Reading Old English Texts focuses on the critical methods currently being used and developed for reading and analyzing writings in Old English. It is the first collection of its kind in the field and is a timely book, given the explosion of interest in the theory, method, and practice of critical reading in recent years.
While this is a worthwhile study and correctly identifies motivations and undercurrents, particularly in the author's choice of, mainly, Northern Irish poets, the fact that not even one of the exceptional women poets writing in Ireland today is included, means that the work does not reflect contemporary Ireland. Not in the whole, that is. Besides, the South also has a lot to share with the world. Maybe this is just an unfortunate choice of title? But the book is good: Neil Corcoran is one of Britain's most accomplished commentators on contemporary poetry.
J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the most popular writers of the 20th century. His two most famous works of fiction, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, have sold hundreds of millions of copies and completely transformed modern fantasy fiction. In addition, Tolkien was a celebrated scholar, a professor at Oxford, and the author of the most influential article on the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf ever written. The new Critical Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien provides a reliable, up-to-date, and encyclopedic source of information on this influential writer for high school and college-level students, teachers, and the general public.
Reason to Write: Applying Critical Thinking to Academic Writing
This handbook is a practical guide designed to offer students the means to apply critical thinking to academic writing. Critical thinking is a challenging term. Sometimes it is presented in relationship to formal logic, which is too rigid to use as a strategy for writing instruction. Sometimes critical thinking is made synonymous with analysis, although they can be clearly differentiated as separate cognitive activities. Sometimes critical thinking is reduced to writing prompts on selected readings, or exemplar asides.
Critical Praxis Research: Breathing New Life into Research Methods for Teachers
Critical Praxis Research (CPR) is a teacher research methodology designed to bridge the divide between practitioner and scholar, drawing together many strands to explain the research process not just as something teacher researchers do, but as a fundamental part of who teacher researchers are. Emphasizing the researcher over the method, CPR embraces and amplifies the skills and passions teachers naturally bring to their research endeavours. Emerging from the tradition of critical pedagogy, Critical Praxis Research: Breathing New Life into Research Methods for Teachers transcends longstanding debates over quantitative vs. qualitative and scholar vs. practitioner research
