When trying to promote empathy, it is not sufficient to merely learn about other people and cultures if we seek to understand them better (Case, 1993). As a language arts teacher and researcher, the author sought to explore the potential for multicultural literature to expand adolescent learners' worldviews and shape their perceptions as global…

Exploring the Yiddish language of my father, grandmother, her grandmother, and beyond, this autobiographical article frames language as an ever-changing space where identities are negotiated, formed, and contested. Placing the history of Yiddish alongside my own familial relationship to the language, I explore how the stories of individual lives…

African immigrants in the US and across the globe are confronted with issues of language and culture retention, resistance to the loss of the same, and reconstruction of their identities while navigating the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of the host nations. The experiences of one such family are shared through the African Oral…

This article emerges out of my autobiography as an English language educator and the conversations that I had with three other English teachers in universities in Padang, Indonesia. These conversations formed the core of my doctoral thesis, in which I used Benedict Anderson and Edward Said to theorise our situation as English educators working in…

"Transcendentalism" refers to philosophical, religious, and literary beliefs held by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and other writers in New England during the 1830s and 1840s. Emerson believed in the significance of one's intuition and individuality. He expresses these beliefs in his…

English teachers often feel blamed for low results on high-stakes standardised literacy tests such as Australia's National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Faced with pressure for their students to produce high scores, teachers can react by making changes to both content and strategies which result in a narrowing of curriculum…

The unexpected advent of a global pandemic and, in the UK, as part of the government response to control the spread of the virus, the closure of schools with just 48 hours' notice, meant many English teachers were faced with entirely new pedagogical, curricular and technological demands. This article reflects on the experiences of five English…

Since task-based learning was proposed in the field of second language acquisition in the 1980s, the popularity of this teaching approach has risen due to the effectiveness in enhancing learners' communicative competence. To complete tasks, learners have opportunities to use the target language in various situations so that they can transfer what…

This brief aims to contextualize and promote translanguaging as an approach to educating bi-/ multilingual students in US literacy classrooms. Broadly, "translanguaging" has been defined as "the deployment of a speaker's full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined…

This article shares the experiences, tips, and passion of an English I teacher who teaches English language learners (ELLs) who have been in U.S. schools for at least one year. She provides information about various teaching strategies that have been effective in her classroom over the past few years. The article addresses student grouping,…

Despite ongoing and prolific critical scholarship arguing for the widening of the secondary language arts curriculum, many practicing teachers are required or encouraged to teach a curriculum dominated by canonical texts. This is often the case at schools with highly diverse students whose varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds have…

In this article Deidre Faughey shares an experimental classroom project that she developed with a diverse group of students in three ninth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) classes. Podcasts provide a unique opportunity for students to embrace experimentation and to take risks with their own voices, explore the school building and community, and…

I come to this article as an experienced primary and middle years teacher and midcareer university-based academic with a vested interest in researching the message systems of the disciplinary field of subject English. My sociocultural perspective challenges those who view English teaching predominantly as a cognitive act of learning to read or…

This essay addresses the persistence of monolingual tendencies in composition pedagogy and the critical efforts needed to dissolve them. Approaching language difference from a distinctly pedagogical perspective, this essay draws on the authors' teaching experiences and reflective writing in an effort to theorize the reflective practices key to…

Working for the chair of the foreign language and methodology in Volgograd State Academy of Advanced Training and Retraining of Education Workers for about 4 years, the author has noticed that on the one hand, teachers of English have a reluctance to speak English in front of their colleagues (peers) while harboring an unwillingness to have any…