Applying Freire’s Critical Pedagogy to Iranian EFL Bilingual and Monolingual Speaking Performance

Abstract

The purpose of the present pre-experimental study is to examine the extent to how Critical Pedagogy (CP) may function in EFL teaching in Iran. Compared with the growing but far from conclusive body of research, virtually few studies have been covered comparatively among monolinguals and bilinguals. Also, no studies have examined Freire’s CP among monolinguals and bilinguals especially in Iran, which considered as two privileged and less privileged groups respectively. Therefore, this study was done among sixty Iranian monolingual and bilingual university sophomores to know if CP affects them differently. The study is done under two available classes in bilingual and two other classes in monolingual context. The first groups received problem-posing and the second groups were exposed to banking model. The scoring procedure of participants’ performance was based on IELTS speaking band descriptors. Findings reveal that applying problem-posing model cause improvement in speaking performance of both monolingual and bilingual learners than banking model. More importantly, it is concluded that there is no significant difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in terms of problem-posing model, perhaps because the standards of educational justice have been partially observed among both communities. Finally, implications were drawn for EFL teachers and syllabus designers.