HC English Department

A great speech that sums up the corporate threats facing education

John Tierney reveals some interesting--albeit grim--aspects of the contemporary college world. He then makes some connections to what is revealed of high school student life in the film Race to the Top to that of college world.

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong. And yet people who use two spaces are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste.

Sandra Stotsky just released a report on the state of literature instruction (amount, difficulty, titles, etc.) in grades 9-11. Click here to read the report; click here to read a summary and others' responses on the Core Knowledge site. The report was written for the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. Here are her key findings and details from the report's Executive Summary:

This is the site for a student-staffed writing center at Clarkstown High School in NY. It began as a teacher-staffed center, but it became too burdensome for teachers alone to help the high volume of kids, so they brought in peer tutors. Now it is almost entirely student run. Now there is at least one teacher in the center at lunch and after school, but he or she works as a mentor to the student tutors. 

The truth is, and the research shows, students need multiple and various exposures to a word before they fully understand that word and can apply it. They need also to learn words in context, not stand alone lists that come and go each week. Of course the way we learn words in context, or implicitly, is by reading, then reading some more.

A criticism of Massachusetts' decision to adopt national standards that necessitates a move away from classic literature.

Interesting thoughts on collaboration, copyright, and web-based writing. Also, the links to "popular stories" all look interesting!

A response to Gladwell's New Yorker article.

American Passages: A Literary Survey provides professional development and classroom materials to enhance the study of American Literature in its cultural context. It is organized into 16 Units; each exploring canonical and re-discovered texts, and presenting the material through an Instructor Guide, a 30-minute documentary video series, literary texts and an integrated Study Guide

Transcript of an audio file on TKAM featuring Sandra Day O'Connor, Horton Foote, Robert Duvall and others.

A column that analyzes the rhetorical strategies that Bill Clinton used in his speech at the DNC

I'VE been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size manipulation, plagiarism and clichés. We need to set our sights not lower, but shorter. I don't expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students' daily chatter, as well as the world's conversation. The photo caption has never been more vital. So a few years ago, I started slipping my classes short writing assignments alongside the required papers

In celebration of Read Across America Day, and of World Read-Aloud Day, both in early March, we offer engaging, short Times essays, articles, op-eds and humor pieces on a range of topics for teachers, parents or students to read aloud. Many of our picks are pieces that someone on the Learning Network staff has field-tested with real, live middle and high school students over the years

Words from NY Times articles that were looked up most often by readers using the site's dictionary function. This blog post comments on the list.

Discusses "distributed reporting" through social media.

Using The New York Times to show students how the rules of grammar can be bent - and as models for their own writing.

Teaching ethos,pathos, logos, nomos through a scene from A Few Good Men

Info about a free possibility for e-portfolios through Google Apps. This site includes examples, Step-by-step processes, etc.