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The purpose of this paper is to investigate why reading aloud (RA), both by teachers and students, is such a common practice in high school classrooms. In particular, this investigation considers students’ views of why RA is practised and what are its effects.

The paper presents the results of two small focus group discussions, in which high school students were given the opportunity to express their responses to the notion of RA in the classroom. Their responses are considered in the context of theoretical views of RA: pedagogical, reader-response and social/vocational.

Analysis of responses revealed acknowledgement that RA is not only a useful skill but also that it is in the classroom, a site of anxiety and even conflict.

The sample is small and of very circumscribed generalisability. The students’ responses indicate further questions that might usefully be asked about the purpose and value of RA, in school and in society.

The findings have implications for teachers’ practice, particularly in terms of the extent to which and the conditions in which students’ RA can develop confidence.

Although much has been written about the use of RA with young children, it remains under-researched in mainstream high schools.

This paper, which originates in an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom activity in Hong Kong, aims to explore English learners’ expressive and creative potential in writing by studying their work in the literary narrative genre.

A group of upper secondary students (15-16 years of age) with limited English resources and competence was enlisted to remake a folktale with visual and written prompts.

The writing samples demonstrate that these low-level EFL writers are able to refashion the narrative elements, and to communicate meanings for their own purposes. They exhibit logicality and problem-solving skills in their attempts to challenge and transform idea and to include themes of interest to them. There is also evidence of creative play with language in their use of dialogues and figures of speech.

These writing outcomes suggest the need to re-vision English language arts practices in increasingly diverse education systems. Genre-based instruction, with its emphasis on “writing to mean” as a social activity supported by learning to use language, could lead to widening EFL learners’ access to genre knowledge and to greater life chances.

A linguistics-based pedagogy scaffolding less able EFL writers while they learn to build effective narratives is identified as a way forward.

Although the idea of using narratives to engage EFL learners in writing is not entirely new, this paper contributes to the field by responding to low-level learners’ writing that goes beyond linguistic “correctness”, and developing strategies for supporting creativity and language play.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the growing interest in oracy and to propose the pedagogy of process drama as an ideal model for the dialogic classroom.

This paper takes the form of an explanatory case study where the author draws on a successful drama/oracy project in a primary school in Brisbane, Australia, to illustrate the connections between Alexander’s five indicators of a dialogic classroom and the process drama in which the students participated.

The application of this process drama as pedagogy for the teaching and learning of oracy has contributed positively to students’ oral communication skills and intercultural awareness. In addition, parents provide positive feedback about student engagement in school and developing self-confidence because “they have something to say”.

There was no formal pre-post test for the oral communication skills on this study, instead the researchers developed a draft “oracy” checklist which deserves further interrogation and development.

There are implications for the use of process drama as a means of creating and sustaining the dialogic classroom. Teacher professional development would be required to assist the planning and delivery of dramas that allow for the deep and complex learning evidenced in this study.

This is an ideal vehicle for assisting in the development of empathy, collaboration, emotional intelligence and intercultural understanding.

This is an example of an extremely high-quality curriculum plan and implementation. The importance of engaging in implicit and explicit instruction of oral communication for the twenty-first century should not be underestimated. The process drama allows oral language to be foregrounded, with additional learning opportunities from a range of other learning areas, brought together in a coherent and complex model of practice.

The purpose of this paper is to combine conceptual and documentary research.

Drawing on a range of New Zealand curriculum documents and on the history of English subject in the New Zealand context, it maps aspects of the contestation that has accompanied the development of various versions of the subject over time. It also explores ways in which the subject has always drawn on a range of primary disciplinary discourses through a process of recontextualization (Bernstein, 2000).

Based on this analysis, it problematizes the conventional location of literary study within the English curriculum, arguing that this arrangement disadvantages English as an additional language (EAL) students with an interest in literature. As another plank in the argument, it argues that literary study is itself currently disadvantaged by being linked to narrowly conceived notions of textual practice and the pervasive power of high-stake assessment technologies in constructing content and pedagogy.

A solution to both problems is offered, arguing a case for relocating literary study in an expanded Arts curriculum. The paper then goes on to draw on the concept of disciplinary literacy, to argue a case for the “reinvention” of the English teacher as a cross-disciplinary resource teaching a re-framed subject renamed “Disciplinary Rhetorics”. It concludes by discussing the implications of these two re-envisionments for English teacher identities and the construction of their professional content and pedagogical knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and consider the implications of the literature justifying the value of teaching poetry. There has been a long tradition of literature education in the English departments of Chinese universities. English Poetry courses are offered within optional literature modules in senior stages of a BA in English language and literature. In 2000, the new national syllabus for tertiary English majors was issued. This syllabus has brought the teaching of English into line with the perceived practical needs of society. As a result, poetry courses have been under threat within the degree. A substantial number of university teachers have responded to this threat with articles arguing the value of teaching of poetry.

The China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the largest database of academic journals in China, reveals that from 2000 to 2013, 102 articles about teaching English poetry to Chinese people learning English as a foreign language were published in Chinese academic journals, of which 67 are concerned with English majors. This literature examines these 67 articles.

These articles justify the purpose of teaching English poetry, evaluate the content of poetry courses and share pedagogical strategies. The issues within this discussion fall into three categories: why teach poetry; what to teach in poetry courses; and how to teach poetry. Because the commitment of Chinese teachers to sharing their beliefs about teaching English poetry is positioned in the context of increased advocacy for the creation of inter-disciplinary market-orientated graduates, discomfort, uncertainty and the desire for change emerge in this discussion. On the other hand, teachers looking for change express caution about the costs of changing pedagogical approaches on the development of the skills of close reading and analysis of poetical texts.

This investigation of the local Chinese context resonates with and contributes to the wider discussion of the challenges faced by English literature teachers in both second- (L2) and first-language (L1) contexts and warrants examination. It is difficult to say in advance how far such knowledge could contribute to any policy decisions that may be made in the future, but it is important that the voice of teachers contributes to the larger international debate about the value of humanities in tertiary-level education.

The purpose of this study is to address the situation that although the theoretical benefits of using drama projects in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) have been described in a number of studies, researchers have identified a lack of literature on their practical use, particularly in terms of different institutional settings, teaching styles, learning styles and proficiency levels. This paper therefore describes three case studies in universities in Korea, showing that the use of drama projects can be successfully used in different teaching situations and is an effective means of promoting meaningful language learning in students often demotivated by traditional methods and the test-driven classroom.

In these adult-learner EFL settings, a process approach to drama projects aimed to promote meaningful language acquisition and holistic learning in students of different proficiencies and majors. Drama projects were used as: syllabus supplementation by an individual teacher in a Korean-mediated English program (Case Study 1); core content on an English-mediated pre-service teacher training course (Case Study 2); and syllabus content on a Freshman English program taught by 25 native-speaking instructors (Case Study 3). Data were collected from pre/post-course questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and students’ evaluations. These were then triangulated to identify trends in participant perceptions.

Results indicated positive attitude change and promotion of cognition, positive affect and social skills in all three case studies, confirming earlier research findings and showing that the drama project is a viable and effective educational tool for the foreign language teacher, from individual syllabus supplementation to incorporation into a language program curriculum. Rather than resisting the innovation presented by drama projects, the adult learners involved welcomed the opportunities for creativity, autonomy, group work and performance.

The practical confirmation of the theoretical benefits of EFL drama projects across individual and institutional settings indicates the potential value of including them in university language programs and teacher-training EFL curricula, enabling and encouraging language teachers to promote holistic, meaningful language learning.

This paper aims to delve deeply into the sometimes clashing interplays in English classrooms to explore the ways in which new media makes visible long-existing discourses and assumptions about the purpose of schools and the roles of teachers and students.

This piece draws upon discourse analysis and utilizes the frame of strategies versus tactics (de Certeau, 1984) to trace the complex classroom interplays between a high school English teacher, a partnering researcher and a high school junior during the process of a month-long digital photography project.

Data reveal that, at times, both teachers and students made moves to preserve the status quo of the school space (through strategies), and at other times, worked to reshape the space for more relevant purposes (through tactics.) Strategies that emerge from teacher moves include the formalization of requirements and the controlling of bodies; the student strategy described is the perpetuation of stereotypes. Teacher tactics reported include repositioning identities, reframing “the work” and opening up space for inquiry. Student tactics include resistance, shifting to the personal, subverting a given task and self-positioning. The author argues that generative potential exists at the intersection of teacher tactics and student tactics, and calls for furthering the co-construction of classroom spaces.

By zooming in on the process, rather than the product, that ensued as the focal student created and defended her photographs representing school as jail, this paper emphasizes the agency that both teachers and students can enact in sometimes limiting classroom spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how student learning materials, such as textbooks, are becoming more oriented toward multi-modal approaches using visuality and orality. While such approaches may help students to understand and then to reproduce taught materials, the objective of this paper is to question whether they are serving to promote students’ critical literacy.

The paper assesses the character of current textbooks and other means of student support, such as online learning management systems, and assesses how well they seem able to promote the critical literacy that requires ability in “reading against” and “writing back”. The paper goes on to identify ways in which some parts of the university see orality as preliminary and subordinate to literacy-focused communication, but elsewhere, the pinnacle of students’ work is artistic or creative attainments with lesser need to write complexly literate textual works.

As a means of trying to resolve inherent tensions between differing pedagogical assumptions and methods in the university, the paper proposes ways in which Ong’s (1982, p. 36) nine communication characteristics of “orally based thought and expression” may be able to offer insights into challenges of improving students’ critical literacy.

The inherent academic tensions within the university still remain insufficiently theorized. For example, the humanities and social sciences (still) place much store on developing students’ abilities in critical writing, while disciplines such as design or creative arts are much more focused on students’ creative outputs. The paper contributes to a better understanding of such scholars talking past one another.

Scholars in different academic camps often note the discrepancies in how their relative pedagogical tasks are to be understood, but typically, it is not clear to them how they might better relate to other parts of the university. The paper aims to elucidate the nature of academic differences that often appear to exist to provide insights into possibly new ways of seeing everyday teaching and learning.

Ong’s insights into literacy and orality when viewed through a prism of tertiary teaching and learning provide a practical means whereby students and other university stakeholders can develop a better appreciation of the character of the modern university.

The novel use of Walter Ong’s model of literacy and orality provides fresh ways of seeing challenges and disputes within the academic community and suggests new ways of seeing students’ work and their teachers’ expectations of them.

An overview of English aims, theoretical scope and methods is badly needed. Ministries throughout the English-speaking world have become dominated by a demand for testing – stimulated no doubt by regular Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveys – and lost sight of first principles. The purpose of this article is therefore to set out a model of English drawn from the best international experience since the 1960s, collected during seminars and practical workshops on four continents.

This paper uses a collection of experiences drawn from seminars and practical workshops over the past 50 years. It incorporates researches and reflections generated with the author’s former colleagues.

The paper gives an insider’s account of the carefully designed movement for English development and teacher participation that started during that decade in England, ramifying and attracting new energies in Canadian provinces, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Founded in new theories of classroom communication and interaction, the emerging models also demonstrated the urgent need for new approaches to assessment, sampling students’ optimal achievements. The regime that is universally replacing this major work depends, it can be shown, on a model designed by ministers (disregarding professional advice) and avowedly intended to promote competition among pupils, teachers and schools – thus stifling the kinds of cooperation essential to any classroom, especially in the arts, and indeed to Education in general. But the historical foundations remain, from that creative period, and can be reclaimed.

This is an original view from an author who is one of the handful of survivors and who has been active in each stage since 1960, and has been privileged to be invited to four continents to convene seminars and practical workshops over many years.