Critical literacy and text selection in English for academic purposes courses

In this paper I plan to explore the relationship between critical approaches to literacy and the selection of EAP reading texts, taking Australia’s colonial and post-colonial society as an example of a theme around which discussion of text selection will revolve. Drawing, for example, on the writings of Benesch (1993, 1996) and Pennycook (1989, 1994, 1997), I suggest that by reconceptualising the selection of EAP texts within a critical pedagogical framework, we may be able to avoid perpetuating institutionalised forms of historical and cultural exclusion. I would argue for an approach to literacy that reframes the text ... as a social strategy historically located in a network of power relations in particular institutional sites and cultural fields (Luke 1996: 333) The background to this paper lies in my experiences as a teacher of themebased1 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in tertiary institutions in Australia over the past 13 years. Specifically, I am interested in identifying appropriate criteria to use as guidelines for text selection in EAP courses. This aim, together with my own interest in Australia’s colonial history and current questions concerning relations between Australia’s indigenous and non-indigenous (predominantly Anglo-Celtic) peoples, has motivated