We report a study examining, for the first time, the effectiveness of engagement in dialogic argumentation in relation to its ability to promote integration of multiple source perspectives in an argumentive writing task after reading controversial multiple texts. Sixty-four primary school students engaged in a dialog-based intervention aiming to…

By exploring the uses of plain, middle, and grand styles, the author examines how theories of classical rhetoricians can be applied to Atticus Finch's speeches in "To Kill a Mockingbird." In the high school English classrooms the author has encountered, "rhetoric" has not been a focus or even a passing discussion. It forms the…

This article discusses one teacher's efforts to give their students a mentor text for a persuasive, research-based writing project. The author's shift from assigning predominantly fiction to focusing more on nonfiction came as a result of their efforts to help their students move from students' current writing style -- that of a five-paragraph…

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the writing discourse in one classroom and how students learn through studying a topic, i.e. the teaching and learning of written argument. The study takes its stance from a sociocultural perspective and is influenced by discourse analyses, new literacy studies and critical literacy (Fairclough…

How can we help pupils learn to read historically? Gary Howells explores this question by explaining how he builds reading challenges into the course of his pupils' post-16 studies and by describing some of the tasks that pupils are set and the principles that underpin them. Howells argues that over time and through stepped and scaffolded tasks,…

Written by a petty bureaucrat and diplomat for Lorenzo de Medici, a member of one of the ruling families of Europe, Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" is a slim volume concerned primarily with advising Medici on how to acquire, maintain, and sustain power over a state. Its difficult and often archaic vocabulary aside, at first glance it…