This article describes the use of drama activities to motivate students, to teach vocabulary and pronunciation, and to enhance cooperative learning. The author describes in five steps the classroom procedure of an activity based on the play of "Romeo and Juliet." The author discusses the results of the activity and its implications. Play…

In their anthology, Guth and Rico cite as preface to Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," a student paper saying: "The mere doubt of the existence of good and the thought that other human beings are evil can become such a corrosive force that it can eat out the life of the heart." This is what happens to Brown. In the…

A teacher in an inner-city London school describes how she involves low income, minority group students in learning classics such as Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." Emphasizes cooperative learning and active student involvement using their urban background. (FMW)

This lesson plan, featuring the epic, "Beowulf," employs the introduction-quotation exchange to monitor student comprehension while reading the epic. A second exercise, also dealing with reading comprehension, requires students to keep an historical evidence journal and fill out an historical evidence chart. The lesson plan features a…

States that Great Britain's National Curriculum pre-20th century list of prescribed authors is overloaded with unrealistic choices. Reports on a small-scale survey of actual choices made by teachers from this list. Calls for further research. Discusses teaching treatments of actual texts and makes a case for recognizing the work of the poet John…

Addresses social and cultural changes of reading in Russia: (1) changes in cultural hierarchy; (2) changes in reader behavior; (3) declining importance of classic literature; and (4) rise of mass culture and its effects. Tables present information on the genre of books that were best sellers and books borrowed from Russian libraries. (JMV)

In today's interconnected and global society, socially responsive learning is an integral part of educational excellence. This book encourages socially responsive learning by showing the reader how to use traditional African folk tales and quality children's books, young adult novels, classic literature, and film media about Africa as the mode for…

A two-year ethnographic study of dialogic literary circles in Spain explored the learning experience of adults who participated in them. In a dialogic society, educational projects providing real opportunities for transformation and overcoming inequalities usually had a dialogic orientation and promoted instrumental learning as well as critical…

This paper examines the debate about the English literature canon in schools. It evaluates the importance of the canon in a 21st-century curriculum and considers its relevance to adolescent readers saturated in early 21st-century culture who have disparate identities and diverse backgrounds. The implications for teaching and learning of the…