ELT Author and Editor
EAP/Advanced Levels Specialist
Academic Editor/Proofreader

Look at the following. What do they have in common?

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• In Spain, an artist converted a disused church into a colourful skateboard park, with ramps where aisles and pews used to be.

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• In the United States, an experiment showed that people who reacted with disgust to unpleasant things, like chocolate cake in the shape of dog poo, were more likely to be opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion.

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• In Denmark, the anarchist community of Christiania was established in the 1970s by people who didn’t believe in authority and who used a lot of drugs. Over fifty years later, it’s still there.

 

ELT materials writers will immediately recognize these as examples of what we call PARSNIPs: things we don’t normally include in published materials. The acronym stands for politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, -isms, and pork. These three examples alone give us politics, religion, sex, narcotics, and -isms.

 

They have something else in common: They all appear in the new edition of Critical Reading.

 

These topics are not just there for shock value. Each of the 12 units in the book is related to an academic theme. The Spanish skateboard park is an example of adaptive reuse (architecture); the dog poo experiment is related to perceptions (psychology); and Christiania is a classic example of a different type of economy (economics). Other characters students will meet in Critical Reading include people who fear the loss of their jobs to AI; climate change deniers; people wrongly imprisoned for murder; and a woman who was swindled out of half a million dollars by a guy she met on a dating website. Not pleasant, but very real. 

 

Why include these things in a book? Isn’t our job simply to produce educational material that works? Why not stick to simple, inoffensive topics that won’t upset anyone? Food, festivals, hobbies, movies … that kind of thing? In some cases, this makes sense. These subjects I've outlined above are not suitable in books intended for young learners, and arguments can be made that they may be inappropriate in some cultures. The last thing we want to do as materials writers is make our readers feel uncomfortable or embarrassed.

 

On the other hand, Critical Reading is intended for a specific market: advanced-level EAP students who are planning to study in an English-speaking country, or in an EMI program in their home countries. Users of the book are likely to be young adults, educated, thoughtful, and with a thirst for knowledge about the world. They may be one or two semesters away from a university degree where they will be required to show analytical thought.

 

These students need more than happy images of smiling people enjoying a cultural festival. I believe they need—and I hope want—to read about the reality of the world, to cast an analytical eye on contemporary issues. They may wonder what their chosen career will look like ten years from now—or if it will even exist. They may question whether they can trust health information they read online. They may know someone who has lost money to a scammer. They may wonder what to say to a relative who announces at the dinner table that climate change is a hoax. They may be female academics who find themselves struggling to be heard in a male-dominated world. Critical Reading does not shy away from issues like these.

 

But the book is not intended to be gloomy. While not much was off-limits, I did make a last-minute decision to pull one of the readings because I thought it was just too heavy. Readings look at what citizen science can teach us, how scientists are addressing the extinction of species, and how decaying buildings around the world are being turned into art galleries and concert halls. And there is beauty in the book! What, the book asks, makes the Mona Lisa a great work of art?

 

Critical Reading may not be a warm, fuzzy book full of smiling people enjoying sanitized lives—but it is the most real book I have ever written. It is also the book that almost makes me want to find my way back into a classroom; I would love to teach this book. The scope for supplementary materials in the form of videos or local stories is endless.

 

Critical Reading will prompt reactions, and it may raise a few eyebrows—but isn’t that what critical thinking is all about?

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For More Information

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Visit the TC Media page here

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