English Learners’ Literary Competence Development through Critical Thinking Tasks in a Colombian EFL Classroom

Literary competence is still a poor research subject in many EFL (English as a Foreign Language) settings. Therefore, this qualitative case study analyzed how a group of Colombian English learners developed literary competence in the foreign language for the first time in their lives with the support of Numrich’s (2001) Sequence of Critical Thinking Tasks. Data related to English learners’ literary competence development were collected through learners’ transcripts of their oral responses to literature, artifacts (written papers/worksheets), and the teacher-researcher’s field notes. Data were analyzed through grounded approach and content analysis. Although reading and discussing authentic versions of literary texts in the foreign language was challenging for these Colombian English learners, findings revealed that they were able to foster literary competence when they did critical thinking tasks, namely Identifying assumptions about literary content based on the titles of texts, interpreting implicit meanings to discover conflicts and themes, inferring meaning conveyed in images and symbols, and evaluating literary content through inquiring further and analyzing literary language. The research novelty is that EFL Colombian education, as well as other EFL settings worldwide, can foster English learners’ communicative competence and literary competence gradually and more purposely through the Sequence of Critical Thinking Tasks model, encouraging the construction of meaning and at a critical stand through original versions of literary texts.