Black Lives Matter in an EFL speaking class

Abstract

Critical pedagogy in ELT mainly aims to encourage learners to address current sociopolitical issues and speak up for change. Thus, encountering a real-world issue might aid in deconstructing a given order of discourse found in the textbooks and gaining a more realistic perspective. This reflective study was conducted at a Turkish university and is based on a participatory approach in which the teacher-researcher and sixteen learners collaborated to develop a mini-syllabus to discuss the American racial movement Black Lives Matter (BLM). Five themes (historical background, activism, current events, media, and online platform) regarding BLM were identified to encourage meaningful action as well as develop oral skills. The outcomes show that the learners voiced their ideas freely in a democratic setting and worked to extract specific lexical phrases. This study brings the topic of BLM into Turkish EFL learners’ setting and invites EFL learners to create meaningful action.