This article inquires into what sort of socioemotional education and conviviality are produced when pleasurable literary reading is encouraged in neoliberal cultures. We critically explore the celebration of reading for socioemotional education as it is produced in official government documents distributed to schools in Chile. Assisted by Sara…

In an era of smart-phones, tablets and online gaming, it seems that a young person's motivation to pick up a book and start to read is relatively low. The article explores this claim by investigating the reading habits of a class of 23 female students at a single sex school in the south-east of England. The case-study particularly focuses on the…

This study investigates the effects of the text difficulty of extensive reading materials on the reading comprehension and reading motivation of English as a foreign language (EFL) vocational high school students in Taiwan. Two experimental groups were assigned, on an individual basis, to read graded readers at either one level below ('i-1') or…

Based on a three-year project conducted in Australian secondary schools, this paper captures a developing disenchantment with reading in and for subject English. As part of an extended professional learning experience for teachers, students and their English teachers were interviewed and students were asked to draw reading. Paying attention to the…

This paper focuses on students' reading habits--whether traditional reading habits (print books) or modern reading habits (using a computer screen). We review the changes in students' reading habits over time, as part of other global changes, and explore whether corresponding digital pedagogies have evolved to address these changes. We examine…

The case study investigates what impact extensive reading of authentic picture books/illustrated books had on the learners' writing skills in a Norwegian EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom of 11-year-olds. Furthermore, the study also looks into the importance the pictures/illustrations had for the learners and what type of picture-text…

What is the hold of literature on a reader's imagination, on my imagination? I remember many hours spent with books in a kind of romantic entanglement, and heartful obsession, and joyful reverie. I certainly remember being lost with words, lost in enthusiastic abandonment. I loved the sounds of words, and the images they conjured, and the…

This article discusses interconnections between research methodology and English pedagogy in a recent study I undertook. The study was designed to deepen understandings about adolescent reading, using particular English teaching approaches to generate data, mindful that ideas about what constitutes the act of reading are often wide-ranging. I…

This paper explores the key findings of a range of research on teenagers and reading, focusing on the implications for classroom practice and student engagement. There is a particular emphasis on addressing the needs of underachieving and reluctant readers and the ways in which promoting reading for pleasure and enjoyment can contribute to student…

This article is based on a qualitative study that explored the impact reading had on the lives of two female students who attained exemplary results in their final year of high school. The reading practices of these two high achieving students provided data rich information. Both students were academically successful in completing their Victorian…

Beginning with the premise that pleasure is a driving force in life, this article examines the relationships between pleasure, schooling and society across the past century. Through the examination of school texts, narratives, and histories of literacy instruction, a case is made that part of the move away from keeping pleasure at the heart of…

This study stemmed from a concern of the perceived decline in students' reading motivation after the early years of schooling. This research investigated the effectiveness of online eBooks on eight grade 1 students' reading motivation. Eight students were given ten 25-minute sessions with the software programs over 15 weeks. Qualitative data were…

In the last twenty years, the teaching of reading in Britain has moved away from an interest in how children take delight in, and make meaning of, their literature to a preoccupation with a mechanistic approach to literacy which breaks down texts into bite-sized chunks and fragments reading into a series of isolated skills. Although an expensive,…

This exploratory study describes the instructional strategies and related activities a Grade 1 teacher and I used to promote engagements with informational texts in one rural Jamaican primary school. Some of the instructional strategies and activities were bridging connections from the known to the unknown, reading aloud to increase content…

Contributes to cultural-studies scholarship on ethnographic media studies by examining the reception of imported romance novels among women in postcolonial urban India. Shows that romance novels were found pleasurable because they were an extension of Indian women's childhood English-language reading, and they were viewed as resources to improve…