CRITICAL THINKING AND MEDIA LITERACY

MEDIA LITERACY TO PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING

This qualitative descriptive study aims to characterize ninth grade students' comprehension of media messages, such as television commercials. As such students were involved in media literacy activities during their English as a foreign language classes. It also describes how the students related the advertising messages to their own social and cultural context. In the pedagogical proposal, media education strategies such as questioning and group discussions were used in order to promote critical thinking skills in a public school in the Kennedy district of Bogota, Colombia. The results of this research project showed that building the attitude of the critical thinker and helping students move from passive reception of media messages to active analysis of information requires systematic guidance from the teacher. Consequently, media literacy served not only to build students' critical capacity but also to develop their argumentative capacity. This research project demonstrated that media literacy requires training in higher order thinking skills; just as critical thinking needs the implementation of a series of activities that test their mental capacities.