The aim of this study is to review research on poetry reading pedagogy in secondary education from 1990 to 2015. Today there is little research on poetry teaching in Sweden and thus little guidance for secondary teachers. Therefore, this study thematically analyses peer-reviewed articles from English language international journals. Articles were…

Recent research shows that reading comprehension relies heavily on prior knowledge. Far more than generic "reading skills" like drawing inferences, making predictions, and knowing the function of subheads, how well students learn from a nonfiction text depends on their background knowledge of the text's subject matter. And in a cyclical…

Literature is not generally considered as a coherent branch of the curriculum in relation to language development in either native or foreign language teaching. As teachers of English in multicultural Indian classrooms, we come across students with varying degrees of competence in English language learning. Although language learning is a natural…

The authors share findings from a recent study of teens who freely select to read texts typically marginalized by schools (dystopia, vampire, romance, horror, fantasy), revealing the distinct functional and psychological benefits of pleasure reading. The students who participated in the study that the authors report on were eighth graders who…

Reflecting on 45 years of teaching and research, Lee Galda argues that practice based on transactional theory is essential for the effective teaching of literature.

Becoming an effective literacy learner requires a bit of slowing down and appreciating the reflective nature of reading and writing. Literature circles support this instructional direction because they provide opportunities for immersing students in discussions that encourage their personal responses. When students feel their personal responses…

Teaching postcolonial literature can be a daunting undertaking that teachers may try to avoid. This article explores three problems that teachers may confront in teaching postcolonial texts. The first problem deals with which literary text to choose and the criteria that may help teachers anchor their choices. Second, in response to the question…

Online booksellers have done a terrific job of developing ways to let customers share their opinions about books with the goal of getting a person to buy more books. They have also made effective use of the bottom line, which is what a customer spends those hard-earned dollars on, to further entice people to add one more item to their cart. In…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what teachers in a Western Canadian province were doing when engaging their students with literature. Forty two teachers from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 were interviewed, which allowed us to get a broad perspective on the types of reader response activities that are being taught in the classroom…

Scholars have argued for reading and discussing children's and young adult literature containing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ) characters and related themes with youths. Yet, we know very little about how to do this among LGBTQ people and their allies. This study examined 18 transcripts of talk from a literature…

What is the hold of literature on a reader's imagination, on my imagination? I remember many hours spent with books in a kind of romantic entanglement, and heartful obsession, and joyful reverie. I certainly remember being lost with words, lost in enthusiastic abandonment. I loved the sounds of words, and the images they conjured, and the…

Textbooks and grammar worksheets do not adequately convey to students how readers or listeners are shaped by the language of the writer. The best way to help students understand the emphasis of a dash or another device is to see one used during a suspenseful moment in a dramatic selection. It is up to the teacher to select dramatic works that…

Re-reading James Moffett's work in the light of more recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, this paper presents a "deconstructive" account of Moffett's key texts. Understanding them as instances in themselves of rhetoric and textuality, and reading them at once "with" and "against" the grain, the…

Teaching narrative text selections is an important part of the middle grades English curriculum. As middle grades educators search for ways to best support their students' reading, it is important to consider carefully the effects of various approaches to teaching literature. This study focused on the two most popular approaches to teaching…

In this qualitative study, the author explores how young readers build literary understanding through performative responses in picturebook read-alouds. Performative responses allow children to create and express meaning in ways that go beyond talk and that engage their creativity and imagination. They include a variety of modalities, such as…