Inspired by a recognition of high school students' frequent disengagement during reading and their lack of comfort and confidence with finding ways to engage with texts, the purpose of this research was to examine the impact of social-media formatted low-stakes writing tasks in the high school English classroom. Drawing from research on writing…

This study explores the pedagogical effectiveness of assignments developed for a first-year composition course to encourage reflexive reading habits that can aid students in the writing process. Students in this course were asked to articulate the connections they found between multimodal texts of their own choosing and texts assigned by their…

In a country where English is not a native language, the language course designs for undergraduate medical students may usually underscore the instruction of language itself (e.g., grammar). This study demonstrated how literature (i.e., stories in this study) and the practice of art were integrated into the pedagogy of English for Medical…

Extensive reading is an approach to language learning that encourages learners to read a large quantity of easy reading material. A substantial body of research confirms the effectiveness of this approach for developing proficiency in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages. This paper explains what extensive reading is, why it is important, and…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

This article reports on the partial results of a longitudinal study I conducted to investigate the first-year students' experiences in dealing with the challenges they face while attaining the academic literacy skills required of them and constructing their academic identities at an American university in the UAE. While the challenges encountered…

This article discusses one teacher's efforts to give their students a mentor text for a persuasive, research-based writing project. The author's shift from assigning predominantly fiction to focusing more on nonfiction came as a result of their efforts to help their students move from students' current writing style -- that of a five-paragraph…

This study investigated perceptions of a class of 20 first-year Japanese college students on peer questioning in cooperative reading activities. After the instructor gave an hour of interactive explanations of the reading, in which students were encouraged to interact actively with the instructor in interpreting the reading material, students were…

City as Text™ (CAT) is one of the earliest structural forms of experiential learning created and practiced in the United States. This monograph explores the centrality of writing in the process of active learning, focusing primarily on the Faculty Institutes and Honors Semesters that foster CAT experiences. All manifestations of this pedagogical…

As concerns mount over the costs and benefits of higher education, it may be worthwhile to glance at the benefits of high school education at present as well. Of course, high school costs, while high, are borne by the taxpayers in general, but it is reasonable to hope that there are sufficient benefits for such an outlay. One of the most…

Research in the area of academic writing has demonstrated that writing varies significantly across disciplines and among genres within disciplines. Two important approaches to studying diversity in disciplinary academic writing have been the genre-based approach and the corpus-based approach. Genre studies have considered the situatedness of…

Although not everyone needs textbooks, they still actively serve four audiences within the discipline. The four audiences that benefit from textbooks are students, instructors, the textbook sales force, and the textbook authors themselves. With a growing number of online classes where students have less and less, or even no, face time with their…

This qualitative study explores the uses of reading and note-taking in two pre-service teacher training Social Sciences courses. Data analysis of in-depth interviews with professors and students, class observations and course materials suggested two polar teaching styles according to how bibliography was included in the course and the presence or…

For novice and experienced instructors alike, facilitating online discussions can seem like a daunting prospect. Many ask themselves how to do so in an effective and meaningful way that actually adds to the course experience rather than seeming like mere busywork. The MANIC discussion strategy is one that promotes deeper student interaction with…

This article reports findings from two studies assessing reading compliance among first semester freshmen at a small Midwestern two-year liberal arts university. The first study assessed reading compliance of students enrolled in two sections of First Year Seminar, finding that 46% of students reported that they read assignments, yet only 55% of…