Ideas from Professional Journals on Teaching English

From ideas in books, I now shift to interesting ideas that I have recorded from professional publications on the teaching of English like the following:

1. English Journal, 2. Language Arts (elementary, middle school), 3. College English, 4. College Composition and Communication, 5. Classroom Notes Plus, 6. Research in the Teaching of English, 7. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (publications of the National Council of Teachers of English. NCTE), 8. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (middle school and beyond), 9. The Reading Teacher, 10. Reading Research Quarterly (publications of the International Reading Association, IRA) and 11. The Writer, a magazine by writers for writers.

If you have been reading this blog, you are aware that it is based on my book, Teaching English, How To.... The ideas from professional publications in teaching English that I will discuss in some ways are related to the ideas I have published in my book. All of the ideas come from recent and not-so-recent publications. It is my intent that these ideas should make you pause to think about teaching English and its many complex parts, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, literature and teaching English as a second language. An example of an entry follows:

Topic: Improving Reading Comprehension

Summary: George Spache: “Students who can set strong purposes for their reading comprehend significantly better than those who set vague purposes” (or read with no purpose at all, RayS). C Cox. Language Arts (Sept. 75), 771.

Comment: When I was in school, no one ever mentioned purpose for reading. It was just, "Open your books to page 35, start reading and answer the questions at the end of the chapter." The idea of specifying a purpose never occurred to me. I read everything as if if it had to be memorized, a tremendous waste of time and a bore. Identifying a purpose for reading, a question to answer, the three causes of X War, etc. turns the passive reader into an active reader. I am a big believer in setting purpose for reading--and teaching students how to do it. RayS.