For almost two decades, literature, which had played an essential role in foreign language teaching in many countries for many years, has been excluded in language classrooms. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest among scholars and educators, in both China and the West, in reviving literature as a means of acquiring language proficiency. But, this revival has been rather slanted towards the linguistic and literary elements of literature, while the inherent socio-cultural value of literature has been little discussed or explored. This dissertation seeks to analyze the relationship between culture and literature in second language acquisition and to provide, through illustrations of literary texts, a theoretical framework for teaching literature with the aim of acquiring crosscultural understanding.

This case study examined the development, implementation, and assessment of a staff development project created to facilitate teachers' instruction of elementary students who speak Black English. Staff development procedures took place utilizing an action research approach. The presenter/researcher examined strategies and methods for promoting school improvement within an elementary school serving African-American students. Successful staff development depended on voluntary participation by teachers who found the information and activities of use in their classrooms. The project demonstrated a low-cost, school-based approach to staff development. The researcher collected information about the needs of teachers and investigated numerous studies about the effects of negative attitudes of teachers toward Black English usage within classrooms and the potential solutions to this problem. Three workshops focused on the definition of Black English, effects of negative attitudes toward Black English, the issues of correction, reading and writing instruction, linguistic self-esteem, and whole language approaches. Staff development workshops generated enthusiasm and positive evaluations from school district administrators, the building principal, auxiliary staff, and the participants. Staff development procedures permitted (1) individual teachers who were uncertain about how to address the needs of Black English speakers to attend workshops, (2) a school-based project to involve volunteers, (3) peer-group interactions and sharing of ideas and knowledge among colleagues and administrators, (4) increased morale among teachers and students, (5) personal and professional growth of teachers, and (6) development of teaching strategies and methods that address the needs of students.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of talk in peer instructional writing groups. It is concerned with the relationship of talk and various writing process activities to the construction of the community within the group and to the definition of social identity by the members of the peer group. The research question asked was "what norms of language use can be identified in the talk of peer writing groups, and for what purpose are the norms used by the group members?" The study was conducted in an English class at a regional vocational high school over a two and one half year period. The same peer writing group of four adolescent males was observed from tenth grade through twelfth grade. Data in the form of audio tapes, fieldnotes, and student writing was collected and then analyzed using a sociolinguistic based method of conversational coding and analysis. The purpose of the analysis was to identify norms of language use established by the members of the peer writing group, and to evaluate the purpose for which the norms were used. Eighteen norms of language use connected to writing process activities and storytelling in the group were identified. The findings suggest that talk within a peer writing group is being used for more than the accomplishment of the assigned task; the talk connected to the writing process activities is also being used to accomplish the construction of a language community within the group and to define the individual social identities of the peer group members. That the group established norms of language use for directing the talk within their group is significant, and that those norms were based upon aspects of the writing process and storytelling is important in that it indicates the existence of a means through which writing and social identity are connected.

The "Draw to Learn" study was undertaken to determine if a combination of drawing and writing in a high school language arts setting would enhance creativity and self-expression. The intervention described in this study took place in a 9-12 high school in Hartford, Connecticut, during April and May of 1993. It consisted of six classroom lessons and four measurements: the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (T.T.C.T./non-verbal), the Sheridan RESCORE writing analysis test, an opinion survey questionnaire and a three-judge panel review of randomly selected student journals. Outcomes were mixed. Results from the T.T.C.T. and the RESCORE were the opposite of expectations. The T.T.C.T. creativity index dropped significantly after the intervention and the RESCORE results measured no general increase in writing between the first and last sessions of "Draw to Learn." Other results were more promising. Anecdotal material from RESCORE, data from the opinion survey questionnaire and the judges' responses indicated some enhancement of creativity and self-expression from the intervention, with a noticeably stronger performance in drawing than in writing. It was speculated that time constraints could have been involved in producing both this discrepancy and the negative results from T.T.C.T. and RESCORE. The possibility that the data were reflecting a population undergoing change was also raised. Several areas of further research are suggested by the study, including uses of the model with other populations, different kinds of drawing activities, and longer time frames.