"Waiting for Waiting for Godot" (2016) is a biographical and award-winning two-act play, a parody of Beckett's seminal work "Waiting for Godot" (1953). It is one of the most renowned works of the newgeneration American playwrights by actor and comedian Dave C. Hanson, who is relatively unknown to scholars. Having used the text…

This article examines the unfolding joy in young children's literacy practices in a Finnish early years classroom. We focus on the unfolding of joy in intra-action among children, adults and materials during literacy learning endeavours by thinking with "new" materialist theories, and the data from an early years multiliteracies project…

Children who like to read and write tend to be better at it. This association is typically interpreted as enjoyment impacting engagement in literacy activities, which boosts literacy skills. We fitted direction-of-causation models to partial data of 3690 Finnish twins aged 12. Literacy skills were rated by the twins' teachers and literacy…

The years of independence have changed various social, political, and literary realities in Kazakhstan, which has affected the thematic and stylistic expressions of Kazakh writers. Thus, research should identify the ideological, social, and thematic features of modern literary writing produced during the years of independence. In particular,…

Reading engagement is an essential component of children's reading achievement. This three-chapter dissertation considers a new approach to conceptualizing reading engagement through the lens of children's immersion, or absorption, in a text. Chapter 1 examines the theoretical underpinnings of story world absorption, sometimes known as…

This paper revisits the well-known and often-taught novel "The Chrysalids" toward a reconsideration of the novel's place within curriculum and the pedagogies it may offer. Framed as a mourning ceremony, a way of revisioning what the novel could mean in the present by saying goodbye to what it has meant in the past, the paper progresses…

This essay emerges out of conversations with early career English teachers about their experiences of teaching literature. During those conversations, they reflected on their own literary socialisation, including the reading they did at home and at school, as well as their tertiary education. They then considered what they had learnt as teachers…

Students are expected to interpret the complexities and nuances of literary texts yet might struggle with interpreting texts in ways that are valued in literary studies. Examining students' language choices can support instructors and students with developing concrete, explicit understandings of the ways language creates meanings in discourse.…

Children and young people's volitional book reading has declined consistently over the last two decades, and research efforts to reverse this trajectory would benefit considerably from the input and insights of children and young people. Meanwhile, the expanding and intensifying role of technology in many children and young people's daily lives…

Many scholars have repeatedly argued that the goals of achieving advanced language skills and understanding literary texts are not to be seen as mutually exclusive and cannot be considered separately. Nevertheless, no general consensus on the approach or how to go about it exists. What is still missing are principled and comprehensive ways of…

Existing research about English literature texts that are studied at secondary schools in developed countries suggests that teachers' choices can be determined by, for example, school policies, access to books, teachers' reasons for teaching literature, the degree of autonomy they have in choosing text and the influence that canonical literature…

This article highlights how Wolfgang Herrndorf's bestselling novel "Tschick" (2010) is particularly well suited for advanced courses focused on cultural and linguistic enrichment. Herrndorf's "Tschick," I argue, facilitates interaction, engagement, and individual interpretation; is linguistically accessible because of its use…

Reading is one of many things vying for young people's attention. In the case of volitional reading, young people between 8 and 15 are following trends of less enjoyment of reading and declining time spent reading. There are complex explanations for patterns of decline in their volitional reading related to how choice is afforded within social and…

All too often lost in the pressure and intensity of the current practice of English teachers and literacy educators is due acknowledgement of the continuing importance of history. This paper brings together two concerns: the work of Margaret Meek Spencer as a key figure in the history of English teaching, reading pedagogy and literacy education,…

Teacher feedback in reading class is closely associated with students' reading achievement. However, the underlying mechanisms of their relationship has been underexplored, especially in cross-cultural contexts. Using Control Value Theory of Achievement Emotions (CVTAE), this study tested the cross-cultural generalizability of reading enjoyment as…