Dialogue might be the most appropriate medium for reflections on translingualism. In a dialogue conducted by email over the course of ten days, Steven G. Kellman and Ilan Stavans consider the validity and implications of linguistic determinism. Their conversation examines whether some words that seem to embody the unique "Weltanschaaung"…

This interview was conducted with Professor Keith Allan with the aim of providing a brief but informative summary of the state of the art of pragmatics. In providing answers to the interview questions, Professor Allan begins with a definition of pragmatics as it is practiced today, i.e., the study of the meanings of utterances with attention to…

In this paper I analyze the role of hindsight in narrative configuration. Configuration means the grasping together of disparate elements into a coherent whole. I argue that hindsight, importantly, brings the temporal constraints on what we can know to the fore, but is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, hindsight is an indispensable tool both…

In his 2016 article, "What Can Readers Read after Graded Readers?" (EJ1098660), Jeff McQuillan provided data to show that there is an adequate amount of reading material that can be read at or above 98% vocabulary coverage to provide sufficient input to acquire most of the word families from the 2,000- to the 9,000-word-family levels.…

In this high-accountability era--one in which there is an expanding movement to condemn teachers for the failures of their schools--teachers teach students who believe writing is primarily an act of complying to a prompt, likely for a state accountability assessment or the troubling 25-minute essay that constitutes less than half of the writing…

As an instructional tool, graphic organizers (GOs) have been highly recommended and used in contemporary classrooms. Over the past decade, a number of concerns have been raised about claims for the effectiveness of GOs. These concerns involve the inconsistent research results on student improvements, the limitation in generalizability from…

The commentary argues for an understanding of how texts are put together that accounts for multimodality and draws on children's ways of being and doing in the home, their "habitus". It focuses on identities as socially situated. It argues that it is important to trace the process of sedimenting identities during text production. This offers a way…

Finds that detection of flaws in a list provides an opportunity to widen perspective on list content, and further opportunity exists when list headings have two meanings. Argues that the list may be represented better by a two-dimensional array. Considers the term "function" used in a list heading, splitting it into its most common…

Provides information and discussion of the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Explains what makes a good nonfiction book for children and discusses several books that have been honored in the first two years of the award. (MG)

Offers some thoughts on the structure of the choices presented in the hypertext read-only file called "WOE" (included on a disk with this journal). (SR)

Offers a monomeric narrative intended as a side-chain narrative to "WOE," a hypertext read-only narrative computer file included on disk with this journal. (SR)

Argues that arrangement (the second canon of rhetoric) can be productively rethought as the canon that both implies and produces the relationship between discourse and space. Suggests that electronic writing (hypertext) can make important contributions to a discussion of arrangement and that arrangement must be an active consideration in…

Argues that technical communication editing is most effective if it deals with structure first, and that structure deficiencies can be detected by applying a range of logical analysis criteria to each text part. Concludes that lists, headings, classifications, and organograms must comply with the laws of categorization and relevant logical…

Discussion of page design for desktop publishing focuses on the importance of functional issues as opposed to aesthetic issues, and criticizes a previous article that stressed aesthetic issues. Topics discussed include balance, consistency in text structure, and how differences in layout affect the clarity of "The Declaration of…

Focuses on how typography and color complement and differ from each other in signaling an underlying content structure; the synergism between typography, color, and page layout (use of white space) that aids audience understanding and use; and the characteristics of typography and of color that are most important in these contexts. (SR)