The purpose of this study was to consider the issue of "authentic engagement" with texts in the context of KS3 and KS4 classroom English teaching. This article describes an exemplar session on the poem "A Fine Romance" by Roger McGough designed to elicit authentic engagement and provoke personal responses, and reports on the…

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.…

This paper explores the application of texture and textual attractors within a cognitive stylistic pedagogy for English teachers. Texture, defined as the feeling of building and experiencing a fictional world, is here taken up as a facilitative way of thinking about how reading, language, experience and cognition operate in the classroom. On the…

This paper details the visual responses created by a group of preservice teachers reading a series of contemporary graphic novels about adolescence. Visual response is here understood as an interpretive methodology of transmediation, informed by theorists of multimodal literacies as well as particular forms of psychoanalytic inquiry related to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate why reading aloud (RA), both by teachers and students, is such a common practice in high school classrooms. In particular, this investigation considers students' views of why RA is practised and what are its effects. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the results of two small focus…

Focusing on the creative writing of Year 6 boys as they make the transition to Year 7, this article establishes a theoretical model for creative writing as response. In line with Bakhtin's notion of utterances as 'interpersonal' (1986), the model demonstrates the complexity of creative writing -- the text is influencing of and influenced by an…

As writing instructors, the authors spend hours "talking back" to their students through written comments on their drafts. But how do student writers receive their comments, and what do they "do" with this feedback? Teachers invest so much time and energy in their responses to papers. How do they know what gets through, what makes sense to their…

Describes how a high school student was able to express powerful feelings and achieve some kind of reconciliation with his father through his therapeutic exploration of Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman." (PRA)

Presents two responses to Meredith Kopald's article, "Arthur Miller Wins a Peace Prize: Teaching, Literature, and Therapy" in the same issue of this journal. (PRA)

Responds to E. D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" and Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," confronting questions of teaching values through literature. Argues that while teachers should deplore societal tyrannies, they can endorse the list proposed by Hirsch and allow students to develop their own responses to items…

Discusses reader-response theories and response-centered literature instruction. Outlines fundamental problems that impede the transfer of authority from teacher to community to reader, and offers suggestions for their correction. (PRA)

Describes a method of teaching writing founded on a concept of response papers based on the strong emotional reactions of students to assigned texts. Gives examples from several student papers, highlighting typical kinds of response. Argues for the response paper as a site for safe thought concerning difficult issues. (HB)

Notes that much of what students read in high school (both young adult literature and the classics) leaves them feeling sad and confused. Argues that teachers can balance that with windows of hope through literature. Offers examples from young adult literature for each of three categories of optimism. Discusses two young adult novels which…

Argues that the essential discipline in literature is neither learning to write essays for an exam nor keeping up with the latest scholarship but giving close attention to the words on the page and learning to respond to them. (MM)

Develops strategies for encouraging students to read a variety of genres and authors. Shows how a program was organized with this end in mind. Discusses what students chose to read and their attitudes and perceptions of their reading and themselves as readers. (HB)