Although secondary school teachers have long been aware of the pedagogical possibilities of Louise Rosenblatt's Reader Response (articulated first in "Literature as Exploration," 1938) and I. A. Richards' Close Reading (first broached in "The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of…

This small-scale pilot study aimed to establish how the mode of response in an examination affects candidates' performances on items that require an extended answer. The sample comprised 46 17-year-old students from two classes (one in a state secondary school and one in a state sixth-form college), who sat a mock A-level English Literature…

As part of a university-wide project to explore Shakespeare's classic play, "Romeo and Juliet," from a variety of perspectives, an interdisciplinary talk was presented to the university community on the chemistry of the potions and poisons referenced in "Romeo and Juliet." To draw the multidisciplinary audience in and to teach…

This paper mainly analyses the the id, ego, and super-ego which exists in the main character Elizabeth from several aspects, such as her pursuit for love, her prejudice towards Mr. Darcy, and the changes in her attitudes towards Wickham. This analysis helps readers appreciate this masterpiece from a different aspect which is related to the…

This article presents the pedagogical implementation of the reader-response theory in a class of English as a foreign language with language pre-service teachers as they experience the reading of two short stories. The research took place over a 16 week period in which students kept a portfolio of their written responses to the stories.…

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…

This article looks at how four British-based poets born in the Caribbean exploit the rich language repertoire available to them in their work for children and young people. Following initial consideration of questions of definition and terminology, poetry collections by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Valerie Bloom are discussed, with a…

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…

This article offers both a rationale and a proposal for the meaningful contribution of English faculty to the preparation of English teachers. We draw on data from teacher licensure tests and interviews with English and English Education faculty to underscore contradictions among the various voices in English education and to identify ways of…

The article analyses the presence of William Shakespeare as intertext in three recent novels by black British writers which deploy the work of the Bard as they explore British and European identities. Caryl Phillips's "The Nature of Blood" recreates an Othello-like figure who in early Modern Venice struggles to come to terms with his…

Dismissed as "brainless" at school, Alan Markland's one saving grace was his ability to read. It grew into a passion for books and reading which survived years of alcoholism and eventual homelessness. He was in his sixties when he began to realise his true vocation as a writer. Markland describes his early education as "perfunctory." An early…

Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as the greatest inheritance in English literature and recent years have seen a growing interest in introducing them to children in their primary schools. In this book, the authors bring a blend of clear thinking, playful and inventive practice and straightforward practical advice to bear on teaching…

The myth of home is what distinguishes children's literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer ("The Pleasures of Children's Literature," 2003) write that while "the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children's literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends…

Shakespeare's hypotext has invited so many hypertextual transformations over the last four hundred years that twenty-first century students deserve the chance of digging into this rich mine of information and dramatic possibilities. The practical approach of a competency-based teaching method offers great advantages over traditional practices in…

Many readers dismiss James Joyce's final novel as impossible to wade through, with its multilingual puns, songs, jokes, portmanteau words, allusions, scientific references, myths and legends. Given the kinetic elements of any reading experience, features particularly evident in "Finnegans Wake", reading inevitably becomes synonymous with…