Abstract:
Various attempts have been made to assist the multitude of South African
learners who experience literacy challenges, particularly critical reading
challenges, in the classroom. Although a number of critical literacy models that
focus on reading literacy have been developed to alleviate the reading
comprehension crisis in South Africa, poor reading comprehension continues to
prevail among South African learners, as shown in the Progress in International
Reading Literacy Study reports. This article argues for a focus on critical
reading comprehension in the classroom. Based on a review of the Four
Resources Model of Critical Literacy and the Interdependent Model of Critical
Literacy, the researchers propose a new model to the literacy debate, the Critical
Reading Interdependent Literacy Model (CRILM), which is designed to be used
at school level and is suitable to be used from Grade 4 and beyond. CRILM is
based on an instruction and learning framework that promotes a participatoryinteractive-
interdependent relationship between educators, learners, the text,
and the author. Through the text and author, learners will be able to initiate
critical insight and societal knowledge development from within the English First Additional Language classroom. Centred on the educator, the learners, the
text, and the author, as well as their relation to reality, this proposed new model
hypothesises the interaction and interdependence of all the participants during
the reading process for the successful development of classroom critical reading
comprehension.
