Designing a Metaphor-Oriented Holocaust Fiction Lesson in a Critical Reading Course for Thai English Majors

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Pakthima Supanchaikul

Abstract

Conceptual metaphors shape how people use language and make sense of human experience. Holocaust fiction, in particular, offers a metaphor-rich context for cultivating empathy and critical thinking, which are widely regarded as essential 21st-century skills for global citizenship. Drawing on a lesson originally designed for secondary-school learners, this article proposes a metaphor-oriented Holocaust-fiction lesson for a university critical reading course and situates it within a 15-week syllabus for Thai English-major undergraduates. The planned lesson includes careful text selection, trauma-sensitive scaffolding, and activities that guide students from metaphor noticing and mapping to reflective discussion and short analytical writing. To make the design usable for other practitioners, the article also explains how the lesson connects with earlier and later course units, especially work on fact versus opinion, tone and stance, and inference. Rather than reporting empirical classroom data, it offers a practitioner-researcher’s forward-looking reflection on anticipated pedagogical affordances such as increased metaphor awareness, deeper critical reading, and enhanced ethical engagement with historical atrocity, as well as likely challenges related to linguistic difficulty, historical distance, emotional sensitivity, and institutional constraints. The article concludes with suggestions for implementing and systematically investigating Holocaust-fiction-based critical reading lessons in Thai ELT higher education.


Therefore, critical reading and ethical literacy contribute to learners' social awareness, empathy, and global citizenship, which are important dimensions of social well-being and quality of life.

Article Details

Section
Academic Article

References

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