This article was given as a keynote address to the 2009 conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW), 30 June to 2 July, at Coventry University, UK. It draws on experiences at Queen Mary, University of London, of developing a "writing in the disciplines" initiative and of working towards…

Genre theory has been around for a long time now. The exchange between Michael Rosen and Frances Christie recently featured in "Changing English" is the latest in a series of exchanges between advocates of genre and their critics over the past three decades or so. Our aim in this response-essay is not to weigh up the merits of the cases…

Previous research into student teachers' knowledge about language concluded that overall the picture was fairly bleak. Such research focused on the knowledge about language that the student teachers possessed when they moved from secondary school education into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes. However, few studies have investigated the…

This qualitative case study examines the nature of a dual language preschool teacher's instructional practices and extratextual talk during shared-book reading practices with two different genres of books in Spanish and English. Specifically, I explore the interpersonal, ideational, and textual features of one teacher's talk in English- and…

This report reveals that children and young people are reading less and more are embarrassed to be seen reading, while many also believe that their parents don't care if they spend time reading. However, not only are children and young people reading less and developing more negative attitudes towards reading, but there is also a clear correlation…

Critical analysis of the literacy narrative assignment within the context of the other genres in a basic writing course complicates understandings of the political import of the assignment. While several advocates of the literacy narrative have argued that it has the power of what Jean-François Lyotard has called petits récits, the authors argue…

In this study we investigated the frequency and types of questions asked when parents read with their four-year-old children, the relationship between the frequency and types of questions parents and children asked, and the relationship between these and the children's early literacy knowledge. Forty dyads shared two narrative texts and two…

In this essay, I examine the problems I now see with the sample curriculum I proposed in "College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for Writing Instruction" in 2007. There are numerous factors that must be considered in designing a writing course: choice of subject matter, choice of genres to assign, sequencing of writing assignments, number of…

The author's late son Greg, who became known as Stephan Sure, started life as a teacher's and parent's dream. Not so much because he "behaved well" but because he was a natural wordsmith. Stephan's knack for clever language was visible through the years in crisp repartee and hilarious storytelling, but his secret life as a writer didn't fully…

Learning to read can pose a major challenge to students, and much of this challenge is due to the fact that written language is necessarily impoverished when compared to the rich, continuous speech signal. Prosodic elements of language are scarcely represented in written text, and while oral reading prosody has been addressed in the literature…

Graphic novels are "hot." They show up everywhere from book stores to TV shows. Educators, too, are discovering the possibilities for graphic novels across the curriculum. Among the possibilities, educators can explore the graphic novel as a bildungsroman, a coming of age story--an old genre in the literary canon appearing in a new medium. The…

How bilingual children represent procedural versus narrative text is important for both pedagogical and theoretical reasons. To examine this issue, bilingual children and children learning English as a Second Language (ESL) read Hebrew sentences comprising either a procedural (i.e., "how to") or a narrative text (i.e., description of "doing") and…

This article informs about a multidisciplinary learning community targeting first year students from diverse cultural backgrounds at an urban community college. The combination of English, art, and philosophy of art in a "Creativity Cluster" offers an excellent opportunity for great teaching and learning experiences. Yet, how can faculty…

This qualitative study examined the importance of the genre and authenticity as teachers sought to bring science journalism to the high school science classroom. Undertaken as part of the National Science Foundation-funded grant "Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn)," this work was conducted as a series of smaller…

This study examines the extent to which ARL academic libraries collect graphic novels. Using a core list of 176 titles developed from winners of major comics industry awards and a library-focused "best of" list, the holdings of 111 ARL academic libraries were searched using the libraries' online catalogs. Results suggest that most of the…