One of the greatest challenges for English language arts teachers today is the call to engage students in more complex texts. Tim Gillespie, who has taught in public schools for almost four decades, has found the lenses of literary criticism a powerful tool for helping students tackle challenging literary texts. Tim breaks down the dense language…

Presents an exercise intended to help students understand that reading literature is a worthwhile endeavor. (RB)

Prereading activities, analogous to prewriting activities, can draw on the reader's prior knowledge of the subject and make the student's reading of literature more proficient, raise the comprehension level, and make class discussions more meaningful. Some suggested prereading activities for the literature classroom include (1) making students…

Presents a brief overview of the history of the emergence of composition courses in English-speaking universities and examines research on the activities of reading, composing, and responding to literature. Describes a literature and composition course in English as a second language which focuses on the interrelationship between reading and…

This guide for junior and senior high school teachers of literature describes 100 post-reading activities--including critiques, debates, symposiums, forums, research papers, minilectures, and critical analyses--which were designed to stimulate student interest, encourage reading, and develop critical thinking. As a summary, a chart lists (1) the…

Discusses English as a second language (ESL) theory as it relates to the use of literature, and presents a four-step approach to any literary text that obliges ESL students to take responsibility for building their own successively more complex schemata. This approach is illustrated with Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home." (Author/LMO)

Noting that instructional films can serve as a valuable tool to motivate students and to help them organize, interpret, and evaluate concepts presented, this program guide is designed to assist teachers in planning instructional activities that will effectively integrate films into the English language arts curriculum. The first section of the…