In this paper, I narrate the long process of my encounters with English language learning and teaching, manifesting characteristics of English teaching at different levels of schools in mainland China. After viewing the limitations of English teaching in mainland China from my fresh point of view as a UK visiting scholar, some suggestions are…

This essay draws on the work of Raymond Williams in identifying a shift from the attempt to have students engage with literary texts in personal terms to a concern, founded on theoretical innovation, that they should read at a more sophisticated level in order to discern the ideology of a given text. It argues that what Williams calls an…

Based on a three-year project conducted in Australian secondary schools, this paper captures a developing disenchantment with reading in and for subject English. As part of an extended professional learning experience for teachers, students and their English teachers were interviewed and students were asked to draw reading. Paying attention to the…

The tradition of teachers engaging in narrative-based inquiry is now well established, as is its value for creating situated knowledge about teaching. This reflexive autobiographical article weaves together narrative accounts around a senior literature classroom environment. The article features two voices: a teacher (Natalie Bellis) and a Year 12…

The term "close reading" is problematic for English teachers, yet a heightened awareness of the role that language plays in mediating experience and social relationships is fundamental to an informed and critically engaged citizenry. This essay finds that a focus on abstracted ideological content of literary texts comes at the cost of…

Given the multimodal and multicultural character of modern English, English Language Teaching should meaningfully reflect this. Although some attempts have been made, adequate attention has not been paid to reforming writing pedagogy. This paper presents the findings of a two-year research project on writing instruction in the Singapore English…

A descendant of Chekhov's extended family, Darya Protopopova has always loved all things literary. When she found out that Chekhov was popular with British modernist writers, she decided to do a master's and then a doctorate in English modernism at the University of Oxford. Having completed both, she chose to spread her love for English literary…

This essay considers the assumption that the study of English involves engaging students' imaginations to explore a range of interpretations and hypothesise about meaning. It goes on to explore the reading positions of two students in a Year 10 class, who were studying "A Christmas Carol" at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary…

If an educator is to take a critical stance, teach students to do the same, and design lessons that engage students in thoughtful discussions and actions surrounding issues of social justice, then discussions of politics, race, culture, economics and systems of power are crucial to this work, and the use of hip-hop is a worthwhile endeavour. In…

This article examines a theory of "weak humanism" that says (1) secondary English classes should focus on personal development and culture and (2) English classes should deliver economic benefits indirectly, i.e. as knock-on effects of studying the personal and the cultural. Economic benefits are defined here as knowledge/skills students…

This paper examines contestations over the value of Literature in the secondary school curriculum in the former British colony of Singapore and the way the Literature curriculum has been framed to understand the various issues surrounding the role of Literature education. Using Raymond Williams' framework of dominant, residual and emergent…

This paper has two complementary objectives. After providing some theoretical perspectives on fiction generally, and on the teaching of fiction more specifically, it firstly evaluates, from a literary-critical perspective, a reasonably representative selection of the portrayal of teachers and teaching in some twentieth-century Anglo-Irish fiction…

This article moves beyond book-based school 'wide reading' to propose constellations of multimodal media, including music videos, fashion parades, literary works, online games and material artefacts, along with associated pedagogies, as sponsors of pleasure. The article, based on empirical research with teachers in an Australian secondary school,…

In addition to the methodology of new historicism, this article deploys feminism, performance studies and presentism to discuss the effects of the masculine practice of enforced marriage and turning a deaf ear to the female voice in Thomas Middleton's "Women Beware Women" and contemporary Palestine. I explain that Middleton's "Women…

This essay emerges from my position as a new trainee teacher, entering my first school, a school as unique and also as typical as any. What struck me was the complexity of the school's culture (and counter-cultures). Language was revealed as a site of resistance, a clash between staff and pupils at the point of instruction; a reluctance to read or…