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The encouragement and formulation of a student's imaginative response to and "engagement" with literature and the concerns of the papers and summaries of discussions in this Dartmouth Seminar report. James Britton discusses refining the student's natural response to literature by developing his increased sense of form ("principally a sense of the pattern of events") and by encouraging wide reading together with close reading. D. W. Harding, in "The Report of the Study Group," links the development of young people's behavior and personalities to their developing responses to literature, indicating three modes of presentation of literature, the kinds of materials to select, and ways to bring about students' affective responses. James E. Miller's paper, "Literature and the Moral Imagination," suggests that studying literature frees students from platitudinous ethical parochialism and encourages self-examination. In "Reading, Writing, Reality, Unreality," Benjamin Demott emphasizes the need to discuss literature primarily to awaken the students' sense of their own and others'"humanness." A sampling of statements from the conference on general topics concerning the study of literature in the schools is presented by James Squire. Suggested readings on response to literature are also included. (LB)

Grouped together are four miscellaneous papers from the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar. The first by Alfred Grommon addresses the education of teachers of English, commenting on the current status of teachers and putting forth some proposals which reflect the changes in attitudes toward teacher education programs and a recognition of the social, professional, and educational context in which such teacher education must occur. The second paper comments on educational research, suggesting that with the impact of research and development arising out of research, there is likely to be a more rapid shift from the personal to the technical approach to teaching. The third paper considers teaching the disadvantaged child and comments on a creative teaching approach based on recognizing the need to give disadvantaged children that minimum of practical literacy which a sophisticated society demands. The last paper by Alan Purves discusses writing about literature (literary criticism) and the elements of writing that an individual might combine in any number of ways to fashion an essay. (HOD)

The aim of English teachers should be to refine and develop responses of children to literature. Development is defined as an increasing sense of form. In literature this relates to a sense of the patterns of events, a sense which increases as one's frame of reference of reality grows with experience. Children must be encouraged to trust their responses to literature and not rely solely on critics and teachers for their opinions. A means of improving response is to encourage individual reading in order to further literary experience. Included are study groups' discussions prompted by Britton's paper. The discussions deal with "Adolescence in Relation to Literature,""Modes of Approaching Literature in the Classroom,""Cultural Heritage,""The Emergence of Responses to Literature.""The Study of Literature," and "Response to Literature.""Literature and the Moral Imagination" argues that imaginative experience parallels the nature of real experience and in this way solicits moral imagination. Treatment of the moral imagination in the study of literature is discussed. (LL)

Fourteen papers collected under three headings--literature, language, and composition--consider what lies ahead in the teaching of elementary school English. Papers on literature cover the role of literature in elementary English programs (Alan S. Downer), the necessity for developing the student's imagination (James E. Miller, Jr.), the nature of the analytic process in studying literature (Roy Harvey Pearce), and the relationship between the "knowledge explosion" and the values of traditional literature (Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr.). Papers on language treat what children need to know about language (Ruth G. Strickland), the distinction between competence and performance in language (Owen Thomas), the limitations of imitation in language acquisition (Philip B. Gough), sentence growth as explained by transformational generative grammar (Kellog W. Hunt), system and variety in American English (Raven I. McDavid, Jr.), problems of Negro speakers of nonstandard English (William Labov), and E. E. Cummings' creative manipulation of grammar (Priscilla Tyler). Three papers on composition discuss teaching the process of writing, the place of rhetoric in the preparation of composition teachers (both by Wallace W. Douglas), and the interrelationship of composition and literature in the elementary grades (Eldonna L. Evertts). (LH)

Eighteen papers on recent scholarship and its implications for school programs treat American ideas, novels, short stories, poetry, Emerson and Thoreau, Hawthorne and Melville, Whitman and Dickinson, Twain and Henry James, and Faulkner and Hemingway. Authors are Edwin H. Cady, Edward J. Gordon, William Peden, Paul H. Krueger, Bernard Duffey, John A. Myers, Jr., Theodore Hornberger, J. N. Hook, Walter Harding, Betty Harrelson Porter, Arlin Turner, Robert E. Shafer, Edmund Reiss, Sister M. Judine, Howard W. Webb, Jr., Frank H. Townsend, Richard P. Adams, and John N. Terrey. In five additional papers, Willard Thorp and Alfred H. Grommon discuss the relationship of the teacher and curriculum to new approaches in American literature, while Dora V. Smith, Ruth A. French, and Charlemae Rollins deal with the implications of American literature for elementary school programs and for children's reading. (MF)

THESE 14 PAPERS EMPHASIZE THE VARIETY OF CURRENT THOUGHT ABOUT RHETORIC AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH MODERN RHETORIC IS EXPLOITING NEW INFORMATION AND RESEARCH. THE EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION DEFINES THE RECENTLY REVIVED ART OF RHETORIC IN TERMS OF ITS PURPOSES AND TYPES, AND THE PAPERS THEMSELVES DEMONSTRATE THAT MUCH OF WHAT IS NOW HERALDED AS NEW IN THE FIELD IS ACTUALLY OLD AND THAT MUCH CAN BE LEARNED FROM FORMULATIONS OF THE RHETORIC OF THE PAST. THESE PAPERS EXAMINE--(1) THE CONTEMPORARY PERTINENCE OF RHETORIC AND SEMANTICS TO COMPOSITION, (2) THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COMPARABLE ORAL AND WRITTEN MESSAGES AND HOW BOTH SHARE THE RHETORICAL "STANCE," (3) THE DANGERS OF USING PRESCRIPTIVE CLASSIFICATIONS IN PARAGRAPH COMPOSITION AND STYLE ANALYSIS, (4) RHETORICAL ANALYSIS APPLIED TO LITERARY CRITICISM AND TO THE EXPLICATION OF POEMS AND POETIC STRUCTURE, (5) THE APPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC FIELD THEORY TO RHETORIC, TO LANGUAGE, AND TO LITERATURE, (6) THE RELATIONSHIP OF RHETORIC TO OTHER DISCIPLINES, AND (7) NEW APPROACHES TO THE TEACHING OF RHETORIC AND TO EFFECTIVE CURRICULUM PLANNING. (THIS DOCUMENT IS AVAILABLE FROM THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH, 508 SOUTH SIXTH ST., CHAMPAIGN, ILL. 61820, $1.75, ORDER NO. 31600.) (JB)