We argue for a course in which students analyze writing about a common topic--in this case World War I--from multiple genres (e.g., poetry and technical manuals). We address the divide between instruction in pragmatic and literary writing and calls to bridge that gap. Students working in disparate areas of English learn the strengths and the…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of prospective teachers of Turkish language and literature on the "text analysis methods" course. In this study, which used the qualitative research approach, the case study design was used. 13 teacher candidates who are enrolled in the Turkish language and literature teaching program…

A recent article in "The Weekly Standard," "Kenyon College Cancels Play About Immigration; Starts 'Whiteness Group,'" describes a current call for censorship. Wendy MacLeod's play, "The Good Samaritan," is about an immigrant family in the U.S. surviving "without pay and living in dire conditions," according…

Ethnically unfamiliar literature can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to expand their repertoire of available texts to better support students in their care. However, ethnically unfamiliar literatures can be difficult for readers to understand and appreciate. This article addresses this disconnect by infusing multicultural literature…

This paper aims at a theoretical comparative textual analysis of two novels; Chinua Achebe's "Arrow of God" (1964) and Ibrahim Tahir's "The Last Imam" (1984). The focus is on their similarities generally and roles played by the heroes in their different societies as political and religious leaders of the different societies and…

Edmundson states that if he could make one wish for the members of his profession, college and university professors of literature, he would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, they would give up readings. By "a reading," he means the application of an analytical vocabulary to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art.…

The author, an elementary teacher, used an online message board and wikis to engage students in literature discussions and to deepen their understanding of and interest in the books they were reading. Her students were much more motivated to read and discuss books using the online tools.

Extremists, whether formalists of the New Criticism or of the humanist-moralist tradition, are taken to task in this attempt to combine elements of both in a more pluralistic approach to literary criticism. An analysis of a Frost poem, "Stopping by Woods", is attempted as an illustration of a kind of criticism that seeks to clarify the parts of…

This dissertation dealt with the preparation, designing, teaching, and evaluation of a course in literary theory. The course examined the following areas of literary study: definition, perception, description, explication, interpretation, and evaluation. It is centered on the following theses: (1) in literary pursuits criticism is teaching and…

This study investigated whether adolescents' response to film is similar to or different from their response to literature and what these similarities or differences mean. Tenth grade students read two literary selections and viewed two films paired on the basis of similarities in treatment of subject and theme. Students' written responses to…

Transactional literary theory centers on the reader's contribution in the two-way relationship with the literary text, lifting the reader to a prominent, essential position along with the author and the text. It develops the premise that the reader evokes a literary work through selective attention to the details of the author's "paper and…

Even the best university students reject serious modern literature in favor of science fiction and other popular fictions that present favorable, heroic versions of mankind. (JH)

A dialectical heuristic that can be used to guide students through the stages of writing about a literary experience is discussed in this paper. The first section of the paper provides a working definition of literature as an area of discourse and divides the process of reading and writing about literature into three general phases: progressive,…

The problem, emphasized by I. A. Richards, of cultivating in students an awareness of literature which enables them to discern good and bad writing remains unsolved. As demonstrated in critical essays about a poem written under examination conditions by two 16-year-old boys, an ability to identify poetic techniques is not enough to ensure proper…