Building on the groundbreaking research of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media & Learning initiative, this book crosses the divide between digital literacies and traditional print culture to engage a generation of students who can read with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other. "Reading in a Participatory Culture" tells the story of an…

This practitioner packet is designed to help community college administrators implement reforms to developmental education at their colleges. It reviews common impediments to developmental reform and presents data that supports directions colleges can take to create a system of developmental education that might serve students more effectively.…

This literary analysis examines constructions of normalcy and disability within contemporary young adult literature, including "Jerk," "California" (Friesen, 2008), "Marcelo in the Real World" (Stork, 2009), and "Five Flavors of Dumb" (John, 2010). As recent winners of the Schneider Family Book Award from the American Library Association, these…

Many universities and colleges are increasingly concerned about enhancing the comprehension and knowledge of their students, particularly in the classroom. One of the method to enhancing student success is teaching effectiveness. The objective of this research paper is to propose a novel research model which examines the relationship between…

At a time when political leaders and media pundits seek to narrow the English curriculum and reduce its knowledge structure to the "basics," it is helpful to revisit the potential of different approaches to learning in English that have evolved over time. In this paper I reflect on the semantic features of personal growth, cultural…

This study, situated within the fields of English education and writing teacher education, illustrates not only "what" is happening in writing methods courses but why in its examination of writing methods courses and instructor influences. The writing methods course is identified by English educators and writing teacher educators as…

This article uses Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse to account for both the processes by which curriculum change occurs and the failure of efforts to introduce meaningful attention to language structure into national curricula.

Emotional literacy has an important place in the English curriculum because emotions cannot be separated from reading, writing, and thinking critically with language. Teachers can use the study of literature, writing, and language to reframe emotion from being something that creates victims and victimizers into feelings that can be critically…

Once again, the National Curriculum orders for English are being rewritten. The writers of the new curriculum have looked to the education systems of "high-performing jurisdictions" for inspiration. The result is a curriculum draft that offers a limited view of the subject and one which apparently fails to prioritise the needs of the…

While learners can acquire vocabulary through extensive reading (Pigada & Schmitt, 2006), research suggests that acquisition can be more effective when supplemented with targeted vocabulary activities (e.g., Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). Problems arise, however, in determining what vocabulary learners have acquired, and what items should be…

The increasing importance of English as a global language, calls for an equally vigorous attempt to improving teaching and learning it in schools as a second language within and outside India. Highlighting the relevance of contextualising ESL learning by allowing for the needs of students and teachers in undertaking reforms to ESL learning, this…

Test preparation for high-stakes English language tests has received increasing research attention in the language assessment field; however, little is known about what aspects of test preparation students attend to and value. In this study, we considered the perspectives of 12 Chinese students who were enrolled in various academic programs in a…

Although English-as-a-second-language (ESL) programs for matriculated students have been a presence in U.S. higher education since the 1940s, little has been documented in the literature concerning ESL courses, ESL placement tests, and the procedures in which incoming students are placed into appropriate classes.The present study takes three…

Background: The matter of teacher knowledge in the curriculum subject of English is not simple. Certainly it is not easy to delineate what its "content knowledge" should be and how this relates to other aspects of teacher knowledge. In the context of education policy in England, at a time of change when the nature of the subject and its…

This article reports on an investigation into how learners in a British EFL setting perceive the classroom practice of student-student interaction and why it is perceived in these ways. Adopting qualitative non-experimental methods, I first explored issues leading to the concept of "usefulness" and identified factors that appeared to…