Classic problem-solving, that is, questioning, and teaching how to question, is still at the core of teaching writing. The teaching of problem-solving has not disappeared from the writing classroom but has itself been transformed to now incorporate Freire’s “problematizing.” True applications of critical pedagogy in the writing classroom use problematizing to surface new, perhaps hitherto disallowed areas for questioning, among them social and economic injustice or ethnic and educational inequality. Perhaps more importantly, one of the prime goals of today’s writing teaching should be to arm the students themselves with this critical pedagogical attitude, so that they can transform society with their own thinking and writing.

I look at recent literature and a case study about critical pedagogy, and compare it to my own experience in the ESL writing classroom. Finally I bring us full-circle by putting forth that writing teaching continues to be done by asking questions, but in today’s writing classroom, we realize that the nature of the questions is always changing in context.