Generation 1.5 in Hawaii: Gaining critical tools for reading the world

Abstract

This paper introduces key aspects of a curriculum that I developed for Generation 1.5 in high-intermediate-advanced community college ESL classes in Hawai‘i. It draws on applied critical linguistic approaches, which are informed by various theories including structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies, and Marxist theory among others. It does not attempt to give a snapshot of my pedagogy-in-action, replete with all of its complexities, its need for constant reciprocity between theories utilized and actual classroom practices (praxis), and its need for continual negotiation between teacher and learners: I justify the approaches outlined here because they were successful on a number of levels for these students (Ford, 2003)4. Rather, I attempt in this paper to provide particular slices of the curriculum in which I explore in-depth what a critical approach to language development can look like.