In this article, the author describes three strategies they have used to bolster interest and make use of popular culture to enhance readers' interactions with texts: pop culture pairings, musical connections, and multimodal projects. The author addresses the cultivation of pop culture awareness, the importance of multimodal pedagogy, the…

By exploring the uses of plain, middle, and grand styles, the author examines how theories of classical rhetoricians can be applied to Atticus Finch's speeches in "To Kill a Mockingbird." In the high school English classrooms the author has encountered, "rhetoric" has not been a focus or even a passing discussion. It forms the…

At a time when some high school English classrooms erase and distort experiences and identities, it is vital for educators to explore pedagogies that provide radically reimagined forms of liberatory thought. This article explores ways the work of Coates can serve as "blueprint liberation" in the English classroom. The line of broken,…

Discourse is essential in communicating thoughts and ideas. People around the world communicate their ideas through stretches of language. In order to understand any discourse, it must achieve cohesion. The purpose of this paper is to define and describe the cohesive devices based on the work of Halliday and Hasan (1976). It also aims to emphasize…

This article takes as its focus Lefebvre's trialectic of conceived, perceived and lived spaces as a lens through which to scrutinise the 2013 English Literature Curriculum, and to explore the extent to which creative spaces might exist within that curriculum. The article analyses how the curriculum is envisaged by policymakers and how it might be…

As an approach to literary study, critical literacy is not a widespread practice in New Zealand secondary schools. This article draws on a major project on teaching literature in the multicultural classroom that take place over two years in 2008-2009. In it we report on a case study where a Year 13 English teacher designed and tested a novel…

Teaching narrative text selections is an important part of the middle grades English curriculum. As middle grades educators search for ways to best support their students' reading, it is important to consider carefully the effects of various approaches to teaching literature. This study focused on the two most popular approaches to teaching…

Sometimes teachers do not discover what is really important to students because they do not give them an avenue to explore issues close to their hearts. They must find ways to reach the gay or lesbian students who fear their secret might get out or those who are already out and oftentimes bear the ugliness of teenage teasing, taunts, and sometimes…

The English curriculum tends to be framed in relation to two unconscious boundaries based on the dichotomies between writing and reading as well as print and image. This paper re-envisions the curriculum as comprising a hybrid space where students are involved in composing texts that integrate writing and reading practices while also considering…

This article explores the emergence of multimodality as intrinsic to the learning, teaching and assessment of English in the Twenty-First Century. With subject traditions tied to the study of language, literature and media, multimodal texts and new technologies are now accorded overdue recognition in English curriculum documents in several…

The documentary text, a relative newcomer to the textual armoury of subject English, has received remarkably limited theoretical discussion. It therefore provides an interesting opportunity for the contemporary researcher concerned with the reading/viewing practices that constitute modern textual study. This paper first presents an historical…

Sybil Wilson is a composite representation of an English teacher that typifies much of what most preservice English teachers have seen and experienced in U.S. classrooms. The authors' aim is to articulate textual frameworks often competing and unnamed in English curriculum (and evident in Sybil's classroom) and to argue for a particular reframing…

Claims that computer games have little educational value, are antisocial, and classroom time should be spent on more worthwhile pursuits. Argues that computer games are not literary texts in that they cannot inform students of their cultural heritage, provide an opportunity to respond to ethical questions, or deal with significant and lasting…

Provides support for using computer games in the English curriculum, as texts of the new technologies, to strengthen links between students' in-school and out-of-school worlds. Claims that far from presenting a threat to accepted literacy practices, the games help students gain an awareness of how texts work and become more reflexive about the…

Examines the history and psychology of adolescence, and of the adolescent and reading. Reviews research done by Victor Nell, who looks at the characteristics of the dedicated and absorbed reader. Asserts that teachers can benefit from an understanding of the psychology of teaching literature to adolescents. (MG)