Student-centered Classroom Activities for Teaching Literary Text Interpretation and Fostering Critical Thinking Skills in the Context of Bangladesh - Naqibun Nabi & Firoz Ahmed

Student-centered Classroom Activities for Teaching Literary Text Interpretation and Fostering Critical Thinking Skills in the Context of Bangladesh Naqibun Nabi Assistant Professor, Department of English Comilla University Email: nnabi2021@fau.edu & Firoz Ahmed Assistant Professor, Department of English Comilla University Email: firozahmed093@gmail.com Abstract Considering the traditional teacher-centered approach practiced in Bangladeshi undergraduate literature classrooms, the intention of the authors is to offer alternative student-centered approaches explaining how the classroom activities designed for teaching text interpretation can also complement Critical Thinking (CT) skill development. The significance of this approach is twofold, relieving teachers from designing separate CT tasks while securing both outcomes of learning how to interpret a text and developing CT skills through students’ active participation in a classroom. Though teaching text interpretation and developing CT skills are considered two different pedagogic avenues assuming requirements of different teaching strategies, however, the authors’ attempt is unique here as they intend to propose how these two avenues are potentially complementary to each other. Hence, this paper utilizes two theoretical models, Sandra N. Harper’s (1988) Three-phase sequence approach to teaching how to interpret a literary text and Numrich’s (2006) sequence of tasks to develop CT skills. The paper is a non-survey study based on existing literature on classic classroom activities. Keywords: teaching literature; CT skills; active learning; interpreting text; classroom activity