Janice Bland, originally from London, is Professor of English Education, Nord University, Norway, having worked previously in teacher education in Germany for many years. Her core interests are concerned with creativity in ELT with primary and secondary-school children: creative writing, children’s literature, visual and critical literacy and global issues, intercultural learning and drama methodology. Her publications include Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment – Children and Teenagers in English Language Education (2013) and the edited volume Teaching English to Young Learners – Critical Issues in Language Teaching with 3-12 Year Olds (2015) both with Bloomsbury Academic. Janice is editor of the open-access CLELEjournal http://clelejournal.org/. ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3917-0595 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Janice_Bland
This paper examines how a popular series like Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy can motiv... more This paper examines how a popular series like Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy can motivate students to improve their language and literacy proficiency by extensive reading. Moving on from there, we argue a thoughtful and collaborative deep reading of The Hunger Games can broaden as well as change perspectives; for without being openly didactic, the series is sufficiently multilayered to provide meaningful booktalk in the classroom and to trigger engaged debate. Recognising that the degradation of non-human nature through human action has become a major theme in education, we argue that the intentionally interdisciplinary approach of ecocriticism towards a literary text can be a contribution to global issues education in the English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. We offer an ecocritical examination of The Hunger Games, not as an ideal or model reading, but rather aiming to promote ecopedagogy and further critical discussion and creative language activities in the secondary ESL/EFL classroom and student teacher seminar. To illustrate an ecocritical reading, we trace the classical literary tropes of apocalypse, pastoral and wilderness and reflect on the trilogy's multilayered approach towards the relationship between the human and the non-human. Finally, we suggest how critical issues such as consumer manipulation, media and celebrity culture can well be discussed with reference to The Hunger Games trilogy.
This paper considers ideological dimensions of language education, and the contribution picturebo... more This paper considers ideological dimensions of language education, and the contribution picturebooks narrating diversity and illustrating minority perspectives can make to this important aspect of English Language Teaching. It is argued that both representation of language and representation of the world must be taken into consideration in diversity-sensitive, intercultural education, and that children's literature offers this opportunity. Criteria for a selection of texts featuring children in minority and refugee situations are suggested. Cultural identity, multifaceted subjectivity and agency – concepts important in children's literature scholarship – are discussed, as these ideas are significant for understanding the situation of protagonists in minority situations both in the stories and amongst language learners in the classroom. Furthermore, with reference to Byram's five-stranded model of intercultural learning, it is suggested that elements of intercultural education can be elicited through stories – either illustrated and modelled by the protagonists themselves or recognised, through empathy, by the young language learners.
In the EFL primary and secondary-school classroom there will be found a huge diversity of readers... more In the EFL primary and secondary-school classroom there will be found a huge diversity of readers and reading practices. Although most young students on entering secondary school will already have a sense of story, and functional literacy in their mother-tongue, they will also bring with them preferences for certain types of narrative such as adventure, school stories, fantasy, non-fiction and comics or graphic novels. Many children, however, develop an entrenched loss of interest in reading at about the age of 12. In Germany this is known as the Leseknick, and is sometimes called the Reading Blip in the English-speaking world. As the classroom is increasingly characterised by social and cultural diversity, it has become evident that a truly universal reading experience does not exist. In order to combat the Leseknick, therefore, the wide potential value of non-canonical literature should be demonstrated and explored in teacher education and exploited in the EFL classroom, including the rich opportunities for language and literary learning through graphic narratives and children’s literature.
Children’s literature can be a powerful way to encourage and empower ELT in primary and secondary... more Children’s literature can be a powerful way to encourage and empower ELT in primary and secondary school settings, but is less commonly used globally than simplified versions of adult literature. Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment provides a comprehensive introduction to children's and young adult literature in language teaching. It demonstrates the complexity of children's literature and how it can encourage an active community of second language readers with multi-layered picturebooks, postmodern fairy tales, graphic novels and radical young adult fiction. It also examines the opportunities of children's literature in teacher education, including: children's literature for a pleasurable literary apprenticeship, the rich patterning of children's literature supporting creative writing, and the potential of children’s literature for intercultural communicative competence and critical literacy. Close readings of texts at the centre of contemporary literary scholarship, yet largely unknown in ELT, provide an invaluable guide for teacher educators and student teachers, including works by Anthony Browne, Philip Pullman and J.K.Rowling. This study makes an important new approach accessible for English teachers, student teachers and teacher educators.
Leading international scholars contributing to this volume examine the core issues of teaching En... more Leading international scholars contributing to this volume examine the core issues of teaching English as a foreign language to young learners. English as a discipline and as a teaching medium is expanding rapidly throughout the world, yet English for young learners receives far less attention to date from second language researchers and educational theorists than TESOL with secondary students or adults. The individual chapters cover the crucial issues critically and in-depth, not ignoring the problems in implementation, while searching to identify the advantages of English for young learners. Certain topics that have long been considered successful with young learners are examined, with reports on recent studies and literature reviews of the most relevant research into why these methods are favoured: CLIL, immersion teaching, task-based learning, oral storytelling, poetry and nursery rhymes, drama and booktalk with picturebooks. While some topics, although not new, are becoming more urgent: intercultural understanding, teaching with technology, understanding the role of formulaic language, materials development and assessment for example, other topics are rapidly emerging, such as English in pre-primary. The language development of young learners, although not the only aim of plurilingual education, is considered a central aim. The usage-based approach to language acquisition, which highlights children’s experience of language through engagement with input – how children’s lexical and grammatical knowledge can develop or emerge through oracy and literacy events – is a major theme.
This chapter describes how an early awareness of lexical patterns, grammatical categories and gra... more This chapter describes how an early awareness of lexical patterns, grammatical categories and grammatical judgements can be supported through an active engagement with poetry for children. Although acquired as unanalysed wholes in the primary school, formulaic sequences can provide young learners with an inventory of illustrative exemplars, which may later be recalled from memory. With sufficient input, the young learners may infer productive patterns, and increased command of language may gradually emerge. Thus poetry as pattern-rich, pleasurable language can also function as a template for the future. Language itself, second language acquisition and poetry all rely on repeated patterns. Children delight in these patterns, which support functional literacy. Mini narrative poems allow young learners to create mental models of the storyworld and mental representations of language. Poems can transmit cultural knowledge, can offer opportunities for humour in a motivating classroom environment, and can – like all literature – train flexibility of perspective.
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-1-may-2016/
Children's Literature in English Language Education, 2016
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-2-november-2016/
Children's Literature in English Language Education, 2017
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/journal-profile/
This paper examines how a popular series like Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy can motiv... more This paper examines how a popular series like Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy can motivate students to improve their language and literacy proficiency by extensive reading. Moving on from there, we argue a thoughtful and collaborative deep reading of The Hunger Games can broaden as well as change perspectives; for without being openly didactic, the series is sufficiently multilayered to provide meaningful booktalk in the classroom and to trigger engaged debate. Recognising that the degradation of non-human nature through human action has become a major theme in education, we argue that the intentionally interdisciplinary approach of ecocriticism towards a literary text can be a contribution to global issues education in the English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. We offer an ecocritical examination of The Hunger Games, not as an ideal or model reading, but rather aiming to promote ecopedagogy and further critical discussion and creative language activities in the secondary ESL/EFL classroom and student teacher seminar. To illustrate an ecocritical reading, we trace the classical literary tropes of apocalypse, pastoral and wilderness and reflect on the trilogy's multilayered approach towards the relationship between the human and the non-human. Finally, we suggest how critical issues such as consumer manipulation, media and celebrity culture can well be discussed with reference to The Hunger Games trilogy.
This paper considers ideological dimensions of language education, and the contribution picturebo... more This paper considers ideological dimensions of language education, and the contribution picturebooks narrating diversity and illustrating minority perspectives can make to this important aspect of English Language Teaching. It is argued that both representation of language and representation of the world must be taken into consideration in diversity-sensitive, intercultural education, and that children's literature offers this opportunity. Criteria for a selection of texts featuring children in minority and refugee situations are suggested. Cultural identity, multifaceted subjectivity and agency – concepts important in children's literature scholarship – are discussed, as these ideas are significant for understanding the situation of protagonists in minority situations both in the stories and amongst language learners in the classroom. Furthermore, with reference to Byram's five-stranded model of intercultural learning, it is suggested that elements of intercultural education can be elicited through stories – either illustrated and modelled by the protagonists themselves or recognised, through empathy, by the young language learners.
In the EFL primary and secondary-school classroom there will be found a huge diversity of readers... more In the EFL primary and secondary-school classroom there will be found a huge diversity of readers and reading practices. Although most young students on entering secondary school will already have a sense of story, and functional literacy in their mother-tongue, they will also bring with them preferences for certain types of narrative such as adventure, school stories, fantasy, non-fiction and comics or graphic novels. Many children, however, develop an entrenched loss of interest in reading at about the age of 12. In Germany this is known as the Leseknick, and is sometimes called the Reading Blip in the English-speaking world. As the classroom is increasingly characterised by social and cultural diversity, it has become evident that a truly universal reading experience does not exist. In order to combat the Leseknick, therefore, the wide potential value of non-canonical literature should be demonstrated and explored in teacher education and exploited in the EFL classroom, including the rich opportunities for language and literary learning through graphic narratives and children’s literature.
Children’s literature can be a powerful way to encourage and empower ELT in primary and secondary... more Children’s literature can be a powerful way to encourage and empower ELT in primary and secondary school settings, but is less commonly used globally than simplified versions of adult literature. Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment provides a comprehensive introduction to children's and young adult literature in language teaching. It demonstrates the complexity of children's literature and how it can encourage an active community of second language readers with multi-layered picturebooks, postmodern fairy tales, graphic novels and radical young adult fiction. It also examines the opportunities of children's literature in teacher education, including: children's literature for a pleasurable literary apprenticeship, the rich patterning of children's literature supporting creative writing, and the potential of children’s literature for intercultural communicative competence and critical literacy. Close readings of texts at the centre of contemporary literary scholarship, yet largely unknown in ELT, provide an invaluable guide for teacher educators and student teachers, including works by Anthony Browne, Philip Pullman and J.K.Rowling. This study makes an important new approach accessible for English teachers, student teachers and teacher educators.
Leading international scholars contributing to this volume examine the core issues of teaching En... more Leading international scholars contributing to this volume examine the core issues of teaching English as a foreign language to young learners. English as a discipline and as a teaching medium is expanding rapidly throughout the world, yet English for young learners receives far less attention to date from second language researchers and educational theorists than TESOL with secondary students or adults. The individual chapters cover the crucial issues critically and in-depth, not ignoring the problems in implementation, while searching to identify the advantages of English for young learners. Certain topics that have long been considered successful with young learners are examined, with reports on recent studies and literature reviews of the most relevant research into why these methods are favoured: CLIL, immersion teaching, task-based learning, oral storytelling, poetry and nursery rhymes, drama and booktalk with picturebooks. While some topics, although not new, are becoming more urgent: intercultural understanding, teaching with technology, understanding the role of formulaic language, materials development and assessment for example, other topics are rapidly emerging, such as English in pre-primary. The language development of young learners, although not the only aim of plurilingual education, is considered a central aim. The usage-based approach to language acquisition, which highlights children’s experience of language through engagement with input – how children’s lexical and grammatical knowledge can develop or emerge through oracy and literacy events – is a major theme.
This chapter describes how an early awareness of lexical patterns, grammatical categories and gra... more This chapter describes how an early awareness of lexical patterns, grammatical categories and grammatical judgements can be supported through an active engagement with poetry for children. Although acquired as unanalysed wholes in the primary school, formulaic sequences can provide young learners with an inventory of illustrative exemplars, which may later be recalled from memory. With sufficient input, the young learners may infer productive patterns, and increased command of language may gradually emerge. Thus poetry as pattern-rich, pleasurable language can also function as a template for the future. Language itself, second language acquisition and poetry all rely on repeated patterns. Children delight in these patterns, which support functional literacy. Mini narrative poems allow young learners to create mental models of the storyworld and mental representations of language. Poems can transmit cultural knowledge, can offer opportunities for humour in a motivating classroom environment, and can – like all literature – train flexibility of perspective.
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-1-may-2016/
Children's Literature in English Language Education, 2016
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-2-november-2016/
Children's Literature in English Language Education, 2017
Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed... more Children's Literature in English Language Education is a bi-annual, comprehensively peer-reviewed online journal for scholars, teacher educators and practitioners involved in using and researching children’s literature in the field of English learning as a second, additional or foreign language. The journal investigates children’s literature as an art form, and as a framework with which to connect L2 literature teaching across the school years. The scope covers the affordances of children’s literature for L2 acquisition with pre-school infants through to young adults. http://clelejournal.org/journal-profile/
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http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-2-november-2016/
http://clelejournal.org/journal-profile/
http://clelejournal.org/category/issues/volume-4-issue-2-november-2016/
http://clelejournal.org/journal-profile/