It can be difficult to interest students in academic topics if they have no prior exposure to or experience of the subject. The authors introduce and discuss a pedagogic innovation designed to trigger interest in entrepreneurship and "enterprise culture". They use fiction in the form of Gothic context and the vampire motif to move the…

This study examined the progress of English as a foreign language (EFL) writers using the instructional framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and the communities of practice (CoPs) model. The study participants comprised 11 first-year undergraduate students in Japan with intermediate-level English proficiency who were exposed to SFL…

Although engineering graduate programs rarely require academic writing courses, the indicators of merit in academic engineering, such as journal publications, successful grants, and doctoral milestones (e.g. theses, dissertations) are based in effective written argumentation and disciplinary discourse. Further, graduate student attrition averages…

With delicate literary style and allusions, Louise Chawla combines her ecological research and Montessori background to portray the unfolding of childhood in natural places. Starting with "enchantment with the world" as the basis for nature education for the child under six, the article suggests that the "loose parts" in the…

Grounded in the principle that writing assessment should be locally developed and controlled, this article describes a study that contextualizes and validates the decisions that students make in the modified Directed Self-Placement (DSP) process used at the University of Michigan. The authors present results of a detailed text analysis of…

This manuscript describes how innovative literacy practices such as multigenre writing and artifactual critical literacy have been used to tap into pre-service teachers' cultural identities while responding to literature. In the process of responding to literature, personal experience is crucial; therefore, in this study, I focused on the…

Religious poetry is, a heightened and impregnated form of expression. There is a marriage of form and sense. Linguistically speaking, religious poetry has a conceptual interface between syntax and semantics; a strong relationship between language and thought; universality and cultural specificity; the discourse context and the psychological…

Throughout history humans have dreamed of a better life. This concept of utopia can be used as a central focus for thematic and interdisciplinary instruction. This approach has three key advantages. First, students recognize that certain themes are consistent across time and place and that realization can lead students to explore their own dreams…

This article describes how one teacher implemented a memoir genre study in her sixth grade classroom using a writing workshop approach. It begins by outlining the author's philosophy and rationale for teaching writing in this manner. This is followed by a discussion of how one could organize one's classroom for a memoir genre study. Several…

Educational standards documents worldwide include reading and writing of evidence-based argument as a major focus. In order to help students craft arguments that will be considered seriously by those with the power to make changes that affect them, educators need to cultivate within students their sociological imagination--that is, an…

This study is an attempt to investigate impact of using a technique, namely, genre-based approach on improving reading ability on Iranian EFL learners' achievement. Therefore, an attempt was made to compare genre-based approach to teaching reading with traditional approaches. For achieving this purpose, by administering the Oxford Quick Placement…

This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating the experience and perspectives of students using English as an international language studying transdisciplinary master's degrees related to culture industries at Goldsmiths, University of London. The particular focus of this paper concerns their experiences of writing several different…

This study aimed to examine which genres parents are reading to children and for themselves. Furthermore, it aimed to examine mothers' and fathers' shared reading strategies for different book genres in relation to children's language and literacy development. Parents shared a narrative and an expository book with their preschool-aged children.…

The article studies in three steps how the fairy tale articulates its normative content and what the educational consequence of this kind of communication is. First, the articulation of normativity in fictional literature in general is discussed. Second, the specific mode in which the fairy tale articulates its normativity is studied according to…

This article describes results from an examination of common characteristics in the award-winning United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) Outstanding International Books for Grades K-2 from 2006 to 2012. Books nominated for the USBBY Outstanding International Books List must be currently available in the United States market. The…