This study explores how Thai university teachers integrate extensive reading (ER) into foundation English courses for non-English majors. 63 participants completed an online questionnaire and eight respondents joined semi-structured Zoom interviews. Questionnaire respondents were categorized into Groups A (less experienced with ER) and B (more…

Given the political and social fragmentation and incivility that currently exists in America, this paper examines existing scholarship on diversifying the American literary canon in order to increase cultural literacy and to encourage reflective and critical conversations about modern-day issues of social justice. A brief overview of pedagogical…

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. The limitations of college common reading selections derive from their institutional frameworks. Non-academic mission statements steer selection committees away from intellectually challenging books toward those promoting progressive beliefs or activism;…

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has analyzed college common readings since 2010. Common reading selections partly reflect the constraints on their selection committees. Each year colleges admit large number of students who have not yet read a college-level book and some of whom have never read a full-length adult book at all. Faculty…

Assigning a summer reading to entering freshmen is a growing trend at hundreds of American colleges and universities. Colleges typically pick one book and ask students to read it outside their courses. Many invite the author to help kick off the year by speaking on campus at convocation. Most colleges see the key purpose of a common reading…

What books do colleges and universities assign as common reading? What themes do the books contain? Are they old books or recent ones? What kinds of colleges and universities have common reading programs? What does a typical common reading program look like? What does all this tell us about the state of American higher education today? To find…

This article evaluates a writing assignment in which students read a non-fiction book that they chose from a list provided by their instructor, identified examples of social psychological phenomena, and fully explained how those examples fit social psychology concepts. This novel twist on a traditional assignment yielded surprisingly robust…

Many college courses have historically been associated with large amounts of reading. For example, many biology courses required students to read trade books such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (Carson, 1962), or James Watson's "The Double Helix" (Watson, 1980), but now most instructors elect to focus students' reading on course textbooks and…

Professors have long assigned to their students works of which they were the author. The practice ranges from assigning commercially published textbooks they have written to having students buy a volume they have written and published or course packs made up of their own materials they have photocopied. Not only individual professors, but also…