This article reflects on where and how empirical research, focusing particularly on college/adult writing and literate practice, has appeared over the last century in the complete runs of "English Journal," "College English," "College Composition and Communication," "Research in the Teaching of English," and "Teaching English in the Two-Year…

Michelle is a first-year English teacher at Vailsburg Middle School, a public school in Newark, New Jersey. Michelle is dedicated, caring, energetic, and insightful. This year, the author had the chance to watch Michelle and her principal, Serena Savarirayan, meet for their weekly debriefing of Michelle's teaching. Serena began by praising…

Reader-response has become one of the most influential literary theories to inform the pedagogies of middle and secondary English classrooms. However, many English and literacy educators have begun to advocate for more critical and culturally responsive versions of reader-response pedagogies, arguing that teachers move beyond valuing students'…

This article describes the stance that a rhetorical English teacher adopts, in order to respond more flexibly to the student who operates from the boundaries of our classrooms, our pedagogy and our theoretical investments. It is suggested that when we welcome these boundary dwellers, far from disrupting our practice, we prompt civic discourse and…

Synchronous technologies, particularly interactive video conferencing (IVC), are becoming common modes of teaching and delivering college courses. The increasing popularity of IVC in the U.S. and abroad calls for more pedagogically effective practices for instructors using this technology. This volume focuses on innovative and proven approaches to…

This paper will provide a review of research--regarding explicit grammar instruction--that groups recent studies into three main categories and then sub-categorizes these studies under key terms in second language acquisition (SLA) research. The overall purpose of this paper is to argue that in light of these issues, recent studies have shown that…

As an opinionated and often challenging class of year 10 boys, they demonstrated a strong sense of their identity as a group of "bright boys". One of their English teachers described the class as "boisterous, but very motivated--they love discussing texts", but she also recognised their tendency to "descend into…

This examination of Moffett's contribution to a theory of school English concentrates on his understanding of rhetoric. It is suggested that the impetus for "Teaching the Universe of Discourse" is dialectical: he was running against currents in English teaching at the time that were literary and technical, as well as the specific…

In order to explore effective ways to develop Chinese English learners' communicative competence, this study first briefly reviews the advantages of communicative language teaching (CLT) method which widely practiced in the Western countries and analyzes in details its obstacles in Chinese classroom context. Then it offers guidelines for…

This article explores the development of utilizing music as a Personal Practical Theory (PPT) in the teaching of English and history. Specifically, the authors explore the nature of PPT's, the benefits of utilizing music, and the process through which teachers begin using a new approach in their pedagogy. Unique contributions are the application…

This article presents the results of three separate studies of literacy teaching and learning in the U.S. that explore the social functions of language, specifically focused on the identity development of literacy learners and teachers. Each study offers a detailed account of how literate identities are constructed and enacted and the positive and…

This article reports a quasi-experimental study on the effects of multimedia teaching and learning in English Literature--a subject which places high cognitive load on students. A large-scale study was conducted in 4 high-achieving secondary schools to examine the differences made to students' learning and performance by the use of multimedia and…

English educators at all levels have endeavored to understand difference in their classrooms both in terms of the content that they teach and in terms of the social and cultural identities of students in their classrooms. However, although educators have come a long way in understanding identity as it is constituted by race and gender, much work…

The languages spoken in Nigeria do not only play significant roles in the socio-political life of the country, but also help in no small measure to unify or integrate the country that is so much diverse in all spheres of life. In realizing these multiplicity of roles the languages play in the country, the Government instituted and enacted a policy…

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…