Vocabulary is an important component that students must master in order to master other language skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Vocabulary learning can be effectively done through reading stories. A popular example is Alternative Universe (AU), a setting for a work of fan fiction found on Twitter or X. Utilizing a…

Although peer review has been widely used for formative assessment in writing instruction, there remain concerns about whether assessors are at a sufficient writing performance level that would allow them to identify major problems in the reviewed work and provide helpful feedback to improve draft quality. Little empirical research has examined…

This article explores the pedagogical potential of closely reading and writing hardboiled detective fiction in a Canadian secondary English Language Arts classroom. Grounded in narrative theory and co-taught with a local high-school teacher, the unit focused on the cynical narration and stylistic elements of authors like Raymond Chandler and…

Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

Identity currently features as a prominent theme in digital multimodal composition (DMC), given the significant impact of DMC on identity expression. However, L2 learners' writer identity development and fluctuation in this type of textual composition needs further exploration in light of the absence of clearly established DMC-specific identity…

Speculative fiction is a powerful medium to explore possible futures, inviting literacy researchers and educators to consider the value of futures thinking as a tool for eliciting learners' hopeful narratives about equitable, sustainable futures for their communities. Yet, when asked to imagine the future, adults and youth alike often envision…

Although digital multimodal composing (DMC) is receiving increasing attention in language classrooms, the extent to which it contributes to students' writing practices is controversial. In order to understand the affordances of DMC compared to traditional monomodal writing in school contexts, it is pertinent to compare DMC and traditional writing…

When schools present texts through their explicit curricula, they infuse those stories with a certain perceived value (Eisner, 2002). When those accounts all ring with the same voice, they promote the merit of those people represented over those excluded (Haslem, 1998). In this study, we explored how White high school students responded to…

This study examines how the genre of input text influences Chinese young EFL learners' performance on continuation tasks. Participants were 30 students in Grade 9 and repeated-measures design was adopted to compare their performance on narrative and argumentative continuation tasks, in terms of writing quality, CAF indicators as well as alignment.…

Good writers don't wing it--they have a plethora of skills. They list, picture, circle, strategize and revise to make language come alive. They know what to use and when. Like ace athletes, they are highly trained, well-versed in the techniques found in this lively book. "Writing Workouts" provides a method for instruction that gives…

Purpose: Using a discourse analytic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine how genre impacts white readers when reading about historic acts of racial violence. Specifically, this study explores one white high school student's stance-taking as she read an informational text and an eyewitness narrative about the Tulsa Race Massacre.…

Language is connected to a people, culture, history, and communicative purpose. One way world language teachers help students explore the intersections of culture and language is through the use of authentic texts, such as films, newspapers, podcasts, videos, music or short stories (see: Pinzon, 2020). While the research points to the success of…

This research was an investigation of the application of genre instruction to the unique purpose teaching Thai secondary students to write personal statements for undergraduate university admission. The goals of this small-scale case study were to 1) investigate the effects of genre-based instruction on students' writing abilities and 2) examine…

Short stories have the advantage of teaching materials. Because of its short form, it is flexible to be used as teaching materials that do not take long to read. This study aims to describe the teachers' perception of the urgency of integrating tolerance education in the short story appreciation, the content of tolerance values in the short story…

This explanatory sequential quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of differentiated instruction on reading comprehension attainment in mixed-ability classrooms. Fifty-four tenth grade students from two classes in two different schools took part in the study. They were randomly distributed into an experimental group (n = 27) and control…