One component of the United States' public school curriculum core is social studies. Since the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), elementary social studies has been marginalized, and in some cases, eliminated from the school day in favor of increased time for literacy and mathematics instruction. Kentucky's adoption of the ELA Common Core standards…

This study proposes a model for integrating multicultural children's short stories as an extension activity or as a supplement to in-class instruction to develop college students' reading and speaking skills in English as a foreign language (EFL), together with cultural awareness. It gives the advantages of using multicultural children's short…

This quantitative and qualitative study is aimed to diagnose and promote the use of new technologies in teaching literature reading in Public (State) Schools, assessing materials accessibility and computer skills. The research consisted of three distinct steps: (1) A survey to detect teachers' and students' computer skills, their use of computers…

This is a conceptual paper, based on several semesters of collaboration in which the American author interacted with students in the Taiwanese author's EFL classes in Taiwan. The best native language users are typically those who read extensively, especially reading for pleasure in their youth. This gives them a large vocabulary and an intuitive…

The aim of this paper is two-fold: (a) to investigate scaffolding strategies employed by two EFL teachers in the process of instructing more and less proficient learners, and (b) to explore the most effective strategies used by teachers with students. Two elementary school English teachers were invited to take part in this study. Both were asked…

Prompted by the fact that short and interesting materials suitable for reading aloud to secondary school students are difficult to find, a survey was conducted to compile a list of such materials for dissemination. The 260 respondents included secondary school teachers in all curriculum areas. Results indicated that half the respondents read…

The wordless picture book is a valued but underused resource for young children, beginning literacy students, and for proficient readers. A survey of teachers indicated that three problems exist: (1) few wordless picture books are available in library collections; (2) teachers do not know how to select quality wordless books; and (3) few teachers…

High school graduates too frequently find the routes to their career goals blocked by inadequate reading skills. College instructors can help these academically disabled students by accurately diagnosing students' reading deficiencies and by selecting appropriate materials to strengthen specific skill areas. In selecting materials for learning…

Noting that for some time, the theory of literature has been supplanted by other disciplines as the major influences on the teaching of English in the secondary schools, this paper challenges the assumptions underlying two major principles for selecting and teaching literature: the social relevance of its subject matter and its immediate impact on…

Homophobia is accepted and encouraged by society, particularly in the sterile world of academia which allows, promotes, and creates homophobia by not providing lesbian/gay specific texts, examples, assignments, and role models. Composition teachers can make the classroom a safer place for lesbian/gay students, teachers, texts, and issues by: (1)…

A recent study found that "mentioning," or saying just enough about a topic to allow for an assignment related to it, had supplanted instruction in reading comprehension in grades three through six. As a replacement to "mentioning," a "preteaching" unit has been developed that concentrates on development of textbook…

This paper advocates the use of "intrinsic" activities, such as the language experience approach and individualized reading, to teach beginning reading. Unlike "extrinsic" approaches, which depend on texts or other external motivators to stimulate learning, intrinsic methods exploit the internal desire of the child to acquire knowledge.…

Advocates focusing literature instruction on the classroom community rather than the individual because through language, as through mathematics, concepts and worlds are fabricated. (CRH)

Teachers can improve students' content reading by preparing reading profiles in terms of student abilities, instructional material selection, and content learning objectives. These profiles should contain the following elements: orientation questions that give the teachers their present bearings; the identification of the readability levels of…

In selecting materials for English education (both preservice and inservice), it must be remembered that, although materials alone do not make the difference, selection of resources must be informed and careful. This paper presents guidelines for material selection in the areas of language acquisition, composition, methods for teaching the…