to investigate if and how Mrs. Dalloway can be utilized for students to practice critical consciousness in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf criticizes her own contemporary society by deliberately writing about the obnoxious social class system in London during the inter-war period. This deliberate social critique is analyzed by both looking into the author’s background and the historical time period the novel was written. The Marxist literary critic, Terry Eagleton argues that in order to fully understand literature, you must compare both the author and the author’s contemporary society to the novel itself. By analyzing these aspects, it is possible to understand any piece of literature from any given historical time period. Moreover, this essay desires to ascertain if canonical literature is relevant when teaching students about social class and inclusiveness. Furthermore, this essay argues that having a Marxist perspective can help students become critically conscious of both their environment and society. Also, it examines if the combination of Marxist theory together with critical pedagogy can create an educational situation that is equally fair for all students, regarding their socioeconomic status. The results of this essay concluded that applying either Marxist theory or critical literacy pedagogy to literature, could make students become more critically conscious about their environment, which could help to replicate the teaching philosophies of critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire.