Summarizes the scholarly discussion about negative messages and reports the results of two pretests and two experiments using negative letters. Shows that buffers did not significantly affect college students' responses to simulated letters refusing credit and denying admission to graduate school and that strong "resale" was…

As an English teacher who has been teaching nearly 10 years in a college of southern Taiwan, the presenter reports his successful experience on a course, titled "Selected Readings from American Literature." In this try-out study, the presenter adapts a multigenre-response model via which he encourages Taiwan college students to bravely…

Provides a list of 118 reasons why the author's students claim they study American literature, including: (1) to broaden their vocabulary, (2) to learn from other people's experiences, and (3) to develop an open mind about different kinds of literature. (JD)

Examines the interaction among different news sources, individual levels of partisanship, and the hostile media effect in sports news. Explains that university students read a balanced story about their home-town college football team in one of three newspapers: the home-town, the cross-state rival university's town, or a neutral town paper.…

Explains that zines are self-published alternatives to commercial magazines. Includes a conversational interview between a university researcher and the three zinesters who produce "Burnt Beauty." Describes the content and distribution of a zine, readers' reaction to it, and the possibility of including zines in school-based literacy…

Notes that conflict occurs often on a high school newspaper staff. Outlines six common conflicts: editors versus staff; editors versus the teacher; editors versus photographers; staff versus the principal; editors versus editors; and staff versus faculty/readers. Discusses ways of resolving these conflicts, such as collaborative revision,…

Asserts that students should be encouraged to be risk takers and derive their own meaning from expository text. Discusses the impact of several reading strategies on the reading attitudes and classroom performance of college-level developmental readers. (PRA)

Discusses reader-response theories and response-centered literature instruction. Outlines fundamental problems that impede the transfer of authority from teacher to community to reader, and offers suggestions for their correction. (PRA)

Considers the role of visual literacy in the reading experience. Discusses an assumption among readers, publishers, and many educators that the visual elements in a text may be safely ignored, marginalized, or simply edited out. Argues for the important role of visual arts in literature. (SC)

Explores perceptions of media bias by manipulating expectations of bias and news topic. Explains that university students read dummy newspaper articles and then responded to a survey. Concludes that readers were more likely to designate material opposing their own views as biased. (PM)

Asks why students read essays as if their meanings are simple, univocal, and transparent. Suggests that students grow up practicing "essayist literacy," a view of the text as a self-sufficient communication vehicle. Argues that a rhetoric of deproduction conceals the social process of writing behind the apparent artlessness of the plain…

Describes an informal study of literature response journals in a graduate language arts methods course. Details advantages of response journals, procedures for use, and graduate students' reactions to journals as indicated on a questionnaire. Provides samples of students' aesthetic responses to literature. (RS)

Describes how several types of written assessments (student journal entries, student formal response papers, student survey responses, and teacher logs) can be useful in measuring the effects of literature on students' behavior and beliefs. (SR)

While there has been a great deal of debate about enlarging the canon, less attention has been paid to how students respond to "new" literary figures such as Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, or to how instructors should incorporate them into an already cramped literature survey course. Instructors must consider some questions that…

Attempts to show in detail how the human literary activity called literary interpretation consists of personal selection and use of communal tools. (CRH)