Discusses approaches to teaching literature in high schools during an era of retrenchment and calls for a return to the "basics." Considers rationales for making literature study relevant to students' and society's needs. (JT)

Describes a literature course organized around the themes of home and family that are meaningful to freshmen and sophomores, which demonstrates that good writers draw their characters and formulate their conflicts from universal human experiences and concerns. (MKM)

Describes Internet reference resources in language and literature. Includes general literature sites; language dictionaries; language resources; electronic text collections; author information and criticism; poetry; folklore and mythology; and children's literature. (AEF)

Assesses preservice and inservice reading teachers' literature knowledge and their skill in analyzing literature for middle/upper grades. Indicates that half of undergraduates knew only half of the literary terms and were unable to analyze either the story or poem adequately. Notes that graduate students fared better. Concludes teachers may have…

The connection between Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) and literature is discussed with examples of technical vocabulary drawn from a variety of writers, with particular attention to a sketch by the British dramatist Harold Pinter, "Trouble in the Works," which makes extensive use of the terminology of machine parts. It is noted…

The role of literature in education is examined, and implications for assessment of student understanding of literature are outlined. There are three distinct views of the role of literature in school. Literature is variously construed as an adjunct to the learning of reading and writing, as a subject with its own body of knowledge, and as an…

When students write in response to literature, they make reading a creative act. Recording their personal reaction to a poem or an excerpt from a larger work, students become aware of the complex web of past experiences, associations and ideas triggering their responses; they learn to interact more fully, more consciously, with the text. Besides…

A literary communication model cannot adjudicate the conflicting claims of transformation and enculturation: that literature is intrinsically educational, that it conduces to psychic growth as a process, irrespective of subject matter and free from the dangers of indoctrination, but that the imperative to make it instrumental to political ends…

This report discusses the opposition to fantasy, as well as the support for it, both as an activity of the mind and as literature, and concludes that fantasy literature is useful in promoting language development and literature appreciation. The report then discusses characteristics of fantasy literature, lists works suitable for class use, and…

A seminar devoted to explorations of the feelings of self and others, as a means of heightening responses to literature, is described. (JH)

THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENT PACKET OF THE NEBRASKA ENGLISH CURRICULUM BEGINS WITH A UNIT ON "THE MAKING OF HEROES, THE NOBLEMAN IN WESTERN LITERATURE" WHICH LEADS STUDENTS TO QUESTION WHAT MAKES A HERO, WHAT HE IS LIKE, AND HOW HE EXISTS IN LITERATURE. AFTER READING A NUMBER OF BRIEF SELECTIONS FROM SUCH WORKS AS "THE…

THE LITERATURE PROGRAM OF THE GRADE 10 NEBRASKA ENGLISH CURRICULUM EMPHASIZES MAN'S CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD--HIS PICTURE OF NATURE, OF SOCIETY, AND OF MORAL LAW--AND HOW THESE THREE CONCEPTS ARE PRESENTED IN LITERATURE. UNITS COVER THE FOLLOWING TOPICS--(1) "MAN'S PICTURE OF NATURE," (2) "THE LEADER AND THE GROUP," (3)…

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF WRITING LIGHT VERSE, EITHER FOR FUN OR FOR PUBLICATION, ARE DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK--(1) THE NATURE AND APPEAL OF LIGHT VERSE AND ITS MANY VARIETIES, (2) SUBJECTS WHICH LEND THEMSELVES BEST TO THE LIGHT-VERSE TREATMENT, (3) THE APPLICATION OF WHAT ONE HAS LEARNED FROM READING, THINKING, AND CLOSELY OBSERVING HUMAN FOIBLES, (4)…

The Truman Capote nonfiction novel, "In Cold Blood," which reflects for adolescents the immediacy of the real world, illuminates (1) social issues--capital punishment, environmental influence, and the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots," (2) moral issues--the complexity of man's nature, the responsibility of one…