This article investigates the teaching of rhetoric as a discrete discipline within the curriculum of Tudor-era English grammar schools (such as the King's New Grammar School in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where William Shakespeare is believed to have been educated). It examines more recent attempts to advocate for the value of rhetoric as a unifying…

While "Rebecca" is not currently a set text for A-Level English Literature, this paper argues that the novel's multi-faceted richness would justify its inclusion in any list of recommended texts. Divided into four interconnected parts, the paper offers, firstly, some approaches to the reading and teaching of fiction, generally. The…

This article examines the cultural and philosophical significance of code switching in the formulation of diasporic identity in Edward Said's "Out of Place" (1999) and Fawaz Turki's "Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian-American" (1994). It argues that exilic Palestinian writers' use of code-switching pursues various…

This article examines the role of code-switching in recreating the place, Palestine, that contemporary Palestinian memoirist Ghada Karmi was expelled from by providing a close analysis of the code-switched expressions and the plurality of voices and perspectives that this linguistic and cultural phenomenon imply in her work "Return: A…

Steve Shann's latest book is a novel called "The Worlds of Harriet Henderson". It's about 15-year-old Harriet Henderson who has a new English teacher, Molly McInness, and all at once school seems full of possibilities. But, inspired by Molly and impelled by her own adolescent restlessness, Harriet makes an impulsive decision, a decision…

The British government's current educational policy for England draws on E.D. Hirsch's writings on 'cultural literacy'. This paper aims to uncover the roots of Hirsch's influential views through a genealogical critique. Hirsch admired the Scottish Enlightenment educator Hugh Blair as a model architect of a hegemonic culture to unite disparate…

Reading aloud receives a great deal of attention as something done with children and as a potential teaching tool, but less is known about the oral reading that we, as adults, may do for various purposes across our everyday lives. This article explores one element of a two-year project recording and analysing contemporary adult reading aloud…

This essay is about teaching Shakespeare, based on my experience of exploring "King Lear" with a Year 7 class. The evidence I use is drawn from one lesson, in which I offered students the opportunity to reject Shakespeare's version of the story. In this, I hope to demonstrate that the act of offering students a choice is a simple but…

This article examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. To extend an analogy created by William Blake in his poem 'The Tyger', its furnaces are examined and its 'deadly terrors' clasped. It re-interprets the different views of teaching English, as drawn up in the United Kingdom's Cox Report. It argues that these views…

This article takes a personal view of the contribution made by Pete Medway to King's College London.

In this reflective piece, Karl Miller looks down the lens at an ancient world, once his own. He does so with the help of a memoir, "Rebecca's Vest," which he published much later, in the mid-1990s: a mid-term report in which he describes how he became a reader and about what he read. With the end of the term approaching, he offers a…

A descendant of Chekhov's extended family, Darya Protopopova has always loved all things literary. When she found out that Chekhov was popular with British modernist writers, she decided to do a master's and then a doctorate in English modernism at the University of Oxford. Having completed both, she chose to spread her love for English literary…

I explore a series of incidents in my English classroom, which occurred while I was preparing my students for their high-stakes GCSE English Language exam ('Paper 2: Writers' viewpoints and perspectives'). I thereby attempt to confront some of my own failings and biases with regard to non-fiction and the teaching of persuasive writing in…

This study attempts to explore the issue of intercultural and transnational negotiation in written English communication. I am interested in the reciprocal development of written discourse across cultural boundaries. My analysis focuses on academic writers' sense of self and their individual ability to reach otherness when they share the roles of…

Creative writing courses are growing in universities and outside them. Publishers and agents even turn to them now as sources of promise and talent. This article describes a particularly successful MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths College in London and makes a case for the popularity and the usefulness to universities, to aspiring writers and…