This junior high school study guide supplements Gore Vidal's "Visit to a Small Planet." Included are quizzes (with answer keys) and teaching suggestions on the presentation of the opus, oral reports, reading comprehension, various acts of the play, vocabulary and word analysis, sentence patterns and tranformations, language usage,…

An interdisciplinary approach to teaching English and religion can eliminate some of the educational problems posed by each subject. Part one of this thesis presents a philosophy of education which suggests that confluent and student-centered methods of teaching can best develop creativity and, thus, lead to greater humanization of students. Part…

Argues that graduate schools are overproducing literary scholars and underproducing composition and rhetoric scholars, who carry the increasingly bulk of the work in English departments, and examines, in detail, this split between rhetoric and literary scholars. (SRT)

Provides a background of response theory, two Canadian perspectives on response theory, a description of transactional response theory and response-centered curriculum, a discussion of the concepts of participant and spectator roles in literature and of the idea of narration and storying as literature, and a discussion of analysis and criticism.…

Argues that when involving students in activities that require them to explore texts creatively, teachers should also make them inquire into their own reading processes--especially since the reading of literature helps the students to become aware of their own intellectual process if attention is focused on them reflexively. (HOD)

Describes the use of scene work, informal presentations of dramatic passages, to explore aspects of plays that readers are likely to overlook. Finds that this scene work increases the pertinence of students' comments in class and the ambitiousness of their written work. (MM)

Based on William Golding's novel "Lord of the Flies," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that, on a literal level, the novel deals with what happens to a group of boys stranded on an island; and that on a symbolic level, it investigates what happens to civilized people when the structures of civilization…

Based on H.G. Wells' novel "War of the Worlds" and the reaction to Orson Wells' 1938 adaptation for radio, this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that literature originally created in one medium is often adapted to another medium; and that technology can make the unreal seam real and can otherwise confuse…

Suggests that the works of Willa Cather can be used to introduce students to the skills and outlooks needed to read literature. (JL)

Notes the difficulties of getting students to respond to literature. Outlines an idealized conversation about a literary work, with some excerpts of the kinds of student-teacher exchanges that can occur. Offers a guide sheet for conducting such literary conversations. (RL)

Presents a potpourri of classroom techniques used by 28 teachers to develop skills in paragraph composition, public speaking, classroom discussion, the examination of specific literary works, and other language arts activities. (RL)

Describes how a North Carolina school system's integrated English/Social Studies pilot program helped ninth grade students develop more awareness of their local, state, and national community. Notes that the program features research, writing, and literary analysis, as well as a planned program for the "common good." (PRA)

Novice poetry readers need to realize that there are limits to poetic license, specifically with regard to the order of words in a sentence of poetry. For example, the integrity of independent clauses is not violated--no word placed in one independent clause is meant to be read as an element of another independent clause. Although parenthetical…

The articles in this journal issue suggest techniques for classroom use of literature that has "withstood the test of time." The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "The Storytelling Connection for the Classics" (Mary Ellen Martin); (2) "Elizabeth Bennet: A Liberated Woman" (Geneva Marking);…

Focusing on the notion that the author supplies the words in a text while the reader supplies the meaning, this issue contains essays that combine literary theories with classroom practices. Following an introduction by R. E. Fitch, articles include "Teaching a Western: Jack Schaefer's 'Shane'" (J. R. Ruff); "Pragmatic Criticism in…