The purpose of this paper was to provide a theoretical outline of why critical media literacy (CML) should be included in Korean English education teaching practices and teacher training curricula. CML is a pedagogy designed to sensitize students to ideological meanings embedded in media that socialize people into specific values, beliefs, and behaviors. This paper begins with a review of theoretical foundations of CML including the symbolic nature of human consciousness signification and the processes of socialization, which are theoretically encapsulated within the dialectic among post-structural theories of discourse and representation. A review of literature on CML and its application to English as a foreign language (EFL) is then presented. Applications of CML include situated inquiry, discussion, creation of group multimodal projects suggests, how it fosters the development of critical thinking skills, the acquisition and use of new vocabulary idioms, and transforming student perceptions of themselves and their society.

The paper presents selected aspects of critical language pedagogy that are relevant to recent developments in Korean English Education. The paper articulates the personal viewpoint of a scholar outside Korea. Particular emphasis is placed on historical background, the nature of critique, and the role of the intellectual in society. The English Divide in Korea is presented as an issue that calls for a critical perspective on English education. This is briefly analyzed from an economics of education point of view, itself an example of critical pedagogy that does not only focus on classrooms and curriculum theory. Key aspects of critical language pedagogy are sketched, with reference to precursors from Korean history and cultural forms. These precursors are also brought to bear on the role that intellectuals could play in advancing a critical perspective on English education, in Korean society, which is suggested to be a moral imperative, distinct from instrumental understandings of education.

This paper explores students’ and teacher’s experiences with project-oriented learning, as a form of critical pedagogy for Korean English language teaching. The teacher in this study developed and implemented a model of project-based instruction into a Korean tertiary context. The data set consisted of learner journals, teacher journals, and interviews. Six findings were ascertained: (1) The project approach created resistance from both the students and the teacher; (2) Communication between the teacher and the students eased the students’ frustrations; (3) The goal-oriented nature of project work encouraged students to construct linguistic and topic-related knowledge; (4) Group work promoted independent and collaborative learning; (5) The teacher’s role as a facilitator continued to confuse the teacher; and (6) Plagiarism seemed to limit student learning. Based on the findings, two pedagogical implications were drawn: Studentcentered approaches in large low-level classes would require some degree of teachercenteredness in order to respond to language demands; and learner and teacher journals can serve as an indicator of a need for teacher-centered methods.

Despite many innovative changes such as CLT and task-based teaching, ELT still continues to transmit linguistic skills mostly to prepare learners for future job market (Canagarajah, 1999; Kim, 2002; Norton & Toohey, 2004; Pennycook, 2001; Sung, 2006). Accordingly, in a way to challenge the status quo of decontextualized practices in EFL in Korea, this paper exemplifies the researcher's emic experiences of realigning ELT to critical theory(CT) and pedagogy(CP) for an MA English program over the years. More specifically, after presenting existing literature on the history of ELT in Korea and CT and CP, this study utilized a research method of bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005) in which the teacher and student interviews, the student survey, and other relevant curricular and instructional materials were cross-compared and analyzed in the manner of triangulation. In doing so, this paper explains a few principles of developing an EFL graduate program for both domestic and international students. The results showed that exposing students to English-only environments and external faculty from abroad played key roles in the program. However, the lack of coherent administrative support and the high faculty turn-over rate posed constant threats to the enhancement of the program. Lastly, the paper calls for the urgent need of glocalizing curricular and instructional elements in TEFL for ‘critically conscious and conscientious’ practices by mobilizing the concept of 'criticality' in EFL contexts.

본 논의는 필자가 경험한 다양한 생활 속에서, 즉, 일상, 영화, 학술적 문헌, 연구경험 등에서의 경험들을 기초자료로 하여, 다문화라는 특정 주제아래 성찰 중 형성된 이야기로 구성되어 있다. 이러한 이야기들을 중심으로 한국에서 급격히 진행되고 있는 다문화 현상을 이해하고자 하였다. 이를 통해 현 시류에서 논의되어야 하는 이론적 배경으로서 탈근대주의를 제안하고 있으며, 교육적 실행으로서 비판교육학의 필요성을 주장, 강조하고 있다. 본 논의가 가지고 있는 다양한 의미는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 일상적 텍스트(text)와 학문적 텍스트를 동시에 사용하여 현 시류에서 다문화에 대한 관점의 학문과 실제의 괴리를 보여주고자 하는데 의미가 있다. 이는 다문화 교육을 위해서는 선행되어야할 과제로서 현장 중심 기초연구의 필요성을 제시하고 있다. 둘째, 다양한 이론과 방법론적 ‘짜집기’를 통해 연구의 새로운 형식을 제고하고자 하였다. 즉, 영화 텍스트의 사용, 이야기방법론, 자기생애사이야기, 탈근대주의 등을 통해 기술한 탈형식적인 논의 방식은 기존의 문학과 같은 학문과 연계성을 가지고 있는 간학문간 글쓰기 양식으로서 정하여진 틀에 고정되어 있는 현 거대담론식의 논의 형식에서 탈피한 새로운 구성의 가능성을 제시하고 있다.