Although "close reading" remains a worthwhile goal for undergraduate English courses, the term has actually been defined in numerous ways, which need to be compared and assessed. Unfortunately, the version of it spread by the New Critics has intimidated students, making them feel unable to decipher a literary text's real meaning. They…

English teachers can use drama as a performance tool in the English language arts classroom in order to help students build their knowledge of the context of a piece of literature and expand their thinking about text, bridging the learning from self to text to world. Authentic drama assignments capture the students' ability to understand complex…