This article presents the findings of a linguistic ethnographic pilot study, conducted as part of an ongoing research study, to examine how students utilise their knowledge and experience in understanding literary texts being studied from different cultural and temporal spaces. The analysis of this development in the students' comprehension of new…

We compared the performance of Hispanic students from California, Texas, and Arizona on the two Advanced Placement (AP) English exams (i.e., English Language and Composition and English Literature and Composition) using archival data from the College Board from 1997 through 2012. Pearson chi-square tests yielded statistically significant…

In Elizabeth A. Dagrosa Harris' high school English classroom, the writing assignment that inspires the most dread in her students is the literary criticism paper, a common assessment usually assigned in the second semester of the British literature curriculum. This assignment is grounded in solid and time-tested standards that describe research…

English education has played a vital role in facilitating Singapore's global city ambitions since the country's independence. While the state has prioritized English education's cognitive objective emphasizing information processing and effective communication skills, it has given insufficient attention to the role of English in equipping students…

This essay explores the complexity of imposing texts that are considered part of the English literary canon on students from multicultural backgrounds. It considers the rhetoric of the coalition government, in the recent drive to emphasize the importance of the literary heritage and return to English culture and how its impact has been felt in the…

Drawing on a strand of findings from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, this article examines contemporary understandings of poetry performance in teaching contexts. Positioning these understandings in relation to past practices, we…

This article argues that Harry Potter fan vids can be used in the classroom as works of secondary criticism about J. K. Rowling's primary text. It makes two claims: the first is that vids can be read as criticism of a particular text (in this case Harry Potter) alongside other critical essays on that text; the second is that the practice of…

This article reflects on the values and practices of a revolutionary A level (senior secondary) course that achieved a high degree of validity and reliability in assessing the study of English literature. John Hodgson and Bill Greenwell were involved in its teaching and assessment from an early stage, and Greenwell's comments on an early draft of…

Although secondary school teachers have long been aware of the pedagogical possibilities of Louise Rosenblatt's Reader Response (articulated first in "Literature as Exploration," 1938) and I. A. Richards' Close Reading (first broached in "The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of…

Using Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" as an anchor text, the authors argue for applied theatre strategies as vivid and viable tools for exploring challenging texts and applying critical lenses in an embodied way. Readers are guided through a series of theatre-based, English-classroom accessible improvisational frameworks to help…

The heart of this article is an account written by a student at the end of the course. In this account Jeremy charts his changing views about teaching literature. Influenced by the work of Jerome Bruner (1986) and others, he argues for greater 'flexibility' in the ways we conceptualise 'critical response' to a literary text. The work his Year 9…

This article offers both a rationale and a proposal for the meaningful contribution of English faculty to the preparation of English teachers. We draw on data from teacher licensure tests and interviews with English and English Education faculty to underscore contradictions among the various voices in English education and to identify ways of…

The article analyses the presence of William Shakespeare as intertext in three recent novels by black British writers which deploy the work of the Bard as they explore British and European identities. Caryl Phillips's "The Nature of Blood" recreates an Othello-like figure who in early Modern Venice struggles to come to terms with his…

This study is designed to examine writing anxiety in three groups of EFL students who use English writing in their academic programs. The main purpose of this study is to determine the level and sources of anxiety that students experience while writing in English as a foreign language. To this end, 150 university students from Iranian EFL students…

Drawing on observational evidence of two classes working on "Romeo and Juliet," one in England and the other in Palestine, this essay explores the nature of knowledge in relation to English as a school subject. It asserts the importance of paying attention to the resources that students, situated in culture and history, bring with them…