This essay considers the relative merits of critical writing and writing in role as a means of enabling and assessing students' responses to literary texts. Drawing largely on the author's experience of teaching "Frankenstein," it argues that the distinction between critical and creative writing is not as absolute as is sometimes…

Despite the difficulty of defining young adult literature (YAL), the benefits of it have been well recognised for adolescent learners. With the aim of exploring pedagogical approaches to L2 literature, this study reports on a YAL reading programme carried out in a secondary EFL classroom in China. To gain both teacher and student perspectives,…

This paper presents original research which investigates university students' perceptions of identity, rights and duties in relation to four novels at a public-sector university in Sindh, Pakistan. Reader-response framework and model of citizenship are used as theoretical frameworks guiding this study. The findings are based on data supplied by 26…

This essay considers the assumption that the study of English involves engaging students' imaginations to explore a range of interpretations and hypothesise about meaning. It goes on to explore the reading positions of two students in a Year 10 class, who were studying "A Christmas Carol" at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary…

This article addresses the interconnection between two education practices: reading and mathematics. These are two common aspects of schooling. Learners engage with these critical practices, regularly. There hardly goes a day in the life of schoolgoing children without them engaging in these two practices in one form or another. However, the point…

This study emerged from the abrupt shift to online distance teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic and reports of "Mother Tongue Instruction" (MTI) in Sweden, where online distance teaching was initially introduced in MTI only. In Sweden, MTI is offered to students whose parents/caregivers speak languages other than Swedish on a daily…

This paper reports on findings from a classroom study on the introduction and effectiveness of new methods of instruction using English literature in a Japanese high school setting. It is based on data compiled during a two-year research project. In this paper, we will detail the investigation and findings from an analysis of student questionnaire…

Using Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" as an anchor text, the authors argue for applied theatre strategies as vivid and viable tools for exploring challenging texts and applying critical lenses in an embodied way. Readers are guided through a series of theatre-based, English-classroom accessible improvisational frameworks to help…

The heart of this article is an account written by a student at the end of the course. In this account Jeremy charts his changing views about teaching literature. Influenced by the work of Jerome Bruner (1986) and others, he argues for greater 'flexibility' in the ways we conceptualise 'critical response' to a literary text. The work his Year 9…

Senior English students, in spite of themselves, respond to Dickens both critically and emotionally. Impressed by Dickens'"artistry of style," they nonetheless disagree with each other over whether his characters are believable and whether the exaggeration of character traits is an effective device. The deepest level of understanding…