Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Partnering With Your Local Public Library, Amy Banks

The Utah English Journal

School libraries are an excellent resource for English classes, often serving as a central hub for research and literacy. But it is not the only library schools can access: public libraries can also support English classrooms. After teaching English in junior high and high school, as well as teaching adjunct writing classes at Brigham Young University, I shifted into librarian work, where I now design after-school reading, writing, and social programs for teens and adults.

Book Review: Race Against Time, Amanda Burrows

The Utah English Journal

US Supreme Court, 1923. More than 50 years after the ratification of the 14th amendment and the end of the Civil War, the promise of" equal protection of the laws" was under attack. Moore vs Dempsey was the first case where the federal court overturned the ruling of a state court; more significantly, it was the first case to rule in favor of a black defendant. Four years earlier, in Elaine, Arkansas, a meeting of sharecroppers at a local church had been bombarded with gunfire. After a few days of rioting, -five white men and an uncounted number of black …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 50, 2022: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Sound Of Stars, Megan Russell Harbin

The Utah English Journal

One glance at Alechia Dow's stunning cover for The Sound of Stars drew me in, but I wasn't prepared for the beautifully told, relevant story that followed.

The Sound of Stars is written from two, distinct perspectives: Janelle (Ellie) Baker, a human teenage girl, and M0RrlS, a labmade Ilori alien. M0Rrls is part of the alien invasion that has taken over Earth, where Ellie resides. Over the past two years since the takeover, M0Rrls has been in charge of creating a "vaccine" for the humans, per orders from the superior "true Ilori." This "vaccine" will provide the true Ilori with …

Book Review: Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide To Engaging Families For Student Success, Leah Day

The Utah English Journal

A devastating pandemic has now shaped nearly all aspects of our lives, including education. Students are more disengaged than ever, and we need to take a reflective look at how to drive student success-through engagement with their families.

Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success is a plentiful resource for all types of educators looking to up their game in connecting with families in their learning community.

Uptake Processes In Academic Genres: The Socialization Of An Advanced Academic Writer Through Feedback Activities, Shakil Rabbi

Journal of Response to Writing

Academic socialization has been a common framework in writing studies for decades. Recent scholarship on rhetorical genre studies and feedback on writing can develop this paradigm in generative ways. In particular, examining how writers take up feedback as they write in genres can inform how writing pedagogy understands such activities. This study examines and interprets the case of a graduate student as she works with in-person and textually mediated feedback in research group meetings and reviewers’ letters. Approaching graduate students as advanced academic writers—simultaneously performing the role of expert and learning the content needed to be a full member of …

Professors’ Views Of Content Transformation In Students’ Paraphrasing, Ling Shi

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores how paraphrasing transforms and integrates meaning from reading into writing. Findings are based on interviews with 27 professors who commented on 8 paraphrases written by graduate students. Both student writers and professors were selected from across cultural (Chinese and North American) and disciplinary (soft and hard) contexts. Results indicate that the participating professors tended to accept paraphrases that involved a selection or interpretation of the original source that accurately represented the source text, rather than those that contained a misunderstanding or additional ideas. The professors also suggested that students could add an explanation for the content transformation …

Towards A Better Understanding Of The Complex Nature Of Written Corrective Feedback And Its Effects: A Duoethnographical Exploration Of Perceptions, Choices, And Outcomes., Eva Kartchava, Yushi Bu, Julian Heidt, Abdizalon Mohamed, Judy Seal

Journal of Response to Writing

Despite a large body of research into the benefits of corrective feedback (i.e., teachers’ reactions to students’ incorrect use of the target language), little is known about how new and experienced second-language (L2) teachers supply feedback to writing and what factors guide their decisions. This paper is a collaborative effort of 1 teacher-educator and 4 graduate students to examine the process of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to university-level L2 learners. Findings point to complexities involved in WCF provision and the importance of examining CF holistically, as preservice teachers’ corrective choices and learners’ responses to them are often interlinked.

Acknowledgments: …

Student Engagement With Teacher Written Corrective Feedback In A French As A Foreign Language Classroom, Maria-Lourdes Lira-Gonzales, Hossein Nassaji, Kuok Wa Chao Chao

Journal of Response to Writing

This paper reports on an exploratory multiple-case study conducted to examine 6 French as a foreign language (FFL) learners at a university in Costa Rica and their affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagements with teacher written corrective feedback (WCF). We collected data through students’ writings (drafts and revisions), semistructured interviews, and stimulated recall interviews. We used the students’ writings to examine students’ behavioral engagement, and we used the semistructured and stimulated recall interviews to determine how students engaged cognitively and affectively with WCF. Findings revealed that although most participants initially reported mixed feelings and, at times, negative emotions upon the receipt …

Editorial Introduction, Katherine Daily O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Written Corrective Feedback In Efl: Combining Error Codes And Metalinguistic Explanation, Yoshimasa Ogawa

Journal of Response to Writing

The present study evaluated the effects of a combined form of written corrective feedback (WCF) on English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ writing accuracy. The combined WCF consisted of unfocused error-code WCF and focused metalinguistic explanation. Different forms of WCF were administered to two groups of Japanese EFL students in two consecutive years, and the effects of the feedback were compared based on the number of grammatical errors that the students made before and after receiving feedback. The original version (single combined WCF) provided metalinguistic explanation only once for each of eight target grammatical forms, whereas the intensive version …

Editorial Introduction, Betsy Gilliland, Katherine Daily O'Meara

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Efficacy Of Response To Intervention For Students Struggling With Reading, Emily J. Warburton

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Response to intervention (RTI) has increased in popularity in schools recently as a means of helping students according to their responsiveness to 3 different tiers of intervention: general classroom instruction, small group instruction, and individual instruction. Using a PsychInfo search, we examined articles to determine the how well the current RTI model fulfills its intended purpose in providing remedial reading instruction to struggling children, teacher perceptions of the system, and what changes could improve the model in coming years. For elementary aged students, we found that RTI has helped students achieve grade-level benchmarks. For secondary school students, there is much …

Building Dialogue From The Ground Up: Framing Classroom Discussions, Dawan Coombs

The Utah English Journal

Recently a builder friend and I wandered through a house under construction in a nearby neighborhood. As I looked at the cement pad, I confess that I could not envision how what I saw in front of me could become an inhabitable structure. Seeing just wooden beams and supports separating one room from the next, I had a hard time making sense of what was going to be. Shrugging my shoulders, I sighed and asked, "Call me when you've put up the walls?"

Book Review: Ink Knows No Borders: Poems Of The Immigrant And Refugee Experience, Kaelin Stanley

The Utah English Journal

At a time when terms such as immigrant and refugee are seen daily in the news and media, the collection of poems found in Ink Knows No Borders is not only refreshing but strikingly relevant to society today. The 64 talented poets whose experiences are beautifully shared in the book provide a unique insider view of the heartache, growing pains, and unconquerable spirit of first- and second-generation immigrants and refugees.

Book Review: What If It's Us, Zach Searle

The Utah English Journal

Ben and Arthur, the co-protagonists of Albertalli and Silvera's first collaborative novel, are brought together by the universe--depending on who you ask. Arthur is in New York City for a summer internship with his mother's law firm, and he firmly believes the universe has a plan for him when he runs into Ben at the post office. Ben is only at the post office to mail off his ex-boyfriend's break-up box, and he is convinced that the universe is out to get him. However, after their chance encounter, Ben and Arthur aren't so sure about what the universe wants. If …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 47, 2019: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Weaving A Workshop Into Your Writing Instruction, Jacob Rees

The Utah English Journal

Why workshops? When we put students together in groups to discuss their writing, we dramatically expand their audience and increase the opportunities for students to write without increasing our grading load. More importantly, we shift the responsibility back to the students to identify what makes writing work. As it is in our own writing process, the ability to assess always precedes our ability to revise. Always.

Writing Beyond The Walls: Five Questions To Promote Authentic Writing Experience In The Classroom, Christine C. Thompson

The Utah English Journal

In the fall of 2018, I established the writing objectives in my eighth grade classroom with student and teacher sanity in mind. Heading into my twelfth year of teaching, I was tired of reading predictable, formulaic paragraphs that all but screamed, "This is my topic sentence. Here are my ideas and supporting evidence. And now, let me conclude by restating my topic sentence." Sure, this type of writing is easy to assess; even a computer can grade this structure with moderate accuracy, but there are so many problems with it-problems that generate impersonal pieces lacking in passion, creativity, and risk-taking. …

Scandal, Pop Culture, And Crime In The Classroom: Using Documentaries To Teach Twenty-First-Century Literacy Skills, Johanna Chausow

The Utah English Journal

When two new documentaries appeared on my "Recommended For You" list this past year, I had an epiphany that has enriched my teaching. Fyre Fraud (2019) is a film made for Hulu by Lana Barkin and Julia Nason, while Fyre (2019) was made for Netflix by Chris Smith and Danny Gabai. Both films address the failed music festival in the Bahamas that was heavily promoted by Instagram influencers. The films cover the same topic but present drastically different interpretations of the events leading up to the disaster. While I could never show these documentaries in their entirety to my students …

Juggling The Curriculum: Integrating Vocabulary Into The Rhythms And Routines Of Our Classrooms, Rachel Knecht

The Utah English Journal

At the end of my third year of teaching, I finally felt like I was successfully juggling the many moving parts of an English curriculum. Literature units focused on an essential question? Check! Daily routines including Writer's Notebooks and independent reading? Check, check! Writing units using mentor texts, authentic audiences, and grammar in context? Check, check, and check! And, through all of these practices, I believed I was on my way to creating a student-centered classroom where students' voices, backgrounds, and skills were valued.

I had this English teacher thing down! Or at least I thought I did. There was …

Using Chronotypes In Literature To Enhance Student Perspectives, Heather Fitzgerald Jorgensen

The Utah English Journal

"How do I draw a picture of democracy?" a seventh grader asked. "I know it's a noun."

"That's a good question," I said, stalling for time. It was my first year teaching at a school in the intermountain west, where seventh graders had grammar instruction every Tuesday.

"Why don't you try drawing a symbol of democracy?" I asked. "Like the American flag or Lady Liberty."

"That works," the student said.

Bending Back To Move Forward: Scaffolding Reflection To Develop Student Authors, Liz Thackeray Nelson

The Utah English Journal

When I was teaching high school language arts courses, I used a four-corners activity at the beginning of every year in order to get a quick glimpse of my students' attitudes toward writing. Each corner of the classroom represented a point on a Likert scale: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree. I read statements about writing ( such as "I avoid writing whenever possible" or "I like writing my ideas down") and then students moved to the corner that best matched their view. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the majority of students stayed in the …

Book Review: Being The Change, Whitney Hansen

The Utah English Journal

In Being the Change, Sara Ahmed pleads with teachers to seek out and encourage difficult conversations in their classrooms. She acknowledges the fears many teachers associate with bringing up political debates and current events to their students but contends that these conversations are vital for our students. Through classroom conversations and personal stories, she lays out the current political situation that our students are facing. With this tumultuous setting, she pleads that we must teach our students how to talk to one another and, more importantly, how to disagree with one another. Through these disagreements, Ahmed asserts that students …

Book Review: Shout, Kara Trammell

The Utah English Journal

Laurie Halse Anderson's latest book Shout

is "the true story of a survivor who

refused

to be silent."

Book Review: Illegal, Lisa Jones

The Utah English Journal

Ebo's sister has already fled Ghana for a better life in Europe, and now his brother Kwame has disappeared on the same quest to help his family. As much as Ebo appreciates these efforts, he refuses to be left behind once again-especially as Ebo and his siblings are orphaned. Thus, Illegal shows the dangerous journey of a refugee to find his brother and eventually make it to Europe. Told in the form of a beautiful graphic novel, Ebo must cross the brutal Sahara Desert to the dangerous city of Tripoli and eventually travel across the ocean. In each situation, Ebo …

Book Review: The 57 Bus: A True Story Of Two Teenagers And The Crime That Changes Their Lives, Albert Ricci

The Utah English Journal

Dashka Slater pulls her information from various sources-"interviews, documents, letters, videos, diaries, social media posts, and public records" -to craft her nonfiction account of two teenagers whose lives collide one innocent day on November 4, 2013, on the 57 bus. "If it weren't for the 57 bus, Richard and Sasha would never have met. Although they live in the same city, Oakland, they are from radically different worlds. But one single reckless act changes both of their lives forever." Sasha is a senior at Maybeck High School, they love Russian literature, live-action role-playing, the color purple, and skirts: they are …

Book Review: Circe, Tara Pina

The Utah English Journal

The story of Odysseus and his adventures home to Ithaca is familiar one: one that is taught and read in many classrooms, and one that is adapted and borrowed from often. However, Circe by Madeline Miller does not simply retell this familiar story, instead she shifts the well-known tale to focus on the minor goddess Circe. Miller gives a glimpse into Circe's life that is so moving it will change how you look at the story of Odysseus and surely how you approach it with students.

Book Review: Internment, Leah Smith

The Utah English Journal

Internment by Samira Ahmed is an excellent example of realistic fiction that helps students really engage with their political, social, and personal beliefs. Those who find themselves in a minority group will relate well to the themes and characters, and those who are more privileged will find their eyes opened.

Book Review: Pitch Dark, Madison Sheldrake

The Utah English Journal

Pitch Dark is a futuristic story of adventure and survival, set in motion after humanity deems Earth to be uninhabitable and takes to the stars to save both themselves and their future. The book takes place in space, showing events on two spacecrafts that come together in an effort to learn from the past as the characters look to secure their future. However, unbeknownst to most of the crew members, a secret terrorist plot is underway to undermine humanity's last chance to colonize Mars.