English Journal - Volume 93, Issue 4, 2004

The author details the challenges of teaching metaphorical language to English language learners. Yu Ren Dong shares lessons to provide students with opportunities and resources to gain this language and thinking power.

Teaching the conventions of respect for those whose lives and stories interact with our own may be more difficult and more important than anything else we do. Through telling the story of a student, a former high school teacher poses pedagogical and ethical questions about teaching and writing.

When writers think of conventions as falling along a continuum from syntactic to rhetorical choices rather than as absolute rules, they better understand the roles conventions can play in communicating meaning. Using examples from popular publications, Cornelia Paraskevas argues for productively flouting conventions.

The use of automated essay scoring tools is growing in tandem with the push for standardized testing. As Julie Cheville reminds us, these automated assessments can lead to curricular changes that benefit private industry and conflict with research on language, writing, and correctness.

Jeffrey Schwartz teaches English and film at Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut. email: [email protected].

Discussions of controversial literature should include both an understanding of the power of books and the reader’s ability to understand those texts. Perry L. Glanzer argues the need for “alternative voices and worldviews’ in the classroom.

Through a detailed examination of works by James Welch, the author shows how Welch’s poetry and prose can be used to overcome stereotypes of Native Americans and explore themes of identity, family, and love. Jim Charles urges readers to consider, along with Welch’s characters, “the redemptive act of overcoming the seemingly insurmountable distances between peoples.’

J. Beth Haase Menzies argues that intuitive play is underutilized in secondary schools. She describes a project compatible with brain research in which high school students created sculptures from found objects and, as a result, were better able to address the complexity of the concept of evil in Beowulf.