Compelling Stories for English Language Learners – Creativity, Interculturality and Critical Literacy

This book is a comprehensive introduction to children’s and young adult literature in English language education. It demonstrates why story matters for language learners and presents many ideas for teaching with compelling story. Using recent examples of literary texts from diverse cultural contexts that are well suited to the primary or secondary classroom, the book explores the advantages of deep reading and the vital importance of in-depth learning, engaging students as motivated participants, working collaboratively and with empathy while preparing for and confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century. Story is promoted as central to language education in order to experience new perspectives from around the world. Illustrating the approach with a Deep Reading Framework based in research and theory, Janice Bland guides the reader to discover how to make use of literary texts in a way that energizes students for interculturality, creativity and critical literacy.The objective is not a study of literature but a study of how readers can learn about life as well as language through compelling story.