Teaching popular culture in a second language university context

This article examines an established course on Popular Culture which is framed within the general educational model in an English-medium university. The article is organized into three parts: the underlining educational rationale for general educational courses, the course description and the students' perspectives of their learning experience. This course aims primarily to develop students' abilities to analyse critical issues and approaches in the study of popular culture. Both locally and globally situated popular cultural references are used in this course to motivate students to think and learn beyond their immediate popular cultural practices. We problematize issues that have arisen in the course such as pedagogy, language, culture and agency and discuss the implications these have for developing and teaching such courses in a multicultural higher-education environment, enabling more critical analysis by students as second language learners.