What bilingual poets can do: Re‐visioning English education for biliteracy

This paper describes a bilingual‐bidialectal poetry writing programme set up in a community library in the southeastern United States for multi‐age learners. The authors explore the use of poetry as a vehicle for biliteracy development. The analysis draws on observations of the students’ engagement with poetry both in terms of their writing and the teachers’ responses. The paper discusses how poetry can inform a critical, multicultural approach to developing biliteracy in students of all ages and degrees of competence in written English. The authors theorise the role that poetry can play in creating positive learning environments for such students.     

Colluding in the ‘Torture’ of Poetry: Shared Beliefs and Assessment

Assessment is most often held responsible for teachers' and students' mechanical approach to poetry in class. This article shows how examination pressure leads a group of poetry teachers and A Level English students at a post‐16 college in Malta to perpetuate an approach to poetry that is characterised by an emphasis on finding hidden meaning. However, it is also argued that to blame only assessment for this approach is to run the risk of ignoring the shared beliefs that teachers and students have about poetry.     

Writing the Unseen Poem: can the writing of poetry help to support pupils' engagement in the reading of poetry?

This article discusses a small scale project investigating the role of writing poetry in order to strengthen pupils' responses to reading and analysing poetry. This takes place within the context of preparation for a question on unseen poetry in a high stakes examination, in a contemporary climate where creative responses to poetry are reported to be less prevalent than analytical responses within an assessment‐focused curriculum. The project investigates strategies to inspire pupils to write their own poetry and to analyse the work of their peers in order to ‘put themselves in the shoes’ of the poet, supporting them in preparing for the examination question. It also involves teacher‐modelling of the writing and reading processes to support pupils in feeling part of a reading and writing community.     

Poetry is an Unfamiliar Text: Locating Poetry in Secondary English Classrooms in New Zealand and England during a Period of Curriculum Change

Undertaken during a period when changes in the assessment of English in public examinations at 16+ were becoming embedded in classroom practice, this comparative research explores where poetry is located within the newly aligned examination assessment frameworks of New Zealand and England. It comments on how these frameworks are locally interpreted by a sample group of English teachers in two culturally diverse cities. It identifies the challenges for assessment of poetry writing and retention of poetry study at examination level that are instantiated within these contexts. In investigating poetry’s location, key issues are highlighted about teachers’ perceptions of poetry, confidence and the support needed for examination level teaching of a genre that is in danger of becoming increasingly unfamiliar to many students.     

Between Worlds: Poetry,Ethnicity and Class

The world of contemporary poetry can be extremely polarised, most obviously between the so‐called page poets, who are often academically trained in creative writing programmes, and the so‐called stage poets, who are performers as well as poets and, even if they were so inclined, would be hard pressed to find a college or university where they might receive instruction in their chosen art form. This essay investigates how this division is made manifest in the poetry community and how the students of a tremendously diverse, urban community college experience it and are affected by it.     

Powerful students,powerful words: writing and learning in a poetry workshop

A poetry workshop can present opportunities to integrate students' knowledge and perspectives in classroom contexts, encouraging the use of language for expression, communication, learning and even empowerment. This paper describes how adolescent students respond to a poetry workshop in an English classroom centred on teaching writing that is based on their knowledge from their various life experiences and understanding of events beyond the classroom. Informed by New Literacy Studies and third space theories, ethnographic methods of participant observation were used to document an eighth‐grade urban public school classroom where a community member implemented a weekly programme using music lyrics and poetry for an entire school year. Findings illustrate how the poetry workshop encouraged students to contribute to the classroom learning context and engage critically with ideas that were relevant to their lives. Collaborating with a community member and tapping in to the powerful ways of using language to communicate led to important learning opportunities for students in this classroom. Poetic devices such as rhyme, rhythm, metaphor and wordplay enhanced and supported students' own language practices; students used these sophisticated writing strategies as they worked to convey their ideas, experiences and opinions.     

Practitioner as poet in researching the literacy world of students with special educational needs: a preliminary encounter

In this article the author, as a practitioner, discusses the poetry she wrote by adapting the actual words and phrases of students with special educational needs in a research study to investigate their literacy acquisition. The poetic text gave an insight into the concerns the students had and the difficulties they were encountering and also the way that the student recognised the value of the teacher. The participation of a practitioner in writing poetry in this context has the potential to give him/her an in‐depth knowledge that will result in self‐reflection and also be a valuable contribution to educational debate within the school or college.     

On Flying,Writing Poetry and Doing Educational Research

This article is written in a personal capacity; it is based on a presentation entitled ‘If the child is father to the man, can the researcher be mother to the poet?’ given as part of the ECER symposium, ‘Telling stories: truth and fiction in educational research’ hosted by David Bridges, at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Edinburgh, 23 September 2000. It is meant as a stimulus to discussion about the relationship between poetry as a species of ‘creative’ writing, and research writing—how and why they might be complementarities as well as opposites. Rather than attempting a theoretical paper, the author uses excerpts from her own poetry—and those of the prize‐winning poet, Jane Draycott, with whom she recently co‐authored a book, and whose ideas have contributed to this article—to explore these ideas.     

Poetry education research as an anchorage of thought: using poetry as interview stimulus material

Interviews in qualitative research may sometimes employ stimulus material as a means of eliciting richer data. However, scant consideration has been given to the use of poetry for this purpose, especially within the field of poetry education research. This article seeks to address the gap in the literature by illustrating how the use of poetry as interview stimulus material can help poetry education research to clarify the connection between teachers’ and students’ beliefs and practices in relation to poetry and pedagogy. Depending on the nature of their inquiry and context, poetry education researchers can choose relevant poems that have the potential to stimulate a discussion about specific beliefs and practices.     

Evolution and Contingency: Poetry,Curriculum and Culture in Victoria,Australia

This article explores the changing place of poetry studies in the broader English curriculum of Victoria, Australia. Its focus is on how students learning to become English teachers engage with poetry studies. Setting this problem within the context of pedagogical theory and evidence about the evolving Victorian curriculum, we have interviewed six first‐year students to explore their perspectives on the study of poetry. A clear finding is that exposure to the study of poetry is very limited in Australia’s secondary school system. A more surprising finding is that students do not clearly recognize their exposure to poetry studies as such.     

过程性考核下的“英语诗歌选读”课程教学与创新思维训练——基于华南理工大学2014-2015年第1学期的课程教学试验分析

文章是对华南理工大学2014-2015年第1学期"英语诗歌选读"通识课课程教学的实证总结和反思。实践证明,英语诗歌教学通过学生的诗歌翻译和仿写练习,并采取过程性考核方式促进过程教学效果,可以在传统的传授诗歌知识和赏析诗歌文本之外起到激发学生想象力的作用,从而达到训练学生创新思维的目的。这一教学模式具有传授知识和训练思维的双重教学目的,是对传统英语诗歌教学的有益充实而非颠覆,是新时代下英语诗歌教学与时俱进的一种尝试。     

Writing like writers in the classroom: free writing and formal constraint

This paper considers how ‘free writing’, derived from the automatic writing of the surrealists, can be used with students in writing poetry in order to emulate the successful practice of established writers. The paper considers how form can be taught, specifically line breaks and stanza breaks, both in relation to free writing and in relation to drafting, and argues that drafting should be considered an extension of the creative act of writing rather than as something which is done afterwards ‘to’ preexisting work.     

‘I guess it scares us’ – Teachers discuss the teaching of poetry in senior secondary English

This article reports on a participant‐centred research project with English teachers in a senior secondary college in Melbourne, Australia. It builds on previous research (Weaven and Clark 2009, 2011), which showed a low take‐up of the opportunities to teach poetry in Victoria's senior secondary English curriculum. This study explores the reasons why teachers of English are unwilling to use poetry texts in their senior classes. The teachers who participated in this study discussed and documented their attitudes towards the teaching of poetry and explored with each other the pedagogical challenges associated with teaching poetry. Their discussions – an analysis of which forms the empirical core of this article – reveal a range of explanations for teachers' reservations about offering poetry to their students. Importantly, these teachers were able to use professional discussion as a means to consider what changes in teaching practice could be successfully developed to facilitate more time spent on the teaching of poetry in senior secondary classes.     

Do secondary school-leaving English examination results predict university students’ academic writing performance? A latent profile analysis

Abstract

Secondary school-leaving English examination results are often regarded as indicators of students’ competence to study in English-medium universities, which is usually demonstrated through source-based academic writing. In English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) contexts, many English-medium universities require local undergraduates to enrol in an academic writing course, unless they received outstanding English results in secondary school-leaving examinations. This study investigates the relationship between ESL undergraduates’ secondary school-leaving English examination results and their academic writing performance through latent profile analysis. Results show that students can be grouped into four classes of academic writing performer (AWP), namely Complex-AWP, High-AWP, Medium-AWP and Low-AWP. Surprisingly, the Complex-AWP group had the highest means in structure, argument and language, but the lowest in citation. Secondary school-leaving English examination results can generally predict students’ class membership in language, argumentation and, to some extent, structure, but not citation. An important implication is that students with high English proficiency do not necessarily do well in all aspects of academic writing. This study can inform university senior management on how to set policies about who needs an academic writing course and provide appropriate training in various aspects of academic writing for university students with diverse English proficiency.     

Making disability visible: How disability studies might transform the medical and science writing classroom

This article describes how disability studies can be used in a medical and science writing class to critically examine the assumptions of scientific discourse. An emerging, interdisciplinary field, disability studies draws on feminist, postmodern, and post‐colonial theory and extends their critiques to the medicalization of disability. Deconstructing the medical model of disability helps students understand how science is socially constructed. After conceptualizing disability studies, this essay discusses sample disability‐related classroom activities, readings, and writing assignments.     

‘Signs of progress’: reconceptualising response to children's poetry writing

Poetry writing is felt by many primary teachers to be an important part of children's early language and literary development. It is also considered by many teachers to be very difficult to assess, due in part to the subjective nature of much poetry. Therefore poetry writing in schools enjoys both high and low status. If practice of teaching this genre is to develop it is necessary for teachers to have a clear view of what children are able to achieve within it. By looking at examples of children's poetry writing, my aim in this paper is to demonstrate how it is possible for primary school teachers to identify features of children's poetry writing which they consider to be of value. I shall argue, from the basis of an empirical research study, that teachers can, therefore, promote and encourage progression in poetry writing by their classes; but that to do so is to challenge views of poetry writing by children promoted in current orders and recommendations.     

Writing and pseudo‐writing from Internet‐based sources: implications for learning and assessment

In recent years, plagiarism has been on the increase across the Western world. This article identifies Internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily available Internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide incidence of plagiarism in the Internet‐based writing of students in three classes at upper secondary school level in Norway. I relate the students' choices to writing as a cognitive process and as a cultural practice. My basic assumption is that the students' writing is work. It is this work we have in mind when we relate writing to learning and when we assess students' skills on the basis of their written texts. Access to the Internet changes the premises for this work because writing can be replaced by ‘pseudo‐writing’. ‘Pseudo‐writing’ is a work reducing writing practice, which neither excludes nor coincides with what we traditionally associate with plagiarism in schools. The main point in this article is that when students have access to the Internet during essay writing, the result is unavoidably a product of both writing and pseudo‐writing. Internet access thus leads to greater uncertainty about the role writing plays in student learning and makes it more difficult to take written assignments into account in assessing students' school results and effort.     

视觉情景法——艺术专业应用文写作课程考试新方法探析

应用文写作课程处于视觉时代中,不可避免会更多地使用视觉媒介和电子传播手段。艺术专业学生由于自身的学习特点更能适应这种趋势和变化。视觉情景法是指根据应用文写作课程的考试需要,教师自己拍摄、制作录像,并使其成为考题的一种笔试方法。通过对100名在校艺术专业学生的调查研究表明,该方法能够促进学习的积极性并增强考试的有效性。     

Writing as a Tool in Teaching Sketching: Implications for Architectural Design Education

This article discusses the process of a study designed to develop university students' sketching skills in schools of architecture. Acknowledging the relationship between cognition and writing, it aims to investigate the role of writing in learning sketching among architecture students and to examine how students regulate their thoughts by writing as they work on their free hand sketches. It includes writing texts before and after sketching tasks to improve sketching. The study was implemented in a school of architecture at a Turkish university as part of an elective course on sketching. The students' works were evaluated in terms of their sketches, texts and self‐reports of their thinking and the views and comments of the tutor who carried out the programme. This article discusses how the study was conceived and developed. The results of this study may provide insights for educators in developing strategies in teaching and learning of sketching and design, using multi modes of thinking.