To promote independent reading in middle school, teachers must understand why adolescents choose to read or not read a specific book. Yet, there is limited research on the factors that students consider when evaluating books that teachers have introduced them to in class. This study aimed to describe factors that 43 Grade 7 and 8 students noted as…

Literature can be a powerful resource for adolescents' psychosocial development, as it provides opportunities to experience the world through the perspectives of others and juxtapose these with one's own experiences. However, gaining access to these perspectives requires going beyond literal words on the page to explore interpretive meanings. This…

Over the past decade in the United States, levelled texts, or "little books" with finely graduated levelling of text difficulty, have regained their status as a literacy staple for beginning readers. Despite their resurgence, questions remain regarding the reliability and quality of these books. In this study, we conducted a detailed…

Examines difficulties children may have in reading Virginia Hamilton's "M. C. Higgins, the Great"; discusses the book and shows how teachers can promote children's appreciation for it by discussing some basic traditions as they appear in the book and by bringing into play children's knowledge of their own belief systems. (ET)

Presents an approach for helping students to explore the auditory level of meaning of a poem in a step-by-step manner. (TJ)

The notion of literature's difficulty must have begun with its first interpreter. Biblical readings sometimes allegorized scripture into moral precept, while occult readings (i.e., Gnostic writings) often carried an implication that such texts are either for an elite readership or represent the essence of a tradition of spiritual truth under…

While thematic curriculum designs based on Bruner's structuralism are a great improvement over the old chronological literature anthologies, they still ignore several important contexts in which a literary work might be studied. The multifunctional approach can provide this complexity of contexts. (SJL)

Describes a study which revealed that teachers scoring high on a test of complexity contributed more positively than did low-complexity teachers to student written ability to interpret literature. (DD)

Ease of language processing varies with the nature of the language involved. Ordinary spoken language is the easiest kind to produce and understand, while writing is a relatively new development. On thoughtful inspection, the readability of writing has shown itself to be a complex topic requiring insights from many academic disciplines and…

Academic writing is distinguished by its being a problem solving activity, no matter how tentative the solutions. In this regard, writing about literature is a form of academic writing that shares the same assumptions as other academic writing. The problem solving activity of the literary interpreter consists of discovering, preserving, or…

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Rappaccini's Daughter" reflects the author's view that inherent in the human dilemma are ambiguous ironies which cannot be resolved. Although Hawthorne (unlike Ralph Waldo Emerson) perceives evil as an extraordinarily potent force, he offers no clear moral solutions in this story, but examines various…

The problems of teaching poetry in the elementary classroom are (1) the choice of poems and (2) the way in which the teacher presents the poems. Becuase good poetry can encourage the child's imagination, a teacher should avoid the mediocre "children's poems" generally found in textbooks and should present students with worthwhile poems from other…

In one college course in colonial history, students read and review one of several designated books, then share their reviews with small groups at the culmination of study of that topic. Discussion groups then answer and discuss synthesis questions about the books. Student response to the approach has been positive. (MSE)

A discussion of the types and uses of stories in second language instruction argues that the inclination to narrate is an omnipresent human phenomenon, whether attributed to nature or to culture. The story is a means of self-expression and communication that describes different forms of narrative, both literary and nonliterary. The uses and…