Professional Literature in English and Reading

Essays on the Teaching of English
Raymond Stopper
Based on His Book, Teaching English, How To….

Background in Teaching English and Reading: Professional Literature

Two major organizations provide professional articles and books on the teaching of English and reading: The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and The International Reading Association (IRA).

Why read professional books and journals in teaching English and reading?

Practical Techniques
Practically speaking, the journals and books from these organizations provide ideas and techniques that suggest solutions to problems in teaching English. My experience with these techniques is that I could not simply transfer them from the circumstances described in the article to my classroom, which had different circumstances, conditions and personalities. I had to adapt them, usually by trial and error. But, as you will see as you continue to read my book, these ideas and techniques added richly to my repertoire of methods for teaching particular topics, from Shakespeare to critical thinking to students who had difficulty with reading and students whose native language was not English.

Theory, Research and Reviews
The articles and chapters in these journals and books also deal with new theories and research for resolving problems in teaching reading and English. Research, of course, has a language all its own, but even the reader most unfamiliar with the specialized language of research will be able to understand the tendencies produced by the research. New professional books are reviewed dealing with classroom practice. Especially notable in book reviews are the children’s trade books and Young Adult books (late elementary grades through middle school).

How To Read Professional Journals
Early in my career, I developed a system for reading these journals and their articles efficiently. I tried to read them for at least fifteen minutes a day. And in fifteen minutes, I gained a significant number of ideas and details from many articles.

I begin by reading the first and last paragraph of the article. I briefly summarize the main point. If you do not briefly summarize the ideas in the article, you are likely to see the article again and have no recall of what the article said. Any questions? If not, I go on to the next article.

If I have some questions about details, I read the first sentence of each paragraph for those details and again summarize briefly so that I have a record of the ideas in the article.

As a result of my method, I read very, very, very few articles in their entirety. For most articles, I read the first and last paragraphs and briefly summarize the main idea. In two or three articles in a journal I will read the first sentence of each paragraph to answer my questions. Rarely do I read the entire article, but when I do, it’s a blockbuster of an article.

Here is a list of journals from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE):
English Journal (Secondary)
Language Arts (Elementary)
Research In the Teaching of English (All Levels)
College English
Teaching English in the Two-Year College
College Composition and Communication
Notes Plus (Practical Ideas, Secondary)

Journals from the International Reading Association (IRA):
The Reading Teacher (Elementary and Middle School. Accessible to all elementary and middle school teachers, not just reading specialists.)
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (Middle School to Adult)
Reading Research Quarterly (All levels)