Product Description
”What a smart and useful book! It provides teachers with a wealth of knowledge and material to help their students develop critical perspective and suppleness of thought.”
–Mike Rose, University of California, Los Angeles
This bestseller was the first text to specifically address the challenges of teaching critical theory in high school literature classrooms. Since its original publication, the author has worked with hundreds of teachers and students t… More >>
Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Second Edition
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#1 by N. Wnek on April 18, 2010 - 8:14 pm
This book is great for any high school or even middle school teacher looking to include critical theory in the study of literature. Appleman suggests several ways in which students will be able to “put their Ray bans on” while looking at the world.
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by K. Dallas on April 18, 2010 - 11:14 pm
This book is a straightforward approach to critical lens theory. It helps the reader grasp the fundamental concepts that are necessary to teach high school and college level students. The activities also are user friendly and easily adaptable to an average ability classroom. Overall, it has easily become my first choice to prepare lesson plans.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Christina Cereghini on April 19, 2010 - 12:29 am
This book is very useful in giving you ideas on how to teach literary theory to those who are unfamiliar with it. The great thing about this text is that the examples they give you can be substituted for any kind of book, whether it is adolescent literature or something in the curriculum that you are teaching. I am enjoying learning about teaching literary theory and I cannot wait to get into the classroom and use some of these ideas with my students!
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on April 19, 2010 - 1:28 am
I’m going to be a first year teacher and ordered the paperback version of this book because I’ve heard Appleman talk about how useful literary “lenses” are to helping students interpret a text in many different ways. Like Eagleton says, every teacher does “theory”, it’s just a matter if they want to come clean about it or not. Having the students think about narrating the story from another perspective is what Appleman is all about. Using Appleman’s “lenses” (feminist, marxist, etc) will definitely help give me more flexiblity in lessons and most importantly I won’t be bored reading 150 papers all working from the same static interpretation. The poetry section of this book is incredible. When she discusses poetry, it’s all about how all kids can have the same poem but things pop out different to tehm. You can use her methods to discuss what poetry really is. If you one of the many public high school English Lit teachers that has been teaching for many years and believes there is ONE and only ONE WAY to interpret a piece of literature, this book is not for you…but it OUGHTA BE!!
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by Mark Valentine on April 19, 2010 - 2:44 am
There is nothing wrong with encouraging students to encounter literature from a variety of viewpoints and any worthy English teacher of literature should be adept in reinforcing this skill. In this respect, Appleman’s book shows merit. She outlines approaches for teaching the literary theories of Reader-Response, Marxism, Feminism, and Deconstruction, with (ad nauseum) student responses and sample handouts. And of course we walk in a world of categorization and theory, so writing about teaching literary theory is somewhat of a “no brainer” since our brain organizes information this way; without this skill, one could not survive. In short, she attempts to bring the theoretical world of the critics closer to younger students. Who can criticize that? Yet…. When I was reading her book, I kept thinking that this information might be handy for a certain teacher who lacks confidence in his or her own ability to respond directly to literature. Having the lenses is a great exercise, especially if one wants their students to show well on “Jeopardy.” Yes, they are indispensible to know if one is in an English graduate program. Knowing them would also help one appear more erudite at a literary party. So teach the students literary theory. Then teach them to respond with their own hearts and minds; to read with passion, voraciously, discarding the inapplicable and acting with courage on the true. Teach them to underline their books (their OWN books, of course) simply because they found a beautiful sentence. Teach them to read the Introduction to the novel LAST, after they have had a chance to read and develop their OWN lense–their own viewpoints. This takes greater courage, I believe. Students need to THINK the page. Robert Frost once said that “education in English is properly a slow process of just staying around in the right company till you can speak and handle a book in the author’s presence without setting his teeth on edge” (as quoted in George Anderson’s “Bread Loaf School of English: The First Fifty Years, Middlebury: Middlebury Press, 1969, p. 33).
Rating: 4 / 5