CCU 10

This paper examined the process for developing students’ critical thinking and analytical skills in their ESL classrooms in formation of cross cultural communicative competence by presenting a method organized around the concept of critical consciousness for conducting a critical discourse analysis of ESL texts.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be a valuable addition to the ESL teacher’s skill set of critical thinking and analytical skills to develop with the Area Studies students. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is focused on the written and spoken texts study and analysis to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts.

The proposed model to develop Critical Discourse Analysis Skills is a learning system that forms the intercultural communicative competence of Area studies students, which, in its turn, provides an efficient model for professional activity in lingocultural society of a studied area, taking into account cultural values. This model allows student to go beyond his own culture and acquire the quality of intercultural mediator, without losing his own cultural identity.