Web skimming may be a kind of literacy but it's not the kind that matters most. In this article, the author contends that web skimming indicates a decline of literacy. The author discusses research conducted by Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, on how users skim web pages. He shows how the web is damaging the right way to read.

Uses an oversaturated print environment at a hospital emergency room to reflect on print in classrooms, maintaining that it should be pertinent to students within the context of their ongoing classroom activity. (SR)

Discusses how instructors can begin to understand aliterates--students who can, but do not, read. Asserts that instructors can reach students who seem aligned against literate culture by reflecting on their own early reading experiences and helping students to reflect on theirs. (EV)

Explains the truth behind the hype of hypertext and multimedia print forms. Argues that neither technology has yet hit its apex, but if nothing else, reading books in either format will encourage people to keep reading. Concludes that although multimedia and hypertext technologies are still in their infancy, the potential to revolutionize reading…

Muses over how many books bought are actually read. Reflects on factors involved in the decision not merely to buy books but to read them. Notes that some people maintain that most of what is actually read is pap. Wonders whether reading teachers should pay more attention to what people read, as well as how people read. (SR)

Discusses how individuals keep a canon of poetry within their subconscious and how it functions to ward off the encroaching loneliness or despair Robert Frost referred to as "Desert Places." (HTH)

Discusses literacy in the author's own family and asks whether the term "family literacy" can really refer with any accuracy to any group of people or to any set of behaviors. Argues that literacy educators must resist abstractions and generalizations and focus upon the particularities that help shape the individual literacies of their…

Describes the shifts in the author's literacy in the three years she has been a mother. Discusses the two books she has had time to read for pleasure, as well as the books she has written and edited (in her role as a teacher educator). Shares how this reflects the fragmented, challenging, exhilarating existence of motherhood. (SR)

Attempts to develop a model for research in reader response to literature which accounts for three sources of variation: those among texts, readers, and contexts. (DD)

Suggests that social scientists use the reading of literature to enhance their instruction about contemporary situations. (AEA)

Explains how female preservice teachers describe their covert reading histories in assigned autobiographical narratives. Uses textual devices borrowed from Bertolt Brecht to show how preservice teachers can critically analyze the assumptions underlying their understanding of their early reading experiences. (TB)

In examining the nature of literacy in ancient Athens, this paper reviews the work of key modern scholars and their positions in the debates concerning the development of literacy in Greece, the oral culture preceeding this, and the technology that enabled it to occur. Following an introduction surveying the viewpoints of Rhys Carpenter, L. H.…

In Portugal, the word "literacy" acquired public importance in October 1995, in the first national literacy assessment report. In the last few years, "reading habits" and not "literacy" became a privileged research object, and it is the amount and kind of reading that is being measured, with the results taken as…

Compares course requirements and student reading practices in a selection of units in business, engineering, health science, and social science and the findings challenge prevailing ideas of what constitutes tertiary literacy in Australian universities. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the trend toward the electronic media among college students resulting in less reliance upon newspapers. Asks what social locator and technology use variables can best explain newspaper readership trends. Provides data from a study of college students in 1992 regarding newspaper readership and other media. (HB)