ABSTRACT
Critical Foreign Language Education, akin to critical literacy education, is influenced by Critical Theory, the progressive movement started in Araujo Freire's Critical Pedagogy. Two critical conceptual movements around World English and English as a Lingua Franca merged into a broad agreement, in the research community, that there will be World Englishes and the lingua francas cannot be reified into one normative and exclusive variety. From a Language Education Policy viewpoint, a critical pedagogy is a form of awakening to the political role of language in the oppression of minority societies and populations. Freedom to learn is possible in situations under local control. However, governments dictate subject-matters, pacing and disciplinary programming, the forms of delivery and examinations targeting observable performance. In exploring the relations between dominant and minority groups, action must be context-sensitive and pragmatic in order to meet the present and remote needs of the speech communities concerned.
