Students in England sit an important gateway examination in English at age 16. Major changes were made to this exam in 2017 resulting in more emphasis on the comprehension of unseen literary texts. This paper uses corpus linguistic methods to identify the kind of vocabulary encountered in these exam texts and compares it to the kind of vocabulary…

This article presents the results of an interpretive case study of three lecturers teaching English at a South African University. The purpose of the study was to explore the lecturers' strategies to decolonize the curriculum succinctly. Purposive, with convenient sampling, identified the three most available lecturers. An emailed reflective…

In post-invasion Australia, English has been a key instrument of colonisation. English education was tasked with producing subjects both loyal to the Australian nation and the British Empire with little recognition given to people from other languages and cultures, least of all First Peoples. Despite Australia now being considered a successful…

Based on queer critical literacies framework, this study describes an intervention that aimed to help preservice teachers identify and deconstruct heteronormative discourse in Turkish social and educational contexts. Through a local documentary that narrates the experiences of a Turkish transgender individual, preservice teachers critique the…

The current study examined the reliability of The Reading League Curriculum-Evaluation Guidelines (CEGs), which were developed to help school-based teams rate the presence of red flags when considering adopting specific literacy curricula. Coders (n = 30) independently used the CEGs to evaluate a free online English language arts curriculum. The…

This paper explores how Australian literature mandated for study in the Victorian senior English curriculum creates opportunities for problematizing central myths about Australia. We engage with Homi Bhabha's notion of ambivalence to demonstrate how representations of colonization, rurality and migration reflect discursive formations of Australia.…

My thoughts on the question of 'Textuality as the Centre of English' were presented at a Roundtable session at the 2020 International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) Conference. Through critical discourse analysis of media and curriculum texts, I highlight how the 'being' of the English subjects is always and already textual in…

The place of grammar within the teaching of writing has long been contested, and a vast body of research has found no correlation between grammar teaching and writing attainment. However, recent studies of contextualized grammar teaching have argued that if grammar input is intrinsically linked to the demands of the writing being taught, a…

All too often lost in the pressure and intensity of the current practice of English teachers and literacy educators is due acknowledgement of the continuing importance of history. This paper brings together two concerns: the work of Margaret Meek Spencer as a key figure in the history of English teaching, reading pedagogy and literacy education,…

While studies on motivational strategies abound in the English as a foreign language acquisition literature, few studies have investigated their role in English for Specific Purposes classes in vocational higher education settings. This study examines the students' perception of motivational teaching strategies and the influence of social…

The aim of this dissertation was to analyze efforts at the time of this study to vertically align curricula between secondary and post-secondary institutions and then analyze how much needs to be done to close the gap in curricular and performance expectations as students transition to higher education. To narrow the focus, this dissertation…

Multimodal texts are an integral part of children's lives. Rapid advancements in media and mobile technologies have increasingly expanded children's capability to view, share, design, and produce multimodal texts. However, Australia's updated English curriculum falls short of offering teachers a metalanguage to help children understand the complex…

Indigenous education futures require the prioritising of Indigenous voices. We need to ensure educators are engaging in deep listening, critical self-reflection and learning to develop necessary understandings. This paper will explore the urgency of prioritising Blak voices in all classrooms, emphasising the role of Indigenous-authored texts…

Students bring cultural and linguistic richness to the English Language Arts classroom in the form of English language diversity; that being said, English Language Arts (ELA) education has traditionally privileged Standard American English (*SAE) and its related white culture rather than embrace the aforementioned diversity. With calls for more…

Higher education persistence and retention rates have been scrutinized more than ever before, at both the state and national levels. Student success and completion rates are central to funding formulas, and this is specifically true for community colleges in Texas. This study examined the role of library instruction on community college student…