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Bringing Literature into the Classroom

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Using  Films (2) in schools A practical guide

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Using  Films (2) in schools A practical guide

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http://mediaedwales.org.uk/pdf/usingfilm.pdf

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Using  Films  (1)

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Courses and teaching and learning materials for anyone teaching with, or about, film.

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Reading and studying Kate Chopin's short stories

One of Kate Chopin's last published short stories ("Polly") appeared in this issue of the Youth's Companion, a popular children's and family magazine, in 1902.

Today all of Kate Chopin's stories are in print and are easily available in published anthologies. Many of them are also available online. Among her most famous stories are several that have pages devoted to them on this site. The five most popular stories are listed here in the order they are most often discussed by students, teachers, scholars, critics, and other readers:

These stories are also popular among scholars, critics, students, and other readers:

Kate Chopin's children's stories are becoming popular among scholars, critics, students, and other readers:

These links will take you to more information about Kate Chopin's short stories.:

Reading Kate Chopin's short stories online and in print
Characters and settings in the short stories
Themes
When the stories were written and published
Films based on the stories
Questions and answers
Two recent translations of Chopin stories
Accurate texts of the stories
Articles and book chapters about specific Chopin short stories
Articles and book chapters about Chopin's subjects and themes
Selected books that discuss Kate Chopin's short stories

Reading Kate Chopin's short stories online and in print

The stories in Chopin's anthologies, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, along with some other stories are available on Donna Campbell's site at Washington State University. Some of Kate Chopin's stories are not yet online. If you're citing a passage of an online text for research purposes, you should check your citation against one of the accurate texts listed below.

In print you can find almost all the stories in and in the Library of America the Penguin Classics edition of paperback and hardcover editions of The Complete Works of Kate Chopin Kate Chopin volume. Kate Chopin's Private Papers publishes a few stories that scholars discovered in recent years. The Penguin Classics edition of Bayou Folk and A Vocation and a Voice includes stories which, according to her early biographer, Daniel Rankin, Chopin had hoped to publish in a third collection. Some stories are available in The Awakening and some in countless general short story anthologies and high school and college textbooks. A Night in Acadie includes the stories Chopin published in those collections, and

For publication information about these books, see the section "For students and scholars" near the bottom of this page.

You can find on the web page for the Library of America Kate Chopin volume a list of which stories Chopin included in Bayou Folk and a Night in Acadie and which she did not included in those anthologies. The LOA web page also explains the difficulty in understanding which stories Chopin had hoped to include in A Vocation and a Voice.

Characters, time, and place in Kate Chopin's short stories

Most of Kate Chopin's short stories are set in the late nineteenth century in Louisiana, often rural Louisiana. Most of the characters, like most of the people living in Louisiana at the time, are Creoles, Acadians, "Americans" (as the Creoles and Acadians call outsiders), African Americans, Native Americans, and people of mixed race. Except for some of the Creoles, most of the characters are terribly poor, because the area has yet to recover from the devastation of the Civil War.

Themes in Kate Chopin's short stories

You can read about finding themes in Kate Chopin's stories and novels on the Themes page of this site, and on the page for a specific story you can see what some readers consider the story's theme or principal subject.

When Kate Chopin's short stories were written and published

Kate Chopin composed her hundred or so stories between 1889 and her death in 1904. Most were published in her lifetime in national and regional magazines and newspapers, including , the Youth's Companion, the Century, and the Atlantic Monthly. A few of the stories were syndicated nationally. Twenty-three of them were included in her collection, Bayou Folk, published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston in 1894, and twenty-one others in A Night in Acadie, published by Way and Williams in Chicago in 1897. A third collection, to have been titled A Vocation and a Voice, was canceled by Chopin's publisher without explanation and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.

You can find out when Kate Chopin wrote each of her short stories and when and where each was first published.

Films based on Kate Chopin's short stories

IMDb.com, the Internet Movie Database, includes a filmography of works based on Kate Chopin's fiction. The listing includes at least nine films-long and short-made between 1956 and 2014.

Questions and answers about Kate Chopin's short stories

Q: Why are there so many French expressions in some of Chopin's stories? If I don't understand French, how do I know what those expressions mean?

A: Many of the characters in Chopin's stories speak French, Spanish, Creole, or all three, in addition to English. Many people with French and Spanish roots live in Louisiana, and some of them speak more than one language. Like Mark Twain and other writers of her time, Chopin was determined to be accurate in the way she recorded the speech of the people she focused on in her work. Some editions of the short stories (like the Penguin Classics editions of Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie and A Vocation and a Voice) include translations of French expressions, and Chopin usually subtly glosses such expressions in the text. Missing the meaning of a French expression is not likely to lead to a mistake in understanding a story.

Q: Did Kate Chopin herself speak French as well as English?

A: Yes. Her mother's family was of French stock, and Kate grew up bilingual.

Q: What about the Creole or other dialectal expressions? I love Kate Chopin, but at places in the short stories, I really struggle with understanding what her characters are saying. How do I deal with that?

A: You might try reading the stories aloud-or you might find someone who can read them aloud with feeling. Chopin is capturing what her characters sound like as they speak, so it may be helpful to hear the story, rather than read it.

For example, here's a passage from an early Chopin story in which a caretaker at a plantation is talking to a visitor. The caretaker says that he himself would not be complaining about how run down the place has become:

"If it would been me myse'f, I would nevair grumb'. W'en a chimbly breck, I take one, two de boys; we patch 'im up bes' we know how. We keep on men' de fence', firs' one place, anudder. . . ."

If you could hear that read aloud, you might understand better. In today's standard English, the character would be saying something like:

"If it would [have] been me myself, I would never grumble. When a chimney breaks, I take one or two [of] the boys; we patch it up [the] best we know how. We keep on mending the fences, first [at] one place [and then at] another. . . ."

Q: Was Kate Chopin's work forgotten until her literary revival in the 1970s?

A: With a few exceptions here and there, was. But some of Chopin's short stories were not forgotten. Several of those stories appeared in an anthology within five years after her death, others were reprinted over the years, and important scholars were writing about her fiction for decades before it caught fire with the appearance of her Complete Works in 1969.

Q: Was Kate Chopin involved in the women's suffrage movement, in the progressive movements for educational reform, health care reform, or sanitation improvement? Was she involved in any other historically significant happenings of her time?

A: Kate Chopin was an artist, a writer of fiction, and like many artists-in the nineteenth century and today-she considered that her primary responsibility to people was showing them the truth about life as she understood it.

So if you're asking if Kate Chopin was involved in social activism as political scientists today would understand that term, the answer is no. She was not a social reformer. Her goal was not to change the world but to describe it accurately, to show people the truth about the lives of women and men in the nineteenth-century America she knew.

If, however, you're asking if Chopin was involved in "historically significant happenings" as many artists would understand those words, then the answer is yes. She was among the first American authors to write truthfully about women's hidden lives, about women's sexuality, and about some of the complexities and contradictions in women's relationships with their husbands.

As the critic Per Seyersted phrases it, Kate Chopin "broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman's submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman's urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom."

Artists like Kate Chopin see the truth and help others to see it. Once people are able to recognize the truth, then they can create social reform movements and set out to correct wrongs and injustices.

Q: So does that mean that what I read on a blog is true, that Kate Chopin "was an integral part of the evolution of feminism, providing early 20th century readers with feminist literature that is still highly respected and studied today"?

A: No, it's almost certainly not true, simply because, from everything we can tell, little of what many readers today consider Chopin's feminist literature was read in the early years of the twentieth century-The Awakening, for example, or "The Story of an Hour," or, certainly, "The Storm." You might argue that after the 1960s or 1970s Chopin became "an integral part of the evolution of feminism," but she probably had little or no influence on early 20th-century feminist readers.

Q: I find it difficult to find the right terms for describing Kate Chopin's style, which I think has some romantic elements but also some realistic ones. In what ways was Chopin influenced by other writers, like Maupassant?

A: Chopin read widely and drew from many movements in nineteenth-century literature-romanticism (she had read Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson), realism (she reviewed a book by Hamlin Garland) and local color (she places her characters in a geographical and historical moment and details their sometimes exotic speech patterns and cultural dispositions). She mentions German philosopher and playwright Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in her work as well as other European writers from Aeschylus to Ibsen. She was deeply influenced by French writers Guy de Maupassant (she loved his economy of detail) and Émile Zola (she was impressed by his determination to tell the truth), both of whom she read in their original French. She understood that Maupassant and Zola rejected sentimental fiction, but she was drawn to the work of the French writer George Sand who at times used sentimental elements to describe a woman trying to balance the well-being of others with her own freedom and integrity.

Q: I understand some critics fault Kate Chopin for her attitudes toward race. Where could I find discussions of that subject?

A: There's been a good deal written about Chopin and race. You might start by reading articles by Anna Shannon Elfenbein, Helen Taylor, and Elizabeth Ammons in the Norton Critical Edition of The Awakening, and you might look at Bonnie James Shaker's Coloring Locals. For a defense of Chopin you might start by checking Emily Toth's Kate Chopin and Bernard Koloski's Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction, and on line you could read Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's comments on the Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening site. You can find information about these and other publications about Chopin and race at the bottom of the page, as well as on pages devoted to individual stories, like "Désirée's Baby."

Q: How can I find out when Kate Choopin wrote her stories and where those works were first published?

A: Composition dates and publication dates for Chopin's works appear on pages 1003 to 1032 of The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969, 2006).

Q: I know that Chopin dealt with a lot of deaths to loved ones growing up. Do many of her writings involve the death of the characters? Are these writings available?

A: In addition to famous stories like "The Story of an Hour" and "Désirée's Baby" and the novels and , here are fifteen short stories in which the subject of death comes up (listed in order of composition):

"For Marse Chouchoute"
"The Maid of Saint Phillippe"
"Doctor Chevalier's Lie"
"The Return of Alcibiade"
"La Belle Zoraïde"
"At Chênière Caminada"
"A Sentimental Soul"
"Her Letters"
"Odalie Misses Mass"
"Dead Men's Shoes"
"Madame Martel's Christmas Eve"
"Nég Créol"
"Suzette"
"The Locket"
"The Godmother"

Yes, all of Kate Chopin's works are available in the books listed near the bottom of most pages on this site; both her novels and many of her stories are posted on the web.

You can read more questions and answers about Kate Chopin and her work, and you can contact us with your questions.

We received this message from Beatriz Viégas-Faria, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil:
"I'm writing to let you know about a new book with translations of twelve of Kate Chopin's short stories that launched on June 20, 2011, in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

"Each of the twelve short stories (in the original English and in Brazilian Portuguese) is followed by two essays-one from a PhD in literature and one from a medical professional (psychiatrists and/or psychoanalysts and one specialist in public health, a nationally renowned fiction writer).

"Other features of the book: one essay presents the translations and the translation process, another presents the literary importance of the short stories, and another presents the importance of Kate Chopin as an example of how literature can help qualify and make more human the relation between a medical doctor and a patient. There is also a text written by two of the translators on Kate Chopin's life and work."

"Launching night in Porto Alegre was a big success," Beatriz Viégas-Faria adds, "with more people than seats for the dramatic reading of 'A Pair of Silk Stockings' by actress/professor Mirna Spritzer (the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). And then we signed books until 10 PM, when the book store closed.

"That was June 20, and then on Sept. 16, in São Paulo, we had another session of book signing, and actress Cris Nicolotti (stage and TV actor from São Paulo) was in charge of the dramatic reading of that same story. We had a good crowd attending, so we again had people lining up to have their books signed.

"On Oct. 27, in Caxias do Sul (state of Rio Grande do Sul, again), we'll have yet another book signing session, with dramatic reading by a local actor. And then on Nov. 10, the book signing is scheduled to take place in the traditional and nationally renowned (57-year-old) Book Fair of Porto Alegre. This fair is absolutely packed with people for its 15 days of duration, and every year it opens on the last Friday of October. Our famous Feira do Livro, with its typical outdoor stands under the Spring blossoms, rain or shine, opened every year, even during the times of censorship during the political regime of military dictatorship in our country."

A 2011 French Translation of Kate Chopin Short Stories-With a Different Emphasis

Éditions Interférences in Paris published in 2011 a new translation of Kate Chopin short stories. The volume is titled Le Sorcier de Gettysburg, and the translations were done by Marie-Anne de Kisch.

The foreword to the volume notes that "at the end of the nineteenth century, in a Louisiana still traumatized by the Civil War, [Kate Chopin] described with subtlety and even audacity the contradictions and ambiguities of the female soul. In Le Sorcier de Gettysburg, as in Une Nuit en Acadie, there is another aspect of her work on display. Although women maintain an important place in the stories, the principal characters this time are Louisiana and its inhabitants."

The book includes translations of eighteen Chopin stories, arranged in this order: "The Maid of Saint Phillippe," "A Wizard from Gettysburg," "Ma'ame Pélagie," "The Locket," "The Return of Alcibiade," "Mrs. Mobry's Reason," "A Visit to Avoyelles," "The Lilies," "Mamouche," "Polydore," "Dead Men's Shoes," "Loka," "The Bênitous' Slave," "Old Aunt Peggy," "Nég Créol," "Vagabonds," "Ripe Figs," and "A Reflection."

Éditions Interférences has also published translations of works by Ambrose Bierce, Louisa May Alcott, Dorothy Scarborough, and Charles Dickens.

For students and scholars

Accurate texts of Kate Chopin's short stories

The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969, 2006.

Kate Chopin's Private Papers. Edited by Emily Toth, Per Seyersted, and Cheyenne Bonnell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie. Edited by Bernard Koloski. New York: Penguin, 1999.

A Vocation and a Voice. Edited by Emily Toth. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories. Edited by Sandra Gilbert. New York: Library of America, 2002.

Articles and book chapters about specific Kate Chopin short stories
You can find recent publications about some of Kate Chopin's more widely discussed stories by clicking on a story at the top left of this page.
Bonner, Jr., Thomas. "New Orleans and Its Writers: Burdens of Place." Mississippi Quarterly 63. 1-2 (2010): 95-209. Discusses "Desiree's Baby" and "A Matter of Prejudice."

Mayer, Gary H. "A Matter of Behavior: A Semantic Analysis of Five Kate Chopin Stories." ETC.: A Review of General Semantics 67.1 (2010): 94-104. Discusses "The Story of an Hour," "Désirée's Baby," "Beyond the Bayou," "Ma'ame Pélagie," and "A Matter of Prejudice."

Hebert-Leiter, Maria. "The Awakening Awakened." In Becoming Cajun, Becoming American: The Acadian in American Literature from Longfellow to James Lee Burke, 57-78. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2009. Discusses "At the 'Cadian Ball," "A Gentleman of Bayou Teche," "Ozème's Holiday," "A Rude Awakening," "In Sabine," and "The Storm."

Frederich, Meredith. "Extinguished Humanity: Fire in Kate Chopin's 'The Godmother'." Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays. 105-118. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Johnsen, Heidi. "Kate Chopin in Vogue: Establishing a Textual Context for A Vocation and a Voice." Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays. 53-69. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Kornhaber, Donna, and David Kornhaber.. "Stage and Status: Theatre and Class in the Short Fiction of Kate Chopin." Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays. 15-32. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Liu, Hongwei. "Lun li huan jing yu xiao shuo Jue xing de ju jue yu jie shou." Foreign Literature Studies/Wai Guo Wen Xue Yan Jiu 30.6 (Dec. 2008): 71-75.

Edwards, Bradley C. "Allusion and the Evolution of Artistry in Kate Chopin's 'A Wizard from Gettysburg' and 'After the Winter'." American Literary Realism 39.2 (Winter 2007): 138-149.

Tritt, Michael. "Kate Chopin's 'Cavanelle' and The American Jewess: An Impressive Synergy." Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures 59.3-4 (2006 Summer-2006 Fall 2006): 543-557.

Articles and book chapters about subjects and themes in Kate Chopin's short stories

Batinovich, Garnet Ayers. "Storming the Cathedral: The Antireligious Subtext in Kate Chopin's Works." Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays. 73-90. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Castillo, Susan. "'Race' and Ethnicity in Kate Chopin's Fiction." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 59-72. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Horner, Avril. "Kate Chopin, Choice and Modernism." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 132-146. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Joslin, Katherine. "Kate Chopin on Fashion in a Darwinian World." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 73-86. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Knights, Pamela. "Kate Chopin and the Subject of Childhood." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 44-58. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Taylor, Helen. "'The Perfume of the Past': Kate Chopin and Post-Colonial New Orleans." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 147-160. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Thrailkill, Jane F. "Chopin's Lyrical Anodyne for the Modern Soul." Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays. 33-52. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Toth, Emily. "What We Do and Don't Know About Kate Chopin's Life." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 13-26. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Worton, Michael. "Reading Kate Chopin Through Contemporary French Feminist Theory." The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin. 105-117. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Zaugg, Brigitte. "Kate Chopin and Ellen Glasgow: Between Visibility and Oblivion." Résonances 10 (Oct. 2008): 179-202.

Koloski, Bernard. "Kate Chopin: The Critics, the Librarians, and the Scholars." Popular Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Literary Marketplace. 451-465. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.

Bloom, Lynn Z. "The Dinner Hours." CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association 69.1-2 (2006-2007 Fall-Winter 2006): 3-13.

Johnson, Steven K. "Uncanny Burials: Post-Civil War Memories in Chopin and Bierce." ABP Journal 2.1 (Fall 2006).

Pierse, Mary S. "Paris as 'Other': George Moore, Kate Chopin and French Literary Escape Routes." ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies 8 (June 2006): 79-87.

Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. "Searching for Emily Hahn on the Streets of St Louis." History Workshop Journal 61 (Spring 2006): 214-221.

Witherow, Jean. "Kate Chopin's Dialogic Engagement with W. D. Howells: 'What Cannot Love Do?'." Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South 13.3-4 (2006 Fall-Winter 2006): 101-116.

Despain, Max and Thomas Bonner, Jr. "Shoulder to Wings: The Provenance of Winged Imagery from Kate Chopin's Juvenilia Through The Awakening." Xavier Review 25.2 (2005): 49-64.

Selected books that discuss Chopin's short stories

Koloski, Bernard, ed. Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.

Robert L. Gale. Characters and Plots in the Fiction of Kate Chopin Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009.

Beer, Janet. The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2008.

Ostman, Heather. Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Essays Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.

Arima, Hiroko. Beyond and Alone!: The Theme of Isolation in Selected Short Fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2006.

Beer, Janet. Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Stein, Allen F. Women and Autonomy in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction New York: Peter Lang, 2005.

Shaker, Bonnie James. Coloring Locals: Racial Formation in Kate Chopin's Youth's Companion Stories Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2003.

Walker, Nancy A. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2001.

Koloski, Bernard. "Introduction" Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie by Kate Chopin New York: Penguin, 1999.

Toth, Emily. Unveiling Kate Chopin Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

Koloski, Bernard. Kate Chopin: A Study of the Short Fiction New York: Twayne, 1996.

Petry, Alice Hall (ed.), Critical Essays on Kate Chopin New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.

Elfenbein, Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994.

Boren, Lynda S. and Sara deSaussure Davis (eds.), Kate Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.

Perspectives on KateChopin: Proceedings from the Kate Chopin International Conference, April 6, 7, 8, 1989 Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State UP, 1992.

Toth, Emily. "Introduction" A Vocation and a Voice New York: Penguin, 1991.

Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton New York: Greenwood, 1990.

Toth, Emily. Kate Chopin. New York: Morrow, 1990.

Lohafer, Susan, and Jo Ellyn Clarey, eds. Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.

Elfenbein , Anna Shannon. Women on the Color Line: Evolving Stereotypes and the Writings of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Kate Chopin Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1989.

Taylor, Helen. Gender, Race, and Region in the Writings of Grace King, Ruth McEnery Stuart, and Kate Chopin Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.

Bonner, Thomas Jr., The Kate Chopin Companion New York: Greenwood, 1988.

Bloom, Harold (ed.), Kate Chopin New York: Chelsea, 1987.

Ewell, Barbara C. Kate Chopin New York: Ungar, 1986.

Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin Boston: Twayne, 1985.

Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969.

Rankin, Daniel, Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1932.

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Short Stories, Kate Chopin, characters, setting, questions

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One of Kate Chopin's last published short stories ("Polly") appeared in this issue of the Youth's Companion, a popular children's and family magazine, in 1902. Today all of Kate Chopin's stories are in print and are easily available in published anthologies. Many of them are also available online.

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TEACHING  TEENS  RESOURCES - STORIES AND POEMS

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TEACHING  TEENS  RESOURCES - STORIES AND POEMS

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In this section you will find stories and poems to use in the secondary classroom with your learners aged 13-17. Browse the most recent content or use our A-Z list.

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source:https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/03_etf_53-3_3_elhess_egbert.pdf

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USING FREE WRITING TO MAKE SENSE OF LITERATURE

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USING FREE WRITING TO MAKE SENSE OF LITERATURE

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SOURCE: https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/english-teaching-forum-volume-54-number-2

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HOW TO TEACH A  NOVEL........
http://teachingreadingandla.pbworks.com/f/How_to_Teach_a_Novel_45_pp.pdf

website for more links : http://howtoteachanovel.blogspot.it/
old website :https://howtoteachanovel.wordpress.com/

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Resources for English Language Learners and Teachers | Pearson English

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Reading is one of the most fun and effective ways to help improve your English language skills. It can help to expand your vocabulary and expose you to different sentence structures, all while you enjoy some wonderful stories.

E-readers and tablets make learning English even easier because if you don't know a word, you can simply click on it to read its definition. On the Kindle you can even add new words you've learnt to its Vocabulary Builder feature, which is stored on the device. Others recommend listening to and reading text at the same time as an excellent way to enhance the learning process. Kindle's Whispersync for Voice is designed for just this purpose and includes audio with selected books, so you can listen and follow the text as you read.

Below, wto help improve your English...

1. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

This classic tale takes place in the English countryside and shares the adventures of the animals that live by the river. Grahame's simple use of language with imaginative stories makes this a pleasurable read for both adults and children.

2. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

This book is a modern classic and a popular study text for schools all over the world. When a group of boys are isolated on a desert island, the society they create descends into ruthless behaviour. Golding uses dramatic and descriptive language, almost like poetry, that makes you feel as though you're in the scenes yourself.

3. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway is well-known for his clear, straightforward writing style and short sentence structure, which is great for English language learners and many people have read it in school. It's the courageous tale of a Cuban fisherman and his battle to land a giant marlin and it's a perfect introduction to Hemingway as an author.

4. Animal Farm - George Orwell

This short, allegorical novel tells the story of animals rebelling against their human masters, and is a satire of Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell uses simple English to appeal to all reading levels with a 'less is more' approach, and the animals speak in short, clear sentences.

5. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

When Mitch Albom reconnects with Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor, he learns valuable life lessons and shares with readers all the funny, insightful wisdom that Morrie reveals in the last months of his life. It's a great book to pick up a more conversational style of reading and writing. It's also a great book to be read aloud.

6. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

A must-read for any music lover, this modern story uses a casual style of language and is written from the point of view of the main character, Rob, a heartbroken vinyl record storeowner living in north London. It has a quick-pace feel with short, funny conversations between characters that really keep the story moving.

7. The Giver - Lois Lowry

Lowry uses short sentences and simple grammar to create a story that's attention-grabbing right from the start. It's about a boy called Jonas and the community he is part of - where freedom, individuality and choice don't exist.

8. Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is one of the greatest children's authors and very popular with adults too. Beginning with a children's book is a good way to begin reading English novels, as they often have exciting plots and fun dialogue.

9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

This is the story about the adventures of a young boy with autism, Christopher. When he discovers the murder of his neighbour's dog, he decides to investigate it. As it's told from Christopher's point of view, his matter-of-fact explanations for everything he sees are clear and easy to understand and take you on an intriguing journey.
Which novels have helped with your English language learning? Tell us via Facebook and Twitter.

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9 great novels to help improve your English

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Reading is one of the most fun and effective ways to help improve your English language skills. It can help to expand your vocabulary and expose you to different sentence structures, all while you enjoy some wonderful stories.

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irishlanguage.net -&nbspThis website is for sale! -&nbsp Resources and Information.

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This website is for sale! irishlanguage.net is your first and best source for all of the information you're looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, irishlanguage.net has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

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teaching integrated skills to efl students

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extensive and intensive reading for efl students

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EFL Literature Circles are fun, focused reading and discussion groups which allow EFL students to have real, meaningful discussions about literature or stories in English.

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What I have collected and found interesting online

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William Shakespeare my favourite web sites

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Shakespeare: Life & Times. Elizabethan Era. ROMEO & JULIET. Shakespeare for Life: Romeo & Juliet. TEACHING SHAKESPEARE. Letters to Juliet (2010) Shakespeare's

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https://www.gutenberg.org/
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/
https://archive.org/index.php
http://www.openculture.com/
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/indexframe.html    ( short stories)
http://classroom-aid.com/open-educational-resources/free-ebooks/  ( free ebooks)

STUDYING  LITERATURE
http://www.literature-study-online.com/resources/
http://www.bibliomania.com/bibliomania-static/index.html
http://www.bl.uk/

INFORMATION ABOUT  BRITISH LITERATURE AND CONTEMPORARY WRITERS
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writers/

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A DIGITAL ARCHIVE

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The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7,000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research.

The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources.

Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired.

The Great War Archive was highly commended at the Times Higher Educational Awards 2008 for 'Outstanding ICT Initiative'

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The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7,000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas.

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http://www.warpoets.org/
http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/reframing-first-world-war-poetry
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/
ITALIAN WAR POETS
http://www.worldwar1.com/sfip1.htm

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WAR POEMS AND POETS OF TODAY AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

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War poetry by soldiers and civilians - First World War to today (Iraq, Afghanistan, Falklands, etc), Remembrance poetry, biographies, plus book information and background material

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http://www.readwritethink.org/

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Not your everyday calendar, here you can find important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, all with related activities and resources that make them more relevant to students.

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Not your everyday calendar, here you can find important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, all with related activities and resources that make them more relevant to students.

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https://twitter.com/VictorianWeb
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/

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What is the Victorian Web?

Donate to the Victorian Web Foundation

What countries does the Victorian Web discuss?

Can I use materials from The Victorian Web?

Which browsers work best with this site?

Are the articles on this site refereed?

French version

Spanish version

How do I cite The Victorian Web?

Directions for contributors

Contact

Web Awards

Credits

Conferences and calls for papers of interest to Victorianists

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The Victorian Web: Linking Scholarship, Teaching and Learning since 1994

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What is the Victorian Web? Donate to the Victorian Web Foundation What countries does the Victorian Web discuss? Can I use materials from The Victorian Web? Which browsers work best with this site? Are the articles on this site refereed? French version Spanish version How do I cite The Victorian Web?

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To introduce the literary genre

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A useful website with lots of short stories

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Welcome to the exciting world of short stories. If you're not sure where to start, here are a few suggestions:
Listen to short stories with an Audible free trial Read or listen with a Kindle Unlimited free trial
Short Story Guide is designed to help middle school/high school teachers, students, and reading lovers find the right story and allow them to easily read online short stories free, where possible. Short stories are categorized by subject, theme, place, author and type.

I try not to reveal too much about the stories, but simply categorizing them can sometimes be a bit of a spoiler.

I hope this list of short stories will be a useful teacher's resource, however, they haven't been specially selected for students and not all are appropriate for all ages.

A big anthology full of interesting stories with literary merit is Fiction 100. (Links are to Amazon) The newest edition is expensive, but an earlier one, like in the link, is affordable. It has many of the commonly anthologized stories. If you only want one short story anthology, this would be a good choice.

A good anthology for middle school is Little Worlds. This book has 31 short stories for students, divided by the usual story elements. Another good one full of stories 1,000 words or less with a coming-of-age slant is Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short-Short Stories.

As for single-author collections, the two that I've enjoyed the most are The Complete Flannery O'Connor and The Complete Roald Dahl (two volumes). If you read one Flannery O'Connor story and like it, you'll probably like them all. If you like unusual, darkly humorous stories where anything can happen, you'll probably like Dahl. I also have to mention Alice Munro. She doesn't have a complete collection yet, but there are many others to choose from. I find her stories very hard to classify because they're just about life-they're so complex (not complicated) that it feels like I'm being insulting when I put one on a category page.

I know what's inside a book is the main thing, but I also like seeing really nice looking books on my shelf. If you do too, check out 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. I love the look of this one. I also like the look of Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. It's a very simple design, but I think it's perfect. These books are full of great stories, so it's really just a bonus that they look so nice.

If you'd like to scroll through some free, well-known stories with a quick description, start here.

"A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is."- Flannery O'Connor

"I want the reader to feel something is astonishing -not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me."- Alice Munro

"Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential."- Jorge Luis Borges

(of the short story) "...it achieves closure-meaning that, when it ends, the attentive reader understands why."- Joyce Carol Oates

"Short stories are the deep, encoded crystallizations of all human knowledge. They are rarefied, dense meaning machines, shedding light on the most pressing of life's dilemmas."- George Saunders

(on what a short story is) "A shaft driven straight into the heart of human experience."- Edith Wharton

"Conciseness is the sister of talent."- Anton Chekhov

"It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-with immense, even startling power."- Raymond Carver

"A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood. And you can try more ephemeral, more fleeting things in a story-you can work more by suggestion-than in a novel. Less is resolved, more is suggested, perhaps."- Eudora Welty

"A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick-a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart."- Neil Gaiman

"'Who reads short stories?', one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us."- John Cheever

". . . each short story has one chief purpose, and every sentence, phrase, and word is crafted to achieve that end. The ideal short story is like a knife-strongly made, well balanced, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts."-Michael Swanwick

"I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a happy ending or anything, but just that everything the story tells moves the reader in such a way that you feel you are a different person when you finish."-Alice Munro

"Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression."-Isobelle Carmody

"Short fiction seems more targeted-hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them."-Paolo Bacigalupi

". . . there is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel-an intense awareness of human loneliness."-Frank O'Connor

"A short story is a different thing all together-a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger."- Stephen King

"I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story."-Sandra Cisneros

"Once you start making lists or devising rules for stories . . . some writer will be sure to happen along and casually break every abstract rule you or anyone else has ever thought up, and take your breath away in the process."- Margaret Atwood

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Welcome to the exciting world of short stories. If you're not sure where to start, here are a few suggestions: Listen to short stories with an Audible free trial Read or listen with a Kindle Unlimited free trial Short Story Guide is designed to help middle school/high school teachers, students, and reading lovers find the right story and allow them to easily read online short stories free, where possible.

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https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-teens/resources/stories-poems

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Here you can find a wide range of ideas for using stories and poems in your secondary classroom. All of the materials are based on authentic texts or stories written especially for secondary learners and are designed to engage and motivate teenagers as well as develop their understanding of important themes and encourage personal, social and emotional development. Written by young learner experts from around the world, our ideas for using stories and poems are easy to use and aim to give your students the skills and confidence they need to enjoy learning English.

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Here you can find a wide range of ideas for using stories and poems in your secondary classroom. All of the materials are based on authentic texts or stories written especially for secondary learners and are designed to engage and motivate teenagers as well as develop their understanding of important themes and encourage personal, social and emotional development.

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Teaching materials: using literature in the EFL/ ESL classroom

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http://blog.tesol.org/teaching-short-stories/

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Sybil Marcus
Author ofA World of Fiction series

Teachers often hesitate to use literature in the classroom. That's a pity since short stories are perfect for teaching language and critical thinking skills. Good stories engage both teachers and students. Best of all, they can be used to enrich all language skills in imaginative and unexpected ways. The ten tips below are designed to help teachers create and implement an exciting, relevant short-story course.

1. Enthusiasm is contagious.
When you believe in literature as a meaningful and fun way to build language skills, you can persuade even skeptical students to take it seriously. I've had students begin the semester thinking literature might be an inefficient use of their time, but in 40 years of teaching I've almost never seen one who felt that way after a few weeks of class.

3. Think carefully about your material.
Choosing stories can be difficult and time-consuming. It's not enough to love a story; it needs to have the right length, layering, and subject matter. Stories that initially appeal to me often don't have enough complexity for intensive analysis and discussion. I might read as many as 50-100 stories before finding one that I'm excited to use in class. When I wrote the first edition of A World of Fiction twenty years ago, I hoped that a collection of teachable, richly-layered stories and exercises would be helpful to teachers wanting to bring literature into the ESL classroom. In A World of Fiction 1 and A World of Fiction 2,the goal has been to offer stories with the variety to engage students' diverse interests and the depth to stimulate meaningful critical analysis.

4. Read each story more than once.
Good short stories are sometimes deceptively simple. A quick reading may give the impression that a story is about one thing, but after a second or third reading it becomes clear that something entirely different is taking place beneath the surface. I read each new story between three to five times before teaching it, and I tell my students that it is crucial for them to read a story twice: the first time for plot and vocabulary, the second time for themes and style.A World of Fiction 1 and 2 are both explicitly designed with this two-reading system in mind.

Note: In next month's newsletter, my coauthor Daniel Berman and I will present excerpts from A World of Fiction 1 and 2. We will look at how these excerpts offer opportunities to apply the ten tips above. Responses to this and the next article are most welcome. I can be reached at the following email address: swmarcus@inreach.com

Published by Pearson 2014

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10 Tips for Teaching Short Stories: Part 1

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Sybil Marcus Author of A World of Fiction series Teachers often hesitate to use literature in the classroom. That's a pity since short stories are perfect for teaching language and critical thinking skills. Good stories engage both teachers and students.

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To explore narrative tenses in Dylan Thomas' prose work

To engage students with Thomas' work and encourage extensive reading

Subsidiary aim(s):

To introduce/review past tenses

To raise students' language awareness

To give students opportunities to develop their creative writing skills

Materials:

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To explore narrative tenses in Dylan Thomas' prose work To engage students with Thomas' work and encourage extensive reading Subsidiary aim(s): To introduce/review past tenses To raise students' language awareness To give students opportunities to develop their creative writing skills Materials:

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USEFUL WEBLINKS FOR TEACHING  LITERATURE   

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USEFUL WEBLINKS FOR TEACHING  LITERATURE   

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TEACHING LITERATURE:

http://teachingliterature.pbworks.com/w/page/19920355/FrontPage

http://longmanhomeusa.com/blog/literature-in-elt-integrating-literature-into-language-learning/#more-13686

http://www.waylink-english.co.uk/?page=25000

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/using-literature-introduction

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Norton Anthology Collection
The Norton Anthology of Poetry has been in existence for almost fifty years, and during that time the way its audience experiences poetry has changed dramatically. Readers now expect to use their ears as much as their eyes when they encounter poetry; hearing poems read out loud deepens both readers' enjoyment and their understanding.

For the new, sixth edition of the anthology, Norton has teamed up with The Poetry Archive, this popular UK-based website dedicated to recording poets reading their own work. Together, they have gathered existing Archive recordings of selections that appear in the anthology, and added new recordings of older poems, to create a rich acoustic line-up of poems from across the anthology.

The result does more than simply confirm the anthology's reputation as an invaluable teaching tool for instructors, and a book that students want to keep long after their courses end. Listening to the poems being read adds a fascinating human element to the experience, prompting questions such as What do the poets sound like? What are their accents? How quickly or slowly do they read? What do their pauses signify? At the same time, dipping into this gathering of recordings confirms by means of new technology an ancient truth: that we understand and appreciate poetry as much by paying attention to sounds as we do by comprehending sense. This is what Robert Frost meant when he said, " The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader."

- Sir Andrew Motion, Poetry Archive Co-Founder.

The Poetry Archive website contains recordings of over 150 poems that appear in The Norton Anthology of Poetry. A sampling of those poems is provided below. To explore the full list, click .

Further information on The Norton Anthology of Poetry, including a full table of contents and ordering information, is available here.

T. S. Eliot Prize Winners' Archive
Welcome to the T. S. Eliot Prize Winners' Archive. The premier Prize in poetry, the T. S. Eliot Prize was inaugurated in 1993 and is awarded annually to the best new collection of poetry in English published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. In a new collaboration between the T. S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Archive, the T. S. Eliot Prize Winners' Archive presents a celebration of 25 years of the finest poetry collections.

From 2018 each winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize will be inducted into the Poetry Archive and will join this unique collection, where each poet's voice is preserved and made available for you to enjoy.

Listen to the work of T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poets here.

National Poetry Day: Freedom
National Poetry Day was founded in 1994 by the charity Forward Arts Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate excellence in poetry and increase its audience

National Poetry Day is an annual celebration that inspires people throughout the UK to enjoy, discover and share poems. Everyone is invited to join in, whether by organising events, displays, competitions or by simply posting favourite lines of poetry on social media using #nationalpoetryday.

For 2017, the theme for National Poetry Day is 'Freedom', so to celebrate the day we have put together a range of poems that are around the theme of or invoke feelings of freedom. Listen, explore and enjoy below.

Listen to the land
Foreword by Sir Andrew Motion

These fine poems, written at different times and from a variety of perspectives, all look hard at the landscapes they enshrine. In doing so, they achieve (at least) two things at the same time. They honour the facts they preserve; and they create little screens on which are projected the feelings of the poets. They are, in other words, all forms of emotional observance. This sort of activity, and the combinations that it includes, has been central to poetry in all parts of the world for a very long time. But as these lines remind us, it has never been more important. Obliquely or urgently, quietly or loudly, all these poems give voice to the deep pleasure we find in landscape, and also to the reasons why we need to protect it. In this respect, we might well call them seriously beautiful.

Poetry Archive: Scotland
This Special Collection brings together some of the recordings we've made over the years with poets from Scotland. Edwin Morgan recorded his reading for the Archive in his flat in Glasgow back in 2000, Douglas Dunn made his Archive recording in 2007, and Imtiaz Dharker came into our studio in 2010. In 2016 and 2017, funding from Creative Scotland has allowed us to extend the range of the work we can offer by poets from Scotland by inviting Anna Crowe, Christine De Luca, David Kinloch, Tom Pow and others to read their work for us.

We hope you will enjoy listening to this selection of poems written by Scottish poets. Each of the poet's names below will also lead you to a full page about them and more examples of their work. And we'll be adding more great Scottish voices as we record them.

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Norton Anthology Collection The Norton Anthology of Poetry has been in existence for almost fifty years, and during that time the way its audience experiences poetry has changed dramatically. Readers now expect to use their ears as much as their eyes when they encounter poetry; hearing poems read out loud deepens both readers' enjoyment and their understanding.

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This library of lesson plans contains classroom activities for all key stages, built around Poetry Archive recordings and offering lively, engaging ways of working with poetry.

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This is in celebration of National Poetry Month and springtime. My daffodil image is in honour of one of the first poems I learned as a child called 'I wandered lonely as a cloud '. We are, perhaps, less lonely here in our cyber-cloud online, which just serves to enhance our ability to appreciate poetry in the modern age.

Today I will share some experiences, resources, and ideas about teaching with poetry. I see poetry in everything, but this is not just a fanciful mindset. My main aim is to show that poetry is a practical tool for language learners and not just literature students. You will also see how online environments can enhance the learner experience, mainly through socializing naturally and collaborating in a focused way.

1. Social Networks and Poetry Groups

When I first decided to teach online in 2010, I made facebook a place to build up my online presence. It also became my place to interact with global students, collaborate with other teachers, and experiment with creative possibilities. One such community we built was called Global English Forum, where a number of teachers interacted with active students on group walls. It was a wonderful experience because there were no rules. Students said and did what they wanted. It was all about natural interaction. What transpired surprised everybody. As a few colleagues and myself shared some ideas or poetry in the group, students became inspired to write their own poetry. We tried all kinds of fun ideas. The most popular one was acrostic poetry. All credit goes to my English speaking colleagues for coming up with great ideas and our English Language Learners who took it all to new heights. The spontaneously ignited acrostic poem frenzy led to hundreds of poems being written on facebook by global students. Many of the poems were archived, some students had huge 'growth spurts' linguistically speaking, and set up websites, separate poetry pages, and you tube channels. One such language learner will be featured here today.

We tried acrostic poetry, topic-based free form poetry, and shared ideas on using limericks or Haiku poetry. We also used quotes from famous poets to carry on discussions about life. Teachers from around the world started taking our experiments and ideas into their own classrooms.

This kind of synergy spread like wild fire and literally changed the way our language learners could experience English. It seems that the experiment itself begs a question. How can social networks or other collaborative venues can be exploited to fulfil the focused objectives of standard curricula and exam-based courses?

As this work was all voluntary, it cannot be seen as sustainable in the long-term. I moved my experiments to the WizIQ's online teaching platform and filled up my teaching programme. There was less time for facebook, but the ripple effects of student/teacher interaction are still evident. If volunteer teachers can do this online, it seems obvious that classroom teachers should also try to engage their students through social networks, using tools that students love. There is much talk of how distracted students are in class; distracted by their smart phones and the internet in class. More and more educators are saying that we've got to tap into the ways of our digital learners.

2. Students Teaching Grammar Through Poetry?

Here is an exceptional example of a language learner's poem. She was writing from the heart and was obviously not trying to practice grammar( I think). But what language teacher would read this poem and not be blown away by the beautiful expression of 'deduction'.

(Must have /deduction and use of modal verbs in the past).

Even daring to pick this poem apart in grammatical terms feels wrong to me, but the bigger picture lies in seeing how beautiful it would be to teach English in this natural context. Just discussing this poem would be a very enriching activity for students. They would have to guess what the story is behind the story, using more modal verbs (may,might,could), of course, before trying to write their own poems.

This poem was written by Assia Yahyoui from Tunisia, a former computer programming student who fell in love with English poetry on facebook. Assia was one of the most active students in Global English Forum and learnt to excel in English through her interactions in the group. She continues to be an inspiration to teachers and learners everywhere.

Between Us
I must have hurt you. by my arrogance..
and you must have forgiven me by your patience..
I must have killed you by my silence..
and you must have overcome me by your brilliance.. You must have enjoyed my company at distance..
and I must have annoyed you by my prudence..
You must have showered me with your joyance..
and I must have ignored it with no conscience..
I must have charmed you by my presence..
and you must have fallen into the trap at once..
and you must have thought I am a guidance..
while I am nothing but .a hindrance..

You must have thought of vengence..
and I must have felt a deep grievance
and I must have admitted being a nuisance
while you still insist I am a pleasance..

Although it is important to have focused programmes for our students, they will never feel comfortable with the language unless they can speak freely and tap into their own creative thoughts, feelings and impressions.

While we are on the topic of grammar poetry, here's a wonderful poetry blog by David ddeubels who says....

" My favourite way to use poetry is with grammar poems which are a guided writing activity that produces a powerful language poem."

3. Live online poetry classes

In collaboration with Edupunk I held weekly public classes on WizIQ. These classes were about learning through fun and creativity. Many of my classes involved collaborative poetry writing. I did this with comic visuals and song lyrics. The result was that whatever was happening on facebook walls could happen with even more excitement in the live online classroom. Firstly, the public classes attracted people from facebook or others from around the world, so it was always a case of global strangers meeting virtually through video/voice and chat. I saw that anyone could write a poem in my classroom, and that everybody enjoyed collaboration. As the classes were driven by student interaction and sharing, there was no room for boredom, but much room for creativity. The students were almost always surprised by their own ability to play with language. Many had never written poems before.

4. Teaching English Through Limerick Poetry

I also began to create e-learning poetry lessons on interactive posters. I embedded videos onto the posters, which could also be uploaded onto youtube. I wrote Limerick poems specifically to demonstrate and explain phrasal verbs. What I had was video, a poem, phrasal verbs and images clarifying vocabulary and other concepts all over the posters. I shared these on facebook, of course, and many teachers were inspired to comment, share or try using limericks in their own classes. Here is an example from students of Maria Alejandra Pinardi, an English teacher from Argentina.
"The school had a project named Live with Happiness and the English Department worked around this project. We gave the name Teaching and Learning with Happiness, and limericks were THE poems to deal with.The name of the teacher who was in charge of the group working with limericks is Elisa Fernandes. I showed her your prezi on limericks and we worked on this project together. I was a big project of the whole English department, which combined your materials together with Jason´s raps. It was really wonderful."

Maria says:
"Our students were 16 year old students at secondary school. level: intermediate. At a teacher meeting, we agreed to make students work with limericks, rap, improvisation. We divided the work. I was in charge of rap and improvisation and used Jason´s RAP material and another teacher used limericks. Students worked on this at their Spanish and literature classes and we dealt with it in English. As regards the work on limericks, students were exposed to various limericks in English and were explained about the metrics, rhyme and humorous style. And in groups, they set on writing. At first they thought it was going to be easy but soon they realised it was not, since they had to pay attention to metrics and rhyme. But they could write them! And they displayed them at the school exhibition."

5. Exploiting Classic Literature.

It is wonderful to write your own poems, and even better to have students write poems. But that is not all we can do. Creating lessons from the works of the great bards such as Shakepeare is a very inspiring and worthwhile pursuit. Here is an example of a great lesson plan by Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat. This was very popular on the Teaching English/British Council facebook page. Shanthi found 'archaic' expressions used by Shakespeare in his poetry and showed how they are still part of our language and how they are used by native speakers. A lesson in practical English, colloquialisms, culture and literature.

6. Special Poetry Website with Lessons

Word powered is my dream poetry website for English Language Teachers. It incorporates everything I've already mentioned in some shape or form. This is actually a recent discovery of mine and I can see how the resources here will make it easy for any teachers to get creative and have fun with students in the virtual classroom and/or breakout rooms. I featured BritLit in a previous article and word powered is a sister site. If you are looking for a new tool to teach language, then literature and poetry may be your answer. This site has it all. How about blending film with poetry to increase student engagement? I see these ideas as launching pads for many more ideas with regard to learning language through literature. Teachers and students can become members of word-powered and submit their own poems and videos.

7. Picture Poems

I copied this picture poem from Andrew Finches document, which I found when researching some links from this article. Think of the picture poems that could be created online by students and teachers. They could be typed in fancy formats or dragged around to make shapes using tools such as Prezi and word cloud tools. The visual element is very special and gets writers thinking more holistically. See Andrew's pdf. document for more examples and explanations.

8. Acrostic Poetry

For me, acrostic poetry has the added attraction of being both simple and complex at the same time. Firstly you don't need any special resources to do this. Secondly, The structure of the acrostic poem focuses the mind and frees it at the same time. It's a whole -brain workout.It's perfect for exploring topics because the body of the poem becomes the topic. So, If I were covering a particular topic such as education with the English Out There courses, I could get students to practice new words or ideas by writing acrostic poems. It's also kind of like mind-mapping as the root word spawns more and more thoughts from the sub-conscious mind. If you asked a class to write an acrostic poem with the word HAPPY - how different and unique would each poem be? It reminds me of an example from Tony Buzon's mind-mapping book where each person's map of this word deviated considerably from those of the others.

9. Pattern Poems

Pattern poems are something that I like to use with my children, though recently I have begun entertaining many ideas for using them in a professional context.

Here's an example of a poem demonstrating noun patterns.

The WizIQ location
In a Cyber-Space Station
Attracts a global population
To its classroom conversations
They dig the reputation
Of teacher-inspiration
And come in desperation
For the neuron-lift vibration
and now we've got the RAP sensation
Of Fluency MC and his ESLebration.

10 Rap Poetry & our Fluency Ambassador

Last, but not least is the poetic justice of having a RAP Poet as our newly-appointed WizIQ ambassador. Jason R.Levine has gone further than anyone else I know in using rhyme and rhythm to help student relax, repeat and remember. His trademark and method revolve around 'Collos', which mean collocations. Although he emphasizes specific learning objectives in his educational RAPS, I sense and feel the poetry in his work, whether it's lexical or just in the rhyme. I was following Fluency MC's work on youtube two years before I met him on facebook. I interviewed him in 2011 and a lot has happened since then. His use of rhyme is now legendary and unquestionably both fun and effective. In the context of this kind of leadership now on WizIQ, I believe that my article on poetry in ELT is all the more poignant.

I began this article by saying that I 'see' poetry in everything. Musicians are often the greatest poets we can find. I also find rock music with creative lyrics to be wonderful for teaching, which reminds me of my Pink Floyd series on Edupunk. This is something that I also hope to develop more.

Needless to say, I recommend trying Fluency MC's music for the best in ELT poetry, music, rhyme and rhythm. His activity workbooks also give instructions for having students write their own raps, and his Weekly English Workout is the place to meet him online.

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10 Ways To Use Poetry for English Language Teaching Online

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This is in celebration of National Poetry Month and springtime. My daffodil image is in honour of one of the first poems I learned as a child called 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. We are, perhaps, less lonely here in our cyber-cloud online, which just serves to enhance our ability to appreciate poetry in the modern age.

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I love to read poetry for many reasons, but some that strike me as being the most important are:

Reading poetry relaxes me.

Reading poetry makes me laugh!

Reading poetry allows me to see into a deeper, more emotional part of myself.

Do you feel the same way? Maybe not -- and no surprise there! Often, we deny our students the experience of great content, such as poetry, because:

1. We don't want to teach it.

2. We're simply unsure of how to teach it.

3. We didn't have a good experience with it ourselves.

As April is National Poetry Month, a few weeks ago on New Teacher Chat, I choose the topic of sharing poetry teaching strategies for the simple reason that I wanted new (pre-service) teachers and their students to feel comfortable with experiencing poetry. I wanted them to have not only resources to use with their students, but actual strategies to support them in making poetry come alive in their classrooms. A surprising number of new and veteran teachers showed up for this Poetry Chat with a big bag of tips and tricks! Today, I'm sharing five tips for teaching poetry, including some from the chat, that new (and experienced) teachers might benefit from using.

An "I Am" poem is a good way to introduce poetry to children, because it allows them to focus on their own characteristics. The process is simple. The "I Am" poem is made up of three stanzas that are six lines each. It follows a specific format with the intention of describing something, often a person or an object. The beginning of each line is already written, and the writer fills in the end of the line by inserting a specific word or words. A simple strategy that all kids will find interesting, it's easy enough to implement and a great process for student self-expression. As you read their "I Am" poems, you might get to know your kids on a deeper level.

Explain the process for shape poems, which entails starting with a shape and building a poem from there. Some examples of shape poems are haiku, diamantes and acrostics. Shape poetry has to do with the physical form of the words on the paper. While the words, writing style and literary devices all impact the poem's meaning, the physical shape that the poem takes is significant. Combining content and form creates a powerful poem. This is a simple and fun way to get started with poetry in the classroom, and kids of all grade levels will enjoy it.

3. Turn Poems into Illustrations

Have students select a favorite poem and illustrate it. This can be done on paper, digitally, on a large sheet of butcher paper on the ground, or on the sidewalk by your classroom. You can use crayons, markers, paint or chalk. Get the kids talking about their poems while illustrating, or just let them draw. After this activity invite the class to do a "poetry walk" around the room or drawing space to share their impressions of the illustrated poems. Invite others to see the poetry-art. Consider pairing up with a colleague who might want to do this activity with you. Take photos of the poetry art to archive for later discussion. This is a great, easy way to start exploring poems and poets while mixing the medium of art in the process.

4. Use Music to Teach Poetry

Have students pick a favorite song. (You may have to do a little screening here.) Next, have them share the song lyrics by reading them as they would a poem. Engage them in conversation about the similarities they note between song lyrics and poetry. Have them "investigate" the poetry in lyrics. Then, using a smartphone or tablet device, consider taking the time to video your budding classroom poets reading their favorite lyrics -- or have them do it. You can upload your content to YouTube Teachers. If that's not an option, use or create your own YouTube channel and start a regular poetry feature. As an example, my channel is Teaching with Soul YouTube. See if this lyric reading helps your students feel more connected to the idea of poetry in their daily lives.

Using ideas from Poets.org, you can bring this alive in your classroom easily. For example, on any day you choose, have your students create bookmarks with favorite lines from a favorite poem. Do a think-pair-share and have students chat about why they choose those specific lines. Did it remind them of something in their lives? A sad or happy experience? Also on that day, project a poem on the wall or on your interactive whiteboard (IWB) and have students read it aloud with you or to each other. Talk about how the poem makes them feel. Discuss any similarities students have as they experience their poems. Have them do a reflective poem of their own in a notebook or journal. Take time to have students read them aloud if they feel comfortable.

No doubt there are more strategies that you would add to this list. However, now that you have five, are you encouraged to delve a little deeper with teaching poetry this month? Just incase you're unsure, I took the time to curate a Poetry Board on Pinterest that will support you to get started. Let me know what you think!

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Five Poetry Teaching Tips for New Teachers | Edutopia

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I love to read poetry for many reasons, but some that strike me as being the most important are: Reading poetry relaxes me. Reading poetry makes me laugh! Reading poetry allows me to see into a deeper, more emotional part of myself. Do you feel the same way?

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Any authentic material exposes students to some 'real English' and can be very motivating for your students, provided they are supported throughout the task. The other great thing about poems is for students to have the opportunity to see the language work creatively and freely. Poems can be used in many different ways and the more you use them the more uses you'll find for them.
Where can I get the poems from?
Finding poems to use is now incredibly easy with the internet. You can find lots of poems by simply typing in the author and the first line or title. There's a site called Poem Hunter which makes this even easier. So even if you only remember a few lines of a poem that you like you'll probably be able to find it. The site is http://www.poemhunter.com/

If you make worksheets using the poem be sure to acknowledge the author's name and the source.
How do I choose the right one for my class?
The first thing to consider when you're selecting a poem for your class is the level of language. If you end up having to explain every single word then the poem may well lose its spark. On the other hand, students won't need to understand every word to get the general idea of most poems so don't be put off if you think the language level is slightly above what they would normally be able to handle. As with songs, if the students are supported throughout and are pre-taught some of the vocabulary, or given some visual aids to help them, they will be able to tackle more challenging texts than they are used to.
What activities can I do with a poem?
Introduce a topic

Poems can be a really nice way into a topic. A colleague recently recommended using a poem called The Ghoul by Jack Perlutsky as a way to introduce a Halloween lesson. He had made a gap fill by taking out the rhyming words. The students loved the poem and later on we took it in turns reading out the verses with the correct intonation and taking care to make the rhyming words rhyme. (Thanks to Johnny Lavery for this idea.)

To introduce the topic of old people and talking about grandparents in a class I've used Jenny Joseph's poem called Warning. The language is simple and the ideas are clear and can easily be supported with visual aids for very low levels.

These are just a few examples of linking a poem to a topic. By using a poem as a spring board into a topic you will make the class memorable for your students.

Ordering the poem

When you have chosen a suitable poem for your class, copy it onto a worksheet and cut up the verses. If the poem tells a story and the order is logical, ask student to read the verses and put them into the correct order. If the order isn't obvious, you can read out the poem and they can listen and put it into order as you read. From here you can go onto to look at the vocabulary, the rhyming words or to talking about the meaning of the poem.

Rhyming words

Obviously, some poems lend themselves well to looking at pronunciation. Whether you want to focus on individual sounds, rhyming pairs, connected speech or intonation patterns, poems can be a great way into it. Getting students to read out chunks of a poem as they copy the way you say it can be excellent practise for their pronunciation.

If you have higher levels and really want to get them thinking about English pronunciation try the Pronunciation Poem which can be found on the Learn English website. Practise saying it to yourself a few times before the class. It's harder than it looks!
The Pronunciation Poem Here is some pronunciation.
Ration never rhymes with nation,
Say prefer, but preferable,
Comfortable and vegetable.
B must not be heard in doubt,
Debt and dumb both leave it out.
In the words psychology,
Psychic, and psychiatry,
You must never sound the p.
Psychiatrist you call the man
Who cures the complex, if he can.
In architect, chi is k.
In arch it is the other way.
Learn a verse

Once you have chosen the poem and have worked with it with your class, encourage the students to learn one verse by heart. It can be really motivating for younger students to be able to say a whole chunk of English perfectly. Ensure that they want to learn it and that it has some useful language in it which will be helpful in the future. Try not to get students to memorise chunks of language just for the sake of it or because you want to fill in the last few minutes and have run out of activities! However it can be really satisfying for students to be able to be able to say a nice chunk of language and to be sure that their pronunciation is good, as they will have practised it with you.

Record the students

Getting students to record themselves saying a poem can be a nice way to help them improve their pronunciation. You could put students into pairs or small groups and get each student to read out aloud one of the verses of the poem. Then listen back to it in the class.

Write a new verse

If you are teaching higher levels you could ask the students to create a new verse for the poem or to change one of the existing verses. This would be a challenging activity for most students so make sure you offer ideas and help to support students through the task. Be ready to give an example verse to show them that it's do-able!

Role play - dialogues

If the poem you are using has any dialogue, you could use it as a springboard into a role-play. Poems with characters can also be used to inspire role-plays. An example of a poem that would be good for this is A Bad Habit by Michael Rosen.

For most teachers poems are an under exploited resource that we have available to us. Although introducing your students to a poem or two throughout the course will take a lot of thought and a bit of preparation time on your side, I think it will be worth it.
Internet links
http://benjaminzephaniah.com/ Information about the poet Benjamin Zephaniah. I haven't yet managed to work him into a lesson, but I think there's lots of potential to use his work in the classroom. Great for teenagers..
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/stories-poems - The British Council's Learn English website has a huge archive of poems. You'll find any topic under the sun.
http://www.poemhunter.com/ This is a great site to help you find poems. It's especially useful if you can only remember a few lines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetryrelationships/ - BBC bitesize website has some great resources for older teens

First published 2007

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Any authentic material exposes students to some 'real English' and can be very motivating for your students, provided they are supported throughout the task. The other great thing about poems is for students to have the opportunity to see the language work creatively and freely.

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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN  LITERATURE

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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN  LITERATURE

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the cambridge history of english and american literature: an encyclopedia in eighteen volumes. 1907-21

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The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907-21

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Considered the most important work of literary history and criticism ever published, the Cambridge History contains over 303 chapters and 11,000 pages, with essay topics ranging from poetry, fiction, drama and essays to history, theology and political writing

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English literature, the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature, Australian literature, Canadian literature, and New Zealand literature.

English literature has sometimes been stigmatized as insular. It can be argued that no single English novel attains the universality of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace or the French writer Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Yet in the Middle Ages the Old English literature of the subjugated Saxons was leavened by the Latin and Anglo-Norman writings, eminently foreign in origin, in which the churchmen and the Norman conquerors expressed themselves. From this combination emerged a flexible and subtle linguistic instrument exploited by Geoffrey Chaucer and brought to supreme application by William Shakespeare. During the Renaissance the renewed interest in Classical learning and values had an important effect on English literature, as on all the arts; and ideas of Augustan literary propriety in the 18th century and reverence in the 19th century for a less specific, though still selectively viewed, Classical antiquity continued to shape the literature. All three of these impulses derived from a foreign source, namely the Mediterranean basin. The Decadents of the late 19th century and the Modernists of the early 20th looked to continental European individuals and movements for inspiration. Nor was attraction toward European intellectualism dead in the late 20th century, for by the mid-1980s the approach known as structuralism, a phenomenon predominantly French and German in origin, infused the very study of English literature itself in a host of published critical studies and university departments. Additional influence was exercised by deconstructionist analysis, based largely on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Further, Britain's past imperial activities around the globe continued to inspire literature-in some cases wistful, in other cases hostile. Finally, English literature has enjoyed a certain diffusion abroad, not only in predominantly English-speaking countries but also in all those others where English is the first choice of study as a second language.

English literature is therefore not so much insular as detached from the continental European tradition across the Channel. It is strong in all the conventional categories of the bookseller's list: in Shakespeare it has a dramatist of world renown; in poetry, a genre notoriously resistant to adequate translation and therefore difficult to compare with the poetry of other literatures, it is so peculiarly rich as to merit inclusion in the front rank; English literature's humour has been found as hard to convey to foreigners as poetry, if not more so-a fact at any rate permitting bestowal of the label "idiosyncratic"; English literature's remarkable body of travel writings constitutes another counterthrust to the charge of insularity; in autobiography, biography, and historical writing, English literature compares with the best of any culture; and children's literature, fantasy, essays, and journals, which tend to be considered minor genres, are all fields of exceptional achievement as regards English literature. Even in philosophical writings, popularly thought of as hard to combine with literary value, thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell stand comparison for lucidity and grace with the best of the French philosophers and the masters of Classical antiquity.

Some of English literature's most distinguished practitioners in the 20th century-from Joseph Conrad at its beginning to V.S. Naipaul and Tom Stoppard at its end-were born outside the British Isles. What is more, none of the aforementioned had as much in common with his adoptive country as did, for instance, Doris Lessing and Peter Porter (two other distinguished writer-immigrants to Britain), both having been born into a British family and having been brought up on British Commonwealth soil.

On the other hand, during the same period in the 20th century, many notable practitioners of English literature left the British Isles to live abroad: James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Anthony Burgess. In one case, that of Samuel Beckett, this process was carried to the extent of writing works first in French and then translating them into English.

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Even English literature considered purely as a product of the British Isles is extraordinarily heterogeneous, however. Literature actually written in those Celtic tongues once prevalent in Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales-called the "Celtic Fringe"-is treated separately ( see Celtic literature). Yet Irish, Scots, and Welsh writers have contributed enormously to English literature even when they have written in dialect, as the 18th-century poet Robert Burns and the 20th-century Scots writer Alasdair Gray have done. In the latter half of the 20th century, interest began also to focus on writings in English or English dialect by recent settlers in Britain, such as Afro-Caribbeans and people from Africa proper, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia.

Even within England, culturally and historically the dominant partner in the union of territories comprising Britain, literature has been as enriched by strongly provincial writers as by metropolitan ones. Another contrast more fruitful than not for English letters has been that between social milieus, however much observers of Britain in their own writings may have deplored the survival of class distinctions. As far back as medieval times, a courtly tradition in literature cross-fertilized with an earthier demotic one. Shakespeare's frequent juxtaposition of royalty in one scene with plebeians in the next reflects a very British way of looking at society. This awareness of differences between high life and low, a state of affairs fertile in creative tensions, is observable throughout the history of English literature.

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English literature | History, Authors, Books, Periods, & Facts

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English literature, the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature, Australian literature, Canadian literature, and New Zealand literature.

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THE BEST 100 NOVELS IN ENGLISH  LITERATURE

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THE BEST 100 NOVELS IN ENGLISH  LITERATURE

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The 100 best novels written in English: the full list

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Robert McCrum has reached a verdict on his selection of the 100 greatest novels written in English. Take a look at his list

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Amos Paran & Pauline Robinson look at some key principles to help you bring literature into the classroom ahead of their webinar on the subject on 13th and 14th July.
I have always found literature to be an extremely powerful tool in the classroom. Maybe it's because of my own love of literature - maybe I managed to convey some of my passion. Maybe the fact that I love literature made me try out more interesting lesson plans - for example, I think that the lessons in which I taught or used literature were much more learner centred than other lessons. I always felt that my learners enjoyed their literature lessons and we always had great discussions about important issues.

One important point to make about literature is the distinction between 'teaching' literature and 'using' literature. I always feel uneasy about these distinctions, but one thing that is always important is not to teach about the literature. The learners must be involved with it directly.

When I think back to my own lessons, or when I have observed other teachers use literature in their classroom, it seems to me that there are a number of principles that can make such lessons a success.

Principle 1: Teacher Engagement

The first principle is probably that teachers need to be engaged in the work that they are teaching - so the choice of the literature they are using or teaching is important. In some cases teachers have little choice about the piece that they are teaching - but some teachers then can use their negative reaction as a discussion point in class.

Principle 2: Appropriate Tasks

With some literary texts you can just plunge in; others will require more preparation. But the tasks that we construct are crucial in helping the learners make meaning with the literary texts and enjoying them. And by 'tasks' I don't mean any activity or any discussion - I mean a focused activity for which there is a clear tangible outcome.

Principle 3: Relevance

Relevance refers to the connection between the learners' lives and what is happening in the society around them and the literature that we use. Many of the works I have used in secondary classrooms concerned the construction of identity and finding one's way in the world - a theme of huge importance to my learners. When I taught James Joyce's Eveline in a secondary school, I had a young woman in my class who was going through the inner turmoil that Eveline goes through and ended up marrying in the last year of secondary school only to escape her home. Obviously, the themes which the story was bringing up were relevant not just to her but to the other learners in the class.

We can also connect literature to history and to our society's view of historical events. For example, on July 1 st 2016 we commemorated the 100 th anniversary of the beginning of the battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in history. Learners can be made aware of this through literary works from World War 1 by poets such as Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, both of whom were killed in the war.

Principle 4: Student Choice

Outside the classroom we normally choose what we want to read; if we don't enjoy what we read, we stop. In class this doesn't happen often, although we know that 'As students perceive that teachers respect them enough to provide genuine choices, students increase their effort and commitment to learning' (Guthrie & Wigfield 2000: 412). If we provide a choice for our students - for example, by offering them a choice of three or four books from which they have to choose one that the class will study - we increase their investment in the class and create a space where the learners have a voice too. This choice can be extended to other areas too.

Principle 5: Continuous Support and Engagement

Learner engagement with literary texts is not something that is achieved miraculously on day 1 of class: like other areas in teaching, this is something that we need to work on continuously. For example, bringing in a short poem once a week and devoting five or ten minutes to reading or discussing it in class can sometimes be more effective than spending a long time on one piece and analyzing it in great depth. We need to move away from what I like to call 'the tyranny of totality', the idea that our learners have to know everything about the piece we are learning (or indeed, that we need to be absolute experts about it!) Literature is there to be enjoyed and experienced, and it can be experienced at many levels.

We will be discussing these principles in-depth, with examples from poetry and short stories, during our webinar on July 13 and 14.
Bibliography
Guthrie, J. T. and Wigfield, A. (2000) Engagement and motivation in reading. In P.B. Mosenthal, M.L. Kamil, P.D. Pearson and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. III. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 403-422.

Amos Paran started his professional career in Israel, where he taught EFL in secondary schools and trained teachers. His main areas of interest are literature in language teaching and the teaching of reading and he has published widely in this area.

Based for many years at the University of Reading, Pauline directed language courses and taught on the MA TEFL programme. She has taught on short courses for students and teachers in many parts of the world, especially in Europe and Asia.

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Conveying Passion: Bringing Literature Into the Classroom - Oxford University Press

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Amos Paran & Pauline Robinson look at some key principles to help you bring literature into the classroom ahead of their webinar on the subject on 13th and 14th July. I have always found literature to be an extremely powerful tool in ... Continue reading →