Advocates focusing literature instruction on the classroom community rather than the individual because through language, as through mathematics, concepts and worlds are fabricated. (CRH)

This booklet presents the Written Response part of the English 30 Grade 12 Diploma examination in Alberta, Canada. After instructions for students, the booklet presents the first part of the examination in which students respond to Thom Gunn's poem "Tamer and Hawk," which addresses the nature and effect of a ruling passion in an…

This book challenges the current penchant in United States education for "dumbing down" and anthologizing literature for secondary learners. The book provides a rationale for teaching the classics to all high school students. It offers a wealth of ways for English teachers to do what they yearn to do in their own classrooms: teach "the good…

Recounts a veteran instructor's experiences with teaching new subjects, American literature and poetry writing, after many years away from graduate school. Muses about the reality of teaching undergraduates. Considers teaching as a rhetorical act and finds that learning is more likely to occur when teachers approach teaching as a rhetorical act…

Describes how a tenth-grade English teacher changed her role from that of a leader always on center stage to that of a prober, guide, problem poser, resource person, and strategist. Advises teachers to help students find, shape, and revise their own questions and then explore and evaluate responses to these questions. (RS)

Describes the experiences of a junior high English class as they read Larry McMurty's novel "Lonesome Dove" and watched the television miniseries based on the novel. Discovers that the relationship between the reader and the written word is similar to that between the viewer and the film. (RS)

Explores how high school students' reading logs reveal their reading processes as they read and respond to literature. Examines the reading logs from three eleventh-grade English classes throughout the school year. (MM)

Uses Martin Jamison's "Rivers" to illustrate a reader-response approach to poetry. Describes the process of students creating their own "poems," while analyzing the author's poem. Concludes that this approach encourages the necessary personal connection required for poetic involvement. (JAD)

Focuses on the resonance and power of the Madonna, or the Virgin Mary, in literature and culture. Argues that the Madonna represents womanhood and feminism. Describes how the multiple readings of "The Scarlet Letter" charted one professor's changing relationship over 10 years with the Jesuit institution where she taught. (HB)

Details a program designed to use an awareness of cultural reader response to stimulate multicultural understanding among middle-school students. Provides strategies for reading multiethnic literature with students from varied backgrounds. (HB)

Studies three African-American children's responses to short works of fiction which were read aloud to them. Describes the three participants and the stories used. Analyzes significant patterns of understanding and interpretation observed. (HB)

Argues that nonfiction is growing in popularity as reading material among adolescents. Provides data and analysis of a study designed to measure the influence of nonfiction on the attitudes, values, and behavior of adolescents. (HB)

Considers how readers form impressions of writers' personalities while reading their texts. Reports on a series of studies which asked readers to respond to college application essays by high school students. Concludes that responses to texts concerning personality are highly predictable and, thus, can be influenced by the writer. (HB)

Explores differences in adolescents' styles of responding to poetry and relates these differences to contrasts in the way students narrate stories of personal experience. Finds contrasts between working-class and middle-class students in styles of responding to poetry which show parallels with their contrasting styles of narrating stories of…

Describes how a middle school English/language arts teacher had students paint in watercolors their responses to the novel the class was reading. Describes how this approach signficantly improved the rate and quality of student participation, and brought out new voices and fresh readings of the text. (SR)