Recent scholarship in multiliteracies-oriented pedagogies has advocated for greater attention to fostering 'textual thinking', understood as forms of literacy that consider the complexities of semiotic choices made by authors, and their underlying meanings, rhetorical purposes, and cultural contexts. This kind of engagement with texts calls upon…

This paper shares some insights into the notion of having EFL students collectively respond to literature. Understanding and appreciating a piece of literature is determined by how one can convey the concepts and words to new situations. During this process, several types of interaction happen: interaction between experience and the text,…

Michael Swan and Catherine Walter (see EJ1142765) take issue with the current emphasis in the teaching of listening and reading on higher-order skills-and-strategies training. They argue that L2 learners typically already possess the relevant skills and strategies necessary for listening and reading in L2, and, by implication, can and do deploy…

Purpose: Affect is central to the process of teaching and learning. The recent affective turn in literacy education has further underscored its critical potential as an act of resistance against dehumanizing forces that impact students' schooling and life experiences (Dutro, 2019; Leander and Ehret, 2019). This article, taking up the notion of…

This study examines the potential of translation activities as a means for introducing a discourse approach to teaching culture in the beginner-level language classroom. For this purpose, a translation session was implemented to a group of beginner-level learners of Japanese at a UK university. Analysis of classroom interaction and students'…

This qualitative research study examined the connections made by refugee and immigrant youth to a teacher proposed mirror text at an elementary ESL book group. Mirror texts, or books in which youth with marginalized identities can see themselves reflected, have been argued to promote text connections and reading comprehension for minoritized…

In this article, the authors describe the outcomes of a workshop of pre- and in-service secondary school English teachers in New Delhi, India, working with a literature-based curriculum that required striking a balance between teaching the text or series of texts and creating opportunities for communicative interaction. The authors describe…

In the United States, new common state standards in English language arts and disciplinary literacy require K-12 students to "read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently." Issues of text complexity have spurred debates in the mainstream literacy, educational practice, and policy…

The case study investigates what impact extensive reading of authentic picture books/illustrated books had on the learners' writing skills in a Norwegian EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom of 11-year-olds. Furthermore, the study also looks into the importance the pictures/illustrations had for the learners and what type of picture-text…

This paper reports on two projects which investigated graded readers (GRs) as meaningful input for learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). Project One examined the intentions of six writers of Japanese GRs. A focus group interview demonstrated that the writers had a genuine communicative intent in the writing process. Project Two…

Authenticity has been a part of the intellectual resources of language teaching since the 1890s but its precise meaning and implications are contested. This commentary argues for a view of authenticity which recognizes the limits of the concept as a guide for pedagogic practice and acknowledges the fact that texts are processes rather than…

Because learning to meditate shares important qualities with learning to be a better reader and writer--for example, dispassionate noticing, becoming more aware of inner processes, a faith in inner wisdom, effort made with a light touch, the cultivation of a practice through simple, regular doing--practice in mindfulness meditation was used to…

In this article, we describe how to help primary-grade English language learners use compare-contrast text structures. Specifically, we explain (a) how to teach students to identify the compare-contrast text structure, and to use this structure to support their comprehension, (b) how to use compare-contrast texts to activate and extend students'…

Four first-grade teachers used discussion prompts to encourage thinking about and responding to text in different ways. This article describes how the teachers introduced the prompts and provides examples of how the prompts were integrated into classroom activities. Teachers found that using the prompts was an effective way to initiate and…

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…