This study examines teaching about grammar and language use in secondary schools through a narrative lens. The author analyses narrative episodes in interviews with three secondary English language arts teachers in the USA to identify patterns in stories of teaching about language use. Findings show teachers with vastly different life experiences…

Expectations have been placed upon elementary teachers from the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts to guide students through close readings of informational and literary texts. This content analysis examined online close reading lesson plans to determine common objectives in elementary close reading lessons using literary text…

Elementary French immersion (FI) language arts teachers often organize instruction around small learning groups. Students rotate through learning stations/centres and work independently with their peers on L2 literacy skills. This study examined how principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) can be used and/or adapted to further support…

This research describes language use by four first-grade students during mathematics and Language Arts instruction in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom. The urban public school was situated in the heart of an African-American community in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Participants were video- and audio-recorded…

Oral narratives are a commonly used, meaningful means of communication that reflects academic language. New state curriculum standards include narrative-related language expectations for young school-age children, including story grammar and complex language. This article provides a review of preschool narrative-based language intervention…

Academic English (AE) refers to the language used in school to help students acquire and use knowledge. This article reviews current literature to determine what is known about the nature of AE within the context of K-12 schooling. It describes how AE is conceptualized in the education research literature, how these conceptualizations are realized…

A modified language arts curriculum has resulted from the contributions of linguists. Language arts teachers need to be thoroughly versed in content and methodology recommendations made by linguists. It is important for pupils to understand patterns of sentences in the English language. Pupils should also attach meaning to the concept of expanding…

"Teaching for Joy and Justice" is the much-anticipated sequel to Linda Christensen's bestselling, "Reading, Writing, and Rising Up." Christensen is recognized as one of the country's finest teachers. Her latest book shows why. Through story upon story, Christensen demonstrates how she draws on students' lives and the world to teach poetry, essay,…

Argues that the prohibition against the comma splice has no logical basis whatsoever, and offers numerous examples. Maintains that English teachers should relax prohibitions against comma splices, accept that usage is flexible, and allow students a freedom which more confident writers take for granted. (SR)

Presents a (fictional) conversation between a college English professor and a graduate student in English who is something of a purist about the language. Shows, in conversations across a semester and a half, her changing attitudes about the rules of good English, "purity" in the language, divided usage, and confusing grammar and usage. (SR)

Discusses the logic, elegance, and history of using they, them, and their as singular indefinite pronouns. Notes that, as a solution to the pronoun problem, the strength of this solution is its vagueness. Offers numerous real-life examples from publications or broadcasts and lists why it is counterproductive for English teachers to exclude this…

Grammar can have meaning and be of use to the learner depending upon the methods of instruction that are being used. The eight traditional parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverbs, prepositional phrase, conjunction, pronouns, and interjection) can be made useful for learners by giving concrete, semi-concrete, and abstract examples when…

This curriculum guide in language teaching for kindergarten through grade twelve is the final "strand" of a five part project in the English language arts. It was preceded by guides devoted to reading, composition, listening and speaking, and literature. The guide is designed to assist elementary and secondary school teachers in improving the…

Paper presented at a conference of Massachusetts state English coordinators, Fitchburg State Teacher's College, November 1967. (RD)

Purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between a subject's understanding of conjunctions and his reading comprehension; the difference in the difficulty of various conjunctions, and the relationship between understanding conjunctions and the demographic variables of socio-economic level, sex and intelligence. (RB)