| Jane Spiro and Amos Paran
Becoming a Reading Teacher: Connecting Research and Practice New York: Routledge, 2023, 196 pp.; ISBN: 978-0-367-47302-0 Reviewer: Alison Hasegawa |
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Overview of the Book
Tomie dePaola, creator of over 260 children’s books famously said, ‘Reading is important because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything’ (cited in Burns, 2012). In the blurb for Becoming a Reading Teacher, Jane Spiro and Amos Paran agree with dePaola and consider reading ‘not only as an encounter with written language but as a lifelong habit of engagement with ideas’. To teach reading effectively, teachers of English need awareness of the principles behind this complex process and the skills involved, from decoding words and comprehending simple sentences to efficiently searching for specific information in a text and understanding distinct styles of different genres. As the subtitle ‘Connecting Research and Practice’ indicates, the authors introduce key research findings on how to teach reading effectively throughout the book. Organised as four sections and with reading systematically analysed in each, the authors consider reading as a linguistic process, a personal experience, a collective experience, and importantly, as a classroom practice. In the final section, Spiro and Paran recommend that teachers undertake research into their own teaching of reading in their classrooms. And thus, we experience full circle handover from research-on-practice to research-in-practice.
Part-by-Part Walkthrough
In Part 1, From Research to Implications, Spiro and Paran pose ten fundamental questions regarding the kinds of skills required when teaching reading. These range from ‘What are we doing as we read?’ to considering the cognitive and emotional effects of reading, ‘Can reading change the way we think and feel?’ Practical concerns for teachers such as ‘What pedagogies are used in the teaching of reading?’ are also systematically introduced. The authors address these questions with observations from their professional experience and evidence from recent research, and gradually, a set of implications or guiding principles to effectively teach reading emerge. In Part 2, From Implications to Application, the same ten questions from Part 1 form a framework with 44 practical activities to apply the guiding principles and develop core skills. These activities are organized from simple to more challenging and could easily supplement a coursebook or an integrated course on developing reading skills for primary or secondary level learners of English.
For learners who experience bottom-up processing challenges, such as with decoding or word-level reading skills, solutions are provided to increase learners’ reading speed and assist them when making text-related predictions. There are several activities to help learners to develop reading subskills such as skimming, scanning and differentiating facts from opinions. Reflective activities are also included, for example keeping a reading journal to assist learners to embark on the vital process of self-reflection as readers. Next, the authors focus on top-down processing, in particular the schematic knowledge readers bring to reading, and they introduce activities that challenge learners to use critical skills when identifying opinions and bias. Later activities include learners comparing factual articles in L1 and L2, introducing reading for pleasure, and reading fiction as a collective experience. The final section enables teachers and student teachers to consider best practices, experience the guiding principles first-hand, and engage in collaborative explorations of different pedagogical approaches.
In Part 3, From Application to Implementation: Teaching Reading in Time and Place, the authors recognize the multiple variables that differentiate one teacher’s context from another. They offer advice on common issues, such as how to make a wide range of reading resources available to learners; they also introduce principles for assessment, suggest how to cater for different reader ages, and offer practical tips for facilitating reading with large or small classes. In addition, they advise how to promote reading outside of the classroom and how to create a positive culture of reading in school environments. This section emphasizes the importance of connecting with other reading teachers to share the joy of reading, and ultimately acting as a model reader of fiction and non-fiction to learners in the classroom, as the title of the book Becoming a Reading Teacher implies.
In Part 4, From Implementation to Research, the four standpoints utilized in the previous sections help teachers with the selection of a topic to initiate some small-scale classroom research. These include researching reading as a linguistic process, a personal experience, a collective experience or researching reading pedagogy. Spiro and Paran present ten suggestions for potential research projects and each template indicates possible data collection methods and the types of analyses which could be conducted. Then, the authors recommend that teachers act on their findings by modifying their classroom practice. This achieves one of the book’s stated aims to provide some ‘stepping stones’ for any teacher to become a researcher. Questions to inspire classroom research include ‘What makes readers choose books?’ and ‘What are the qualities of successful reading lessons?’ which are likely to support teachers as they start to conduct empirical classroom inquiries.
Final Thoughts
Becoming a Reading Teacher is an informative and thought-provoking companion for any teacher at any stage of their pedagogical journey, and it supports the teaching of reading to learners of any age. As the authors state in the blurb, the book is ‘useful for any teacher or reader who wishes to refresh their view of how reading fits into the development of languages and the development of a reading life’. If there are any shortcomings, the very wide scope, from early years to upper secondary and beyond, rather than focusing on one age range, is the only criticism I could mention. However, in all classrooms the practical reality is that teachers meet students with diverse needs and a range of abilities that require a rich pedagogical repertoire of effective approaches for teaching reading. The book not only introduces the attractive concept of a ‘reading culture’ it additionally offers concrete steps to creating one. This laudable aim is supported by relevant research findings with over 100 pages of practical suggestions and concrete ideas for small-scale classroom research. While the publication does not claim to be a step-by-step reading syllabus; it offers substantial scaffolding for educators to develop important micro- and macro-skills for learners of English to read more confidently, competently, fluently and joyfully.
Reference
Burns, T. (2012, April 26). Tomie dePaola on why reading is important. Building a Library: Finding the Right Books for Your Kid (Through Trial and Error). http://www.buildingalibrary.com/miscellany/tomie-depaola-on-why-reading-is-important/450
| Alison Hasegawa is a Specially Appointed Professor at the Centre for Foreign Language Education and Research at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan. She teaches and supervises several courses on discussion, debate, presentation, and reading and writing. She also introduces university students to the world of picturebooks through her popular elective course, ‘Exploring Children’s Literature’. |
| Michael C. Prusse & Nikola Mayer (Eds.)
This is My Story: Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives in English Language Teaching Bern: Hep Verlag AG, 2024, 200 pp.; ISBN: 978-3-0355-2646-2 Reviewer: Sissil Lea Heggernes |
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Introduction
Donat Bräm’s cover illustration of This is My Story humorously depicts the potential for miscommunication through differently shaped speech and thought bubbles. The illustration foreshadows the centrality of perspective-taking throughout the volume, a thread that Daniel Ammann continues in his Foreword as he untangles the elements of powerful storytelling and the role of personal experience. He claims the key word is relevance and posits that ‘there is no need to draw a clear line between fiction and nonfiction’ (p. 8). Then, with the idea of humans as storytelling animals, Prusse and Mayer’s introduction explores people’s fascination with reading and telling stories. The editors show how stories can be linked to an author’s vocation and an activist stance. As stories confront readers with new perspectives, they are essential for learning, particularly in English language teaching, where widening perspectives can help enhance pupils’ narrative competence and enable them to slide through the proverbial glass door.
Chapter-by-Chapter Walkthrough
‘To teach or not to teach Shakespeare’, that is the question. According to the first chapter, the answer is to engage pupils in the historical lacuna of Shakespeare’s biography through formats targeted towards a young audience. Susanne Reichl eloquently demonstrates the relevance of time travel stories about Shakespeare for ELT, arguing that the void around his biography can stimulate pupils’ curiosity. These stories are essentially ‘coming of age’ adventure stories in which a young protagonist is sent on a mission to save Shakespeare for future generations. In so doing, they overcome challenges, grow, and gain agency. The suggested activities for ELT can help to foster pupils’ sense of identity, literary and language learning.
Britta Viebrock’s chapter demonstrates that film literacy requires critical and aesthetic competences. Critical competence is particularly central when watching biographical films that may blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. Viewers’ lack of contextual knowledge can lead them to believe that biographical films are ‘real’, as was the case when Viebrock’s pupils watched the award-winning New Zealand film The Dark Horse (2014), directed by James Napier Robertson. The commercial impact on filmmaking is consequently a vital part of critical film literacy. Viebrock suggests useful tasks to develop critical and aesthetic competences based on her model of film literacy but does not report on the activities she carried out with her pupils or their English development. Nevertheless, the chapter provides a clear rationale for including biographical films to develop film literacy in ELT.
In the next chapter, Daniel Becker and Frauke Matz account for the differences between analogue and digital storytelling, with a focus on the YouTube format Storytime, which ‘blurs the boundaries between author and viewer’ (p. 60). This requires a multiliteracies pedagogy, which moves learning from a competence-based to a process-orientated focus. By drawing on Kalantzis and Cope’s (2005) learning-by-design model, they suggest how English language pupils can engage with digital storytelling and develop their active participation and criticality. Next, Nicole Frey Büchel’s chapter on women’s scientific autobiographies for secondary ELT follows. Her fascinating analysis of three scientific autobiographies reveals how the narrative structure of a coming-of-age novel is used to make a feminist statement. Such novels traditionally include a male protagonist, but here the same structure describes the upbringing and professional development of female scientists. Büchel convincingly demonstrates how animals and plants can represent identity and be ‘object[s] of scientific interest’ (p. 75). Lastly, she suggests activities, such as writing scientific autobiographies with an animal as the protagonist. Creating literature can make it easier for pupils to convey personal issues, Büchel states, as they can make use of analogy, and her suggestions may help teachers plan interdisciplinary projects and motivate pupils to choose STEM subjects.
Michael C. Prusse’s chapter discusses the biographies of migrants and refugees and how to navigate the challenges of representation. Prusse approaches the topic with a focus on colonial fiction, such as Kipling and Conrad. Then building on a corpus of refugee stories, mainly by Western authors and illustrators, he thoughtfully engages with the issues of representation and authenticity. Rather than seeking simple answers to difficult questions, Prusse provokes readers to reflect on the potential victimization and glorification of refugee protagonists. A central question is whether it is ‘not in the very nature of fiction that it imagines the world from perspectives that differ from the ones of its authors or readers’ (p. 98). The question remains as to whether authors of the 21st century will be judged as harshly by future readers as colonial writers are today.
While some earlier chapters outline activities in rather broad strokes, Nikola Mayer´s chapter includes several well-designed activities such as avatars crafted with a graphic memoir design toolkit. These activities are applicable in the classroom and can help to enhance pupils’ multimodal literacy. At the outset, Mayer investigates terminology related to graphic memoirs and outlines an interesting theoretical background on comics. Subsequently, she demonstrates how pupils can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and others, in addition to genre and format awareness, through creating and analyzing their own graphic memoirs. I would include this chapter in the curriculum for my pre-service English teachers and recommend it for in-service teachers and scholars who want to expand their understanding of working with multimodal texts.
Next, three modern graphic novels act as the point of entry for Lynn Williams’s chapter. These stories all feature protagonists’ attempts at better understanding their environments and themselves. Such themes can be linked to work ‘with (auto)biographical storytelling in the upper secondary ELT classroom’ (p. 127), and Williams shares rationales for using graphic novels and highlights key features that pupils should learn about. The presentation of such features could have been enhanced with examples from the graphic novels in the following part of the chapter. Here, Williams shows how the focal graphic novels can be used in upper secondary ELT classes to raise pupils’ awareness of identity and self.
After several theoretical contributions, it was refreshing to read a chapter on a classroom project. The aim was to demonstrate how young English second language pupils engaged with picturebook biographies. Laura Loder Buechel presents activities selected according to anti-bias criteria with lesson plans and classroom materials mapped to social justice standards. Buechel argues that by reading widely about the world and building on pupils’ previous knowledge, they can develop their reading skills to a greater extent than focusing on ‘deciphering, decoding and reading strategies’ (p. 139). The chapter raises interesting questions about stereotyping and tokenism which may be challenging for children to discuss in English, and as Buchel acknowledges, engaging with activism is perhaps more accessible through the language of schooling.
The penultimate chapter draws on classroom data to exemplify how a high-quality picturebook can support children’s abilities to identify different perspectives in a foreign language. Regula Fuchs and Kristel Ross describe the affordances of the narrative structure and picture-text interanimation in The Snail and the Whale (Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler, 2004) for language learning. They also provide a useful framework that can help teachers to conduct picturebook read-alouds in the classroom. The transcripts of teacher-pupil dialogues from Swiss classrooms are of particular interest, as they reveal how teachers scaffolded third and fifth graders’ attempts to express their ideas. However, a sharper focus could have provided more in-depth discussion of how teachers can support young pupils’ language learning through stories. Nevertheless, the authors’ insights into young pupils’ dialogues around picturebooks are valuable for readers.
Finally, the volume comes full circle with an essayistic chapter by Erik Altorfer, who returns to the questions of truth and fiction, the role of stories, biography and autobiography through the experiences of young, budding writers. Altorfer’s reflections on the nature of (auto)biographical writing link the works of celebrated writers to his experiences during writing workshops for young writers, many from refugee backgrounds. The powerful descriptions of the struggles of young refugees when reconciling a perceived duty to tell the truth with creative experimentation when fictionalizing their lives are illuminating. Altorfer reveals how writing based on personal stories can be therapeutic, empowering, and identity-forming, while also contributing to the development of an activist stance.
Final Thoughts
The power of stories and storytelling in ELT is convincingly argued throughout this volume. Based on reports from my student teachers and in-service teachers, this argument still needs to be made. Whether due to time constraints or doubts about the value of stories for learning, pupils who are learning English still read authentic stories more rarely than the texts in ELT coursebooks. Moreover, teachers need increased guidance in the myriad of ways to engage pupils in multimodal texts, which is central to most of the chapters in the book. As such, this volume is a very welcome and accessible contribution that offers readers a sound balance of practical and theoretical insights.
Reference
Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2005). Learning by design. Victorian Schools Innovation Commission.
| Sissil Lea Heggernes is an Associate Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. Her PhD study from 2021 explores English second language students’ intercultural learning through texts, with a particular focus on the role of picturebooks. Her research interests include children’s and young adult literature, intercultural learning, critical thinking, reading, dialogic learning, and language teachers’ professional development. |
| Grit Alter and Thorsten Merse (Eds.)
Re-thinking Picturebooks for Intermediate and Advanced Learners: Perspectives for Secondary English Language Education Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2023, 262 pp.; ISBN: 978-3-8233-8474-8 Reviewer: Tatia Gruenbaum |
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Introduction: Picturebooks in Secondary ELT
The exploration of picturebooks as a teaching resource remains relatively limited within secondary English language education. As Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer notes in the foreword to the book under review, much research in this area has stemmed from literacy studies. Apart from the common perception that picturebooks might be better suited to younger language learners, Mourão (2013) suggests a possible reason might also be the dominance of coursebooks in secondary English language education. Although mainly in the context of primary English language education, Ellis and Gruenbaum (2023) point out that factors such as rigid reading programmes and limited access further contribute to the underuse of picturebooks worldwide. Yet some recent studies underscore how picturebooks can foster creative language and intercultural learning with secondary-aged learners (e.g., Heggernes, 2019; Yeom, 2019). Hence, this volume arrives as a timely addition showcasing recent developments in picturebook-based secondary English language education.
Overview of the Book
Following the compelling foreword by Kümmerling-Meibauer, there is a comprehensive introduction by the editors, who are based in Austria (Alter) and Germany (Merse). Their geographical location is reflected in the book as several chapters are situated in German-speaking contexts. The first four chapters centre on ‘conceptual perspectives’ to position the picturebook in secondary ELT, while the remaining five chapters are grouped under ‘themes, competences, and literacies’. Each chapter offers a combination of theory and practical teaching ideas, often accompanied by examples of selected picturebook(s) and/or samples of learners’ pictorial work, enhancing the visual experience for the reader. A box with ‘Warm-up: Engagement questions’ at the outset of each chapter, seemingly designed to explore the readers’ existing knowledge, suggests both in- and pre-service teachers as a target group, who are expected to make use of picturebooks as a teaching resource to enhance the classroom experience for their learners.
Chapter-by-Chapter Walkthrough
The editors’ introduction opens with a quotation from Ommundsen (2015), who asks, ‘Who are these picturebooks for?’, indeed a central question which aims to locate picturebooks within ELT at the intermediate and advanced levels. To begin with, Alter and Merse argue that the ubiquitous focus on picturebooks at primary level might have resulted in ‘a gap, or an under-interrogated field of engagement and research’ (p. 15) at secondary level. To avoid the primary / secondary distinction, they clarify in a footnote that each chapter defines its target learner group and that as editors they refer to intermediate learners as ages 13-16 and advanced learners as ages 17-19. This contrasts with Ellis (2014), who clarifies the term ‘young learners’ in line with the International Standard Classification of Education and proposes lower secondary learners (11-14) and upper secondary learners (15-17), thereby highlighting the lack of terminological consistency within the field.
Chapter 1, ‘Eco-picturebooks for older learners: Features, selection criteria, and practical suggestions’ by Theresa Summer makes a strong case for the use of eco-themed picturebooks to support critical environmental literacies with learners aged 12-19 in Germany. Summer proposes some excellent picturebooks, diverse in illustration and text volume, and provides a range of teaching ideas to encourage deep reading. To support the picturebook selection process, Summer categorises eco-themed picturebooks into implicit and explicit texts and proposes three criteria which go beyond visual aspects. Markus Oppolzer’s inspiring Chapter 2 focuses on ‘The centrality of conceptual metaphors to reading of characters’ thoughts and feelings in Shaun Tan’s picturebooks’. Through the perspective of conceptual metaphors, Oppolzer introduces readers to several of Tan’s works and presents six inroads (thematic, empathetic, performative, artistic, biographical, and generic) to support educators when exploring Tan’s Cicada with advanced students of CEFR B1/B2 English levels.
The rather anecdotal chapter 3 by Anne Herlyn titled ‘“It was all very mysterious indeed” – Addressing the counterpoint effect in Oliver Jeffers’ The Great Paper Caper in the upper secondary classroom’ might be more suited for an educator new to picturebook-based ELT. Herlyn discusses visual literacies and narrative complexity and reports on a classroom project with The Great Paper Caper, in which learners received either the text or illustrations and were invited to (re)create the missing elements. Undoubtedly, this project would be suitable for a wide range of learner ages, not only secondary. Annika Kolb and Heiko Kist’s exceptional Chapter 4, ‘“The book really got me” – Individualized reading of picturebooks in a secondary EFL classroom,’ is based on a four-week case study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing on common classroom realities such as the challenges of selecting a picturebook to suit an entire class, Kolb and Kist promote individualized reading by offering learners a choice of twelve picturebooks, selected for topic relevance, complexity, and aesthetic quality. The success of their project is supported not only by empirical data but also by a student’s poem, which highlights their linguistic, cognitive, and creative engagement.
In Part 2, Chapter 5, ‘(Re-)Envisioning picturebooks for social justice education in advanced audiences: A critical literacy perspective from Canada’ by Eleni Louloudi and Chapter 6, ‘I Dissent – Discussing Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s egalitarian version of the American Dream at higher secondary level’ by Katja Heim both centre on social justice and human rights. Louloudi explores the engagement of student teachers and high school students during a university seminar in Canada when using The Composition by Antonio Skármeta and Alfonso Ruano. Based on Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and critical literacy as social justice education, she proposes a five-step picturebook teaching cycle and details how she used The Composition with advanced English language learners, including a focus on reflection. Heim’s chapter on the use of I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley with English learners at higher secondary level notes the challenge of low-frequency vocabulary and highlights how the visual support in the picturebook helps learners to grasp meaning, which teachers will appreciate. She identifies three key aspects of education for democracy (affective, participatory, cognitive), which she applies to the picturebook. She then offers a set of questions for analysing the visuals in I Dissent and a sample analysis of three double spreads. These are of great value for teachers new to extracting meaning from picturebook illustrations, and in this way, the chapter both educates and encourages the reader.
Chapter 7, ‘Picturebooks matter: Developing citizenship education in the EFL classroom with teenage learners’ by Helena Lopes, reports on a picturebook-based research project at a secondary state school in Portugal. Lopes promises a practice-orientated approach and she delivers. Building on UNESCO’s (2018) guide for preparing teachers for Global Citizenship Education (GCE), she presents a general set of practical strategies, approaches, and activities before delving into her classroom research. Her project explored three GCE topics with Eric by Shaun Tan, Willy the Wimp by Anthony Brown, and The Hueys in The New Jumper by Oliver Jeffers. Lopes focuses on the latter in her lesson outline and activities. Chapter 8 ‘“Who’s that man?” – Stirring teenagers’ curiosity through Peter Sís’s The Wall,’ is based in Norway, and author Sissil Lea Heggernes explores how visual features can inspire teenage language learners’ curiosity. After a short introduction to the importance of curiosity, Heggernes offers an in-depth visual analysis of the coming-of-age story The Wall by Peter Sís, which helps teachers recognize its value for the ELT classroom. The detailed account of her study addresses how colour and the paratextual features (e.g., endpapers, flaps) raised students’ curiosity, developed their visual literacy and, in turn, prompted meaningful discussions.
Sandie Mourão’s thought-provoking closing chapter, ‘Crack in the classroom: A picturebook about the social problem of drug abuse and retrospective reflections from the classroom’, shares a rare example of picturebooks that focus on drug use and abuse, as well as educators who use such picturebooks in the classroom. Mourão skillfully outlines the visual and verbal text in the openings of The House That Crack Built by Clark Taylor and Jan Thompson Dicks before shifting attention to the classroom. Here, the experience of Mourão and the participating teacher in Portugal shine through in the lesson planning and activities, which follow a before-during-after cycle. The topic-related discussion questions are aptly short and age-relevant. The results of the students’ creative writing confirm the value of this picturebook for English language learners in secondary education.
Final Thoughts
Duncan and Paran (2018) highlight how a teacher’s enjoyment and passion for literature can make a selected text appealing to secondary students. This volume clearly reflects each chapter author’s passion for their selected picturebooks and their pioneering approaches to successfully integrating these books into secondary English language education. The editors have carefully selected chapters that are varied in structure and foci and of significant value to their intended readership. The chapters with detailed visual analyses support teachers who, as Kümmerling-Meibauer points out in the foreword, are often not taught visual literacy. While I, perhaps overly optimistically, would have liked to have seen more diverse teaching contexts represented, there is no doubt that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in picturebook-based language teaching will find this volume to be of great interest. Ultimately, the publication is an exciting and inspiring step forward which helps to elevate the role of picturebooks in secondary English language education.
References
Duncan, S., & Paran, A. (2018). Negotiating the challenges of reading literature: Teachers reporting on their practice. In J. Bland (Ed.), Using literature in English language education: Challenging reading for 8-18 year olds (pp. 243–269). Bloomsbury.
Ellis, G. (2014). ‘Young learners’: Clarifying our terms. ELT Journal, 68(1), 75–78. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cct062
Ellis, G., & Gruenbaum, T. (2023). Reimagining picturebook pedagogy for online primary English language education. In D. Valente & D. Xerri (Eds.), Innovative practices in early English language education (pp. 147–170). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12922-3_8
Heggernes, S. (2019). Opening a dialogic space: Intercultural learning through picturebooks. Children’s Literature in English Language Education, 7(2), 37–60.
Mourão, S. (2013). Responses to the lost thing: Notes from a secondary classroom. Children’s Literature in English Language Education, 1(1), 81–105.
Ommundsen, Å. M. (2015). Who are these picturebooks for? Controversial picturebooks and the question of audience. In J. Evans (Ed.), Challenging and controversial picturebooks: Creative and critical responses to visual texts. (pp. 71–93). Routledge.
UNESCO. (2018). Preparing teachers for global citizenship education: A template. UNESDOC Digital Library. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265452
Yeom, E. (2019). Disturbing the still water: Korean English language students’ visual journeys for global awareness. Children’s Literature in English Language Education, 7(1), 1–20.
| Tatia Gruenbaum is a visiting researcher at TU Braunschweig, Germany and is based in the Netherlands. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics, and her doctorate focused on the use of picturebooks as a tool in pre-service primary teacher education in the Netherlands. Her current research explores picturebooks focused on Jewish lived experiences during the Holocaust. Tatia is one of the co-founders of Picturebooks in European Primary English Language Teaching (PEPELT), a finalist in the 2020 British Council ELTons awards. |