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This article explores a teaching approach that aims to engage learners more fully in the deep learning process that is characterised by the development of critical thinking skills. The concept of critical thinking skills is reconsidered in the context of the need to shift focus away from teaching teachers about learning to teaching students about learning. A cross-disciplinary approach is used, with the educational theory of interactional learning being placed alongside the literary theory of reception study. The result of placing these hitherto unconnected theories side by side is to open up a debate concerning the rhetoric we use when discussing the value of learning, by introducing a new discourse concerning "dialogue strategies". This case study of the potentials in using dialogue strategies during a lecture illustrates how students' conceptual sophistication in cognitive thinking is achieved by asking them to scrutinise their own involvement in the learning experience.