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)

Explores briefly the New Criticism that dominated literature instruction until recently and then provides an overview of reader response theory and how response approaches can be used in the classroom to enhance reading. (NKA)

Provides a background of response theory, two Canadian perspectives on response theory, a description of transactional response theory and response-centered curriculum, a discussion of the concepts of participant and spectator roles in literature and of the idea of narration and storying as literature, and a discussion of analysis and criticism.…

Considers what literature does, its role in a child's education, and how it might be taught. Advocates the use of adolescent literature in the classroom. (NKA)

Considers literature as something different from the texts themselves (specifically, a way of reading that includes the writer, the text, and the reader) so that the purposes of teachers and readers may be considered, and a flexible approach to selection, organization, and pedagogy be permitted. (SRT)

Drawn from talks given at a conference held at the University of New Hampshire in October 1984, the papers in this collection explore the relationship of composition to reading and literature studies. Following an introductory chapter written by Thomas Newkirk, which contains background information about that relationship as well as an overview of…