The present study investigates the effectiveness of teaching critical thinking skills through literary texts in the EFL classroom, based on the combination of reader-centered critical reading and critical literacy pedagogy. Our proposal seeks to address both language teaching and literacy education from a transnational perspective by dealing with critical thinking skills as a set of processes whose main aspects include the interpretation of the world, self-reflection, intercultural awareness, critical awareness, problem-solving, and language use. For the purpose of this study, a series of activities based on Caryl Phillips’s novel The Lost Child (2015) have been designed, following the four curricular components of Multiliteracies pedagogy (Kalantzis & Cope, 2000). Conducted in an EFL classroom in Spain, the study aims to validate the model of teaching critical skills built on working with current social issues, such as immigration, discrimination, and bullying. To evaluate the effectiveness of the model, teacher assessment and self-assessment questionnaires have been completed by the teacher and the students, respectively. A close analysis of the results reveals that both students and their teacher perceive the model as highly effective, in particular, in terms of self-reflection. Additionally, intrinsically motivating activities and frequent opportunities to discuss literary texts and relate them to current issues have proved to be highly beneficial for the students, providing them with a broader perspective that helps them interpret real-world problems properly. The assessment grid has proved effective, although for a wider application of the grid, the descriptors might have to be adapted to the students’ age.

Being born in the same monstruous night that witnessed the rise of Frankenstein monster, the vampire Lord Ruthven celebrates in 2019 two hundred years influencing vampire culture. As it happens in literature, John William Polidori’s creature spread his curse through the centuries creating attractive, aristocrat, sexually ambiguous and immoral male and female vampires. From Victorian penny dreadfuls, novellas and novels such as Varney, the Vampire, Carmilla and Dracula, to present novel as Interview with the Vampire, the short story “The Vampyre” established the character who walk among human beings as a predator who chooses his prey. Ruthven was directly shaped on Lord Byron personality and, similar to the famous English poet, was an elegant figure of high culture and refined manners who hid a wild, libertine, profoundly narcissist nature and irascible behaviour, traits that paradoxically became Byron and his literary counterpart, delightfully fascinating beings. Reflecting the Romantic esthetic of its time, Polidori’s short story instituted the vampire as a rebel beyond bourgeois social norms. Lord Ruthven was an undead and, threfore, was not bound to the concepts that rule the living ones. In this way, the vampire appeal to humanity hidden desires related to the anguish of death, to the perspective of the transcendence and to the fear of the consequences of this act abandoning human nature. These elements help understanding the cultural impact John William Polidori’s creation keep on exercising two hundred years after 1819 through “The Vampyre”.

O romance Frankenstein ou o Prometeu Moderno, escrito por Mary W. Shelley e publicado originalmente em 1818, tornou-se numa das obras basilares do imaginário gótico-fantástico, graças a inúmeras versões deste relato, quer no continente europeu, quer no continente americano, tanto na literatura, como no cinema e no teatro. O presente artigo tem como objetivo refletir sobre o modo como, em três dos seus contos, “Noites brancas” (1920), “No embalo da rede”(1923) e “O Espelho”(1938), o autor de vanguarda Gastão Cruls apresenta uma nova leitura do Gótico e se apresenta como precursor brasileiro do Neofantástico. Partindo da premissa de que o texto literário crulsiano ainda está a ser descoberto no meio académico europeu, este trabalho analisa os mecanismos literários com os quais Gastão Cruls desencadeia reações de medo, pasmo, suspense, insólito ou logro no leitor.

La importancia de la riqueza de la diversidad lingüística y cultural presente en la Unión Europea es indudable; de ahí la insistencia en que el conocimiento de idiomas es un elemento indispensable en el desarrollo personal y profesional de todos los ciudadanos. Consecuentemente, a día de hoy, el bilingüismo es una oferta educativa indispensable y obligada en todos los países que conforman el espacio europeo. De ahí que la Consejería de Educación de Castilla-La Mancha, al igual que el resto de regiones de España, apueste por este tipo de educación no sólo para capacitar lingüísticamente a sus alumnos sino también para transmitir contenidos. El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar los programas bilingües existentes en la región de Castilla-La Mancha y ver cuál es su incidencia en cada una de sus provincias. Para ello, se realizará un análisis casuístico comparativo por programas bilingües, combinaciones idiomáticas y cantidad de programas en activo. Los resultados evidenciarán posibles causas ante la desigual representación y presencia de los programas bilingües en Castilla-La Mancha y se expondrán cuáles son las apuestas pendientes que debe afrontar la administración regional.