A study reexamined data from an earlier study of the effect of teacher questioning techniques on students' understanding of and responses to literature. Data were reexamined for instructional correlates of difficulty of recall and difficulty of depth of understanding. Subjects, 1,041 students in 58 eight-grade English classes in 16 midwestern…

Reflecting the reader-response theory of literature--a theory suggesting that literature is made dynamic through interaction between reader and text--this report presents ways of extending high school students' imaginative grasp of human experience. Using three works--Randall Jarrell's poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," Ambrose…

The assumption that readers understand best and respond most positively to writing and illustrations which reflect their own first-hand experience was tested. To elicit response from children, four books by Byrd Baylor were used in three classes of fifth graders, in urban, suburban, and rural schools. After the books were read and the pictures…

Written in the same spirit as the earlier edition but thoroughly revised and updated, this book is designed to make teachers aware of reader-response theory and its implications for literature instruction and curriculum. The book demonstrates how a response-centered curriculum brings students to a greater understanding of all forms of literature…

Intended for literature instructors, this digest explains the relationship of transactional theory (a reciprocal, mutually defining relationship between the reader and the literary text) to the teaching of literature. The importance of the reader's part in literature is first demonstrated, noting that attention must be paid to who the readers are,…

To learn more about how people read literary texts, with a view to improving the way literature is taught in schools, a study examined the extent to which the reading of literature is affected by variations in readers, texts, and situations. Subjects, 12 skilled (faculty) readers and 96 novice (undergraduate) readers, read a short story, either in…

A selection of romances from medieval literature can be used successfully in undergraduate literature classes to trace the appearance and relevance of medieval themes, motifs, and characters in works of modern poetry, fiction, and film. New scholarly editions, historiographies, translations, and modernizations give both teachers and students more…

A "special themes in literature" course about illness and disability was designed to help future nurses to understand the human, rather than the clinical, dimensions of impairment and its effects on the sufferer as well as the sufferer's family, associates, and community. The objectives of the course were to look at such matters as…

An honors seminar at Bloomsburg University (Pennsylvania) investigated the story of Jesus as it has evolved in different media over nearly two millennia. Initially the students studied two gospels with contrasting versions of the life of Jesus, in order to explore the process whereby oral material is transcribed into written form by different…

This paper provides a creative approach to developing literary understanding and writing ability in students in a college introduction to literature course. Eight assignments are described which pair literary works having some feature in common. A sample suggestion from the first group of exercises, concerned with characterization, is as follows:…

To help students develop a broadly generative approach to reading and writing about literature, teachers of literature should employ not only systematic procedures, but also the eclectic and utilitarian spirit of rhetorical invention. A semiotic perspective offers the most solid theoretical foundation for establishing a genuinely heuristic…

This article discusses editorial "filters" in folktales, specifically the changes ("orientations") which editors deliberately impose on a tale because they want to reach a specific audience. A case in point is the tale called "Allerleirauh," in the Grimm collection, which not only is highly illustrative of editorial…

Two basic approaches to teaching children to appreciate literature at any level are the structural (traditional literary analysis) and the reader response approaches. Structural analysis provides the terms and concepts that help readers interpret and discuss literature, while reader response emphasizes the integrated experience an individual has…

Prepared as part of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, this paper describes the design of a study intended to discover: (1) if there are aesthetic principles that are universal and that guide readers' experiences of works of literature; (2) whether the principles are built into people by their cultural, economic, and social…

This paper describes the folkloristic and literary theories centered on the traditional narrative that have a bearing on the Turko-Danish Fairytale Project. These theories were incorporated into the Fairytale Project because traditional prose tales (of which the fairy tale is one of the most prominent forms) are a genre that exists in both oral…