Dowd and Bartlett (2019) tested the reading competencies of second graders attending Save the Children programs in 11 countries. They used sixty-word passages and comprehension questions without time limits and analyzed data of students reading more than 10 words per minute. They found wide disparities in speed among those who showed high…

The constructive feedback on the author's article has helped him to expand his knowledge on the topic. He would like to clarify here that the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of extensive reading on the development of Japanese high school learners' linguistic knowledge and reading abilities. The findings revealed that the…

Aka (2019) conducted an year-long large-scale study demonstrating that Japanese high school students who undertook extensive reading performed better than a control group who undertook grammatical instruction. Those showing the greatest gains were those of lower and intermediate proficiency. The students' achievement was measured in terms of…

Nobuko Sakurai (2015) presents insightful research results that help educators better understand the impact of translation as it limits reading quantity, reading comprehension, and reading rate in an extensive reading (ER) program. Overall, the results of the study encourage educators to restrict translation as a means of obtaining better results…

This paper is comprised of two essays by the same author. The first essay, "Reading and Writing," refers to two books written by Dan Koeppel as an introduction to the topic of plagiarism in education and the temptation that both educators and students face to cheat. A "Big Lister" is described by Dan Koeppel in his book,…

This essay offers a commentary on how the relationship between language and literacy practices in and out of school has been conceptualized. It draws upon two new books in the field. Shirley Brice Heath's new book, "Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life," which makes use of rich ethnographic accounts of…

This commentary explores a central issue for our times, online reading comprehension. It first defines three issues that have largely gone unnoticed as the Internet enters our classrooms: (1) literacy has become deictic; (2) effective online information use requires additional online reading comprehension practices, skills, and dispositions; and…

Since Susan Adler, Alberta Dougan, and Jesus Garcia like "big ideas," the author offers one to ponder: young people in this country can not read with comprehension. The saddest thing about this crisis is that it is no secret. The 2001 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for reading, published in every major…

Describes a multimedia project that combined text, pictures, and sound and found that the students could reinforce their reading and writing skills by using a word processor, recording their writing, and drawing pictures. Suggests that teachers have been using multimedia for years and should not be intimidated by the thought of it. (JOW)

During the Fall term, 2001, the author taught a new course intended to develop a diversity of close reading skills among his students. An integral component of the course involved the exploration of memory and history. As the fate of the syllabus would have it, right after the September attacks he taught Sarah Farmer's "Martyred Village:…

Even though Swedish students (age 9 and 14 years) placed third in the recent IEA study, reading instruction in Swedish schools is apparently no better than in other countries taking part in the IEA study. No strong correlations between type of reading instruction and students' reading skills have been found. Schools in Nordic countries work under…

Traces the origins of the literacy tradition in indigenous African cultures to the use of the tools of literacy by two black social activists--W.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X. Also stresses the relationship of literacy to social action, self-education, and liberation of the mind. (AEW)

Presents how Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics can be used to analyze readers' responses to an American literature text. Readers are Brazilian college students reading a text by the American author, Amy Tan. (Author/VWL)

Maintains that cultural literacy's emphasis on "what" students should know must be shifted to a concern for "how" they come to know. Describes various theories of reading and the role of the teacher and practical illustrations of them. Criticizes notions of core curricula while suggesting reasons for considering them. (HB)

Suggests using literary texts as a means of enhancing learner participation in English language classes in southern Spain. Literary texts may be employed to develop participation in reading, increase learner's awareness of communicative strategies, and increase the awareness of formal resources used by authors to reinforce texts. (25 references)…