Despite a long debate and the accompanying call for changes in the past few decades, grammar instruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely "disempowering,""decontextualized," and "remedial" (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search for more effective and empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use…

This article presents an annotated bibliography of "Research in the Teaching of English" (RTE). The 2010 version of the bibliography involves a major change--the bibliography is available solely as a downloadable pdf file at http://www.ncte.org/journals/rte/issues/v45-2. As the length of the bibliography has grown from 15 pages in 2003 to 88 pages…

The domain of inquiry by literacy researchers has expanded greatly over the past generation. Literacy researchers now address out-of-school literacies, multimodal texts, literacy across the curriculum and other important issues. Research on literacy development has become even more important in the high stakes assessment environments in today's…

In 1986, while still at Harvard, I started teaching summer school at the Bread Loaf School of English, the graduate program in English of Middlebury College. Bread Loaf offers courses in literature, theater, and writing--here I fit in. I came to that job with a background in applied linguistics and cognitive development, but not in literature, and…

Uses activist ethnographic field work to explore institutional language skills used by inner-city residents as they negotiated social services institutions. Shows residents' critical awareness and political acumen as they complied with and resisted the structuring ideology of institutional agents. Raises questions about the methods of key critical…

Investigates the ability of adults and children to understand aspects of semantic ambiguity. (DD)

Reports on an attempt to establish a research or "observation" base for a comprehensive list of English oral language errors that a student will most likely make as a result of coming from a Spanish speaking background. (DD)

Concludes from three studies that Black English speakers may not spell as well as standard English speakers and that Black English itself can interfere with spelling. (DD)

Investigated the relationship between feelings of comfort and maturity of expression revealed by inner-city preschool Black children in three situations: with a familiar teacher, with the mother or principal caretaker in the home, and with a chosen peer. (DD)

Found that older students speak in a more mature manner than younger ones when presented with paraphrasing tasks. (DD)

Investigated the written syntactic maturity of students from grade ten through sixth year university. (DD)

Illustrates how path analysis can be used to test implied or inherent causal models in language. (DD)

No relation between composition "dialect" and judged quality of the writing was found. (DD)