Youth Participation in Shaping the Textual Landscape

In order for students to successfully recognise their “true selves” when they are made to believe they belonged to certain “categories” based on the general society’s point of view, I think it is extremely vital to teach and equip our students with both critical reading and critical thinking skills. This is because many non -critical readers often take for granted that texts provide facts and as a result, they might happily accept whatever information presented in a text. Unlike critical readers, non- critical readers fail to recognize the point that any single text provides merely one individual’s perspective on the subject matter.

Since critical reading is not simply close and careful reading, one must actively recognize, analyze and make inferences from the evidence upon the page in order to read critically. Hence, I will set aside a lesson for the teaching of critical reading and the lesson objectives will be as follows:

• to recognize an author’s purpose by examining the basis for choices of content and language.

• to understand tone and persuasive elements which involves classifying the nature of language choices.

• to recognize bias that consists of classifying the nature of patterns of choice of content and language.

Certainly, teaching critical reading only might not be adequate due to the very fact that it works together with critical thinking in reality. Thus, the latter must also be incorporated into the lesson. While critical reading refers to a careful, active, reflective, analytic reading, critical thinking includes reflecting on the validity of what has been read in light of one's background knowledge and understanding of the world.

For instance, consider the following sentence:

Many parents are buying expensive cars for their children to destroy them.

In the above statement, critical reading is concerned with figuring out whether, within the context of the text as a whole, "them" refers to the parents, the cars, or the children and whether the text supports that practice. Critical thinking would come into play when deciding whether the chosen meaning was indeed true and whether the reader should support that practice.

With these definitions, critical thinking would seem to come after critical reading. In other words, we can truly evaluate the assertions of a text(critical thinking)only when it is fully understood (critical reading).