On the basis of a National Humanities project proposed by the English department of a St. Louis, Missouri high school, many different approaches to drawing students into writing about and understanding literature were developed. One of three such techniques is a sequence of writing-reading-writing that offers the possibility of both enhancing the…

Literary gaps were identified by Wolfgang Iser in 1974 as "vacant pages" that invite the reader to reflect and enter into the text thereby motivating students to experience the text as reality. Arthur Applebee, in 1979, identified three categories to distinguish children's types of interaction with stories: (1) the complexity of literary…

The proliferation of critics and critical approaches has produced a trend toward fragmentation and isolation among the practitioners involved. A suggestive counter-trend indicates that there is intense curiosity among critics to watch colleagues encounter texts, grapple with the preliminary questions of stance and method, and share the experience…

The double-entry journal requires students to write affective response statements to literature readings and to compare such entries with those of classmates. Use of the double-entry journal is intended to activate students' prior learning and present feelings, foster collaborative learning, integrate major language skills, and encourage the…

A total of 2,000 essays written by 1,000 students was submitted to generalizability analyses for domain-referenced tests. Each student had written one essay on each of two prompts representing two models of discourse. Each essay was read by six readers and judged on a scale of from 1 to 4. No reader read essays from both prompts. Reader agreement…

According to Wolfgang Iser's "The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response," the meaning of a literary text is created by each individual reader in response to gaps, or indeterminacies, in the text. With the application of this theory to the two-year college classroom, teachers can show inexperienced readers how to discover the meaning of…

Freshman and sophomore composition students who are required to write in response to literature frequently find that they are not yet secure enough in their basic writing skills to discuss a literary work. In order to help these students, writing center tutors must be familiar with the assigned writing tasks and what instructors expect from an…

A study was conducted to test the findings of two earlier studies (Peeck l974 and Pressley l983) on the effects of occasional mismatches between verbal and pictorial content in children's retention of illustrated prose. While the Peeck study indicated a considerable impact of mismatched pictures, the Pressley study indicated that with some…

Research suggests that literacy practices are a key site for the construction of gender in society and that widening the range of discourses available to both boys and girls is important to expanding the possibilities for how they construct their definitions of masculinity and femininity. A study compared children's responses to picture storybooks…

This paper discusses the similarities in the difficulties that developmental writers and non-native English speakers/writers bring to the classroom and how this can influence instructors' choices of pedagogical strategies. The paper proposes a method of teaching that encourages teacher comfort with basic writing such that student work remains the…

In separate interviews, Andrew, Ellen, and Caroline, English teachers from the same high school, each pause thoughtfully when asked about how their students respond to literature. Each day, they work carefully with scores of students--organizing lessons, reading together, observing and assessing student work. A study sought to place teachers'…

Although people may be making progress toward global understanding and multicultural acceptance, there are still "miles to go." Only when an individual can view the members of other cultures as people of equal value will s/he be able to truly understand the perspectives of another. Unfortunately, classroom teachers are rarely equipped to…

This paper suggests that one way teachers can revitalize literature studies in classrooms and foster students' response to literature is by teaching the literature of the Vietnam War. The paper presents some typical student responses to some Vietnam War literature, which stand in striking contrast to student responses to other kinds of literature.…

Reading is invisible. Any report of another's reading (beyond the level of word recognition) must rely on some kind of reproduction of the actual experience; there is no way to tap into the experience itself. After completing a pilot study, a small number of adolescents--5 eighth graders and 5 eleventh graders read the first four chapters of…

While university researchers cannot agree on a model for teaching literature, or even what literary knowing is, the training for literature that prospective elementary teachers receive is totally that of teaching reading. Such education is unrelated to reading and responding to literature. Even when preservice elementary teachers do receive…