In an eighth-grade English language arts class, 100 students used virtual reality headsets, augmented reality--capable smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, online scavenger hunts, and print-based texts as an introduction to William Shakespeare's life and works. The authors highlight the need for educators to offer multimodal instruction that…

Beginning in 1984 as an annual conference event, Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED)--a nonprofit organization based on forging new connections among technology, entertainment, and design--started as an invitation-only affair and then grew to have an online presence in the 2000s. At that time TED.com launched an audio and video podcast…

Breman Vance's paper, in keeping with the theme of the College English Association's 2017 conference, Islands, is focused on how teachers need to build bridges, explore new territory, and avoid professional isolation--especially in regard to modern, multimodal literacies, a source of unending questions and frustrations.

Of the 17 African American students that started in one-level below developmental English, only 1 (6%) ended up completing a 200-level English course in a three-year time period. A quick analysis of similar three-year cohorts at this college shows similar numbers, indicating that this is not an anomaly. African American students are not succeeding…

Generation Z (Gen Z) represents something of a quintessence for the broken promises that now seem to make up the promise of higher education. But if despair indicates the dark side of generational malaise around things like civic engagement, community, and student learning, the dark humor that has emerged out of these generations points to modes…

In the light of #FeesMustFall, decolonisation has come to the fore in the South African higher education landscape. Decolonisation proposes the overthrow of entrenched European power relations in higher education and the study of fairy tales within a pre-service teaching degree in a university English curriculum provides an ideal opportunity for…

This paper considers the differential placements of social actors in the contemporary English university, as practices consistent with neoliberal ideologies become increasingly influential. It uses Layder's theory of 'social domains' and the first-hand experiences of the author to explore how the options available -- to students, those on…

The purpose of the study was to investigate differences in writers' abilities to perceive global text organisation in self-, peer- and teacher/researcher-authored essays. Eight student participants were identified as proficient, middle or developing, based on the levels of paragraph subordination, the average number of T-Units and the number of…

Teacher training programmes have often ignored the new multilingual paradigm and, consequently, educators may hold some misconceptions about how additional languages are learnt and should be taught in multilingual contexts. A number of recent studies have investigated language teachers' beliefs regarding multilingual education [Arocena-Egaña, E.,…

In this article, the authors explore multimodal literacies and how they use literacy contracts and quadrants to help students to examine their identities via writing and the creative arts. A notable outcome of their joint efforts is that when teachers and students transacted with multimodal literacies, they showed value for their personal and…

There is limited research on second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning which provides fine-grained descriptions of how vocabulary explanations (VE) are interactionally managed in beginning-level L2 classrooms where learners have a limited L2 repertoire, and how the VEs could contribute to the learners' conceptual understanding of the…

This report describes ACT test results for Austin Independent School District (AISD) seniors in the 2018-2019 school year. In 2018-2019, the district's average ACT composite score of 23.0 exceeded the state (20.5) and national (20.7) average composite scores.

Corequisite remediation involves placing students who have been designated as underprepared directly into college-level courses with concurrent supports--such as in-class tutoring, online learning labs, or a supplemental class--rather than making them take non-credit-bearing developmental courses first. Despite the growing number of studies on…

Background: Classroom discourse featuring meaning making supports students achieving discipline-specific learning. However, moving beyond recitation requires developing beliefs, skills, structures, and practices. Any theorizing we do about developing discussion practice must attend to realities of culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.…

This qualitative case study investigates the technology-enhanced constructivist learning environment (CLE) for developing undergraduate English-majors' research abilities at a Chinese university. The faculty group attempted at transforming an English Writing course into BA Thesis Writing, supported by a free online learning management system…