Writing between the Lines

This article explores how annotation with digital, social tools can address digital reading challenges while also supporting writing skill development for novices in college literature classrooms. The author analyzes student work and survey responses and shows that social annotation can facilitate closer digital reading and scaffold text-anchored argumentation practices.

Application of Reader Response in Literary Pedagogy: A Case Study of English Literature Classroom at a Public Sector University, Pakistan

The current study aims to analyze the application of reader response theory in literature classrooms. It focuses on the potential reader response teachers at a public sector university, Pakistan and their questioning practices in classrooms based on Probst’s (1994) suggested model. Probst (1994) has given five model generic questions for reader response teachers. For this purpose a sample of three teachers of English Literature has been picked up through non probability purposive sampling method. Data is collected through recorded systematic class observation where focus was on the questions asked by the teachers. Substantial amount of literature related to reader response theory and its application in classroom is also discussed which supports the findings of this research. Through observation of teachers’ classes and analysis of data, researchers advocate the use of reader response teaching methods in literature classrooms at university level. The Study further concludes that the types of questions, teachers ask impact hugely the understanding of students. Data indicates that a classroom can only be reader response when students are given space, freedom and are encouraged to discuss and give answers of open ended questions. Study also suggests, teachers’ training and academic excellence also affect the degree to which a class can be reader response. So, it is necessary that teachers should be aware of reader response methods and the ways of its application in the classroom

Axel's Classroom

Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle (1931) has been much blamed for characterising modernist literature by an aesthetic refusal to engage with society, and for encouraging the narrow formalism of New Critical pedagogy. The recovery of Wilson's own distinctive teaching practice, however, shows that he used the book to teach modernism's development out of coterie symbolism towards social engagement and cultural criticism. Modern literature classrooms like Wilson's functioned not to define literature's purity, but to explore the connections between then-contemporary modernism and all kinds of writing that describes, references, and names the material world in which it was created.