Direct quotation can be a source of meaning in storybook texts for beginning readers. The author of this article sketches the linguistic complexity of direct quotation and offers instructional strategies. Three aspects of direct quotation are examined: the cluster of print features and syntactic characteristics that direct quotation involves, the…

Writers carefully include critical information in the opening lines of their chapters, but students often gloss over these beginning sentences, missing information that could help them better comprehend the text. To address this concern, the authors created a strategy that prompts students to examine the opening lines of chapters, helping readers…

Eight experiments evaluated a core assumption of several theories of text processing, the shared resource assumption, which states that component text processes share limited processing resources. Short texts each contained two critical sentences that together warranted a causal inference. The syntactic structure of the second sentence was either…

Finds that detection of flaws in a list provides an opportunity to widen perspective on list content, and further opportunity exists when list headings have two meanings. Argues that the list may be represented better by a two-dimensional array. Considers the term "function" used in a list heading, splitting it into its most common…

Considering the difficulties in understanding the global meaning of texts, this paper intends to give some suggestions on how to help students reach a deeper understanding of texts in intensive reading classroom within the framework of schema theory. The purpose of this paper is expressed in three ways. The first is to give a brief overview of…

The present study examines how changes in the amount of on-screen text will influence student learning from a multimedia instructional unit on basic concepts of coordinate geometry. The relative effectiveness of two different versions (short-text and whole-text) of the instructional unit was examined for students who differed in terms of their…

This paper underscores the effect of text cohesion on EFL reading comprehension. 160 EFL (n = 80) and non-EFL (n = 80) university students took two versions of a cloze test based on a passage of 750 words length one developed with every nth word deletion and the other with cohesive word deletion. The results of analyses of variance indicated that…

This study examined the influences of reading decoding skills and world knowledge on third graders' comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Children read a narrative text and an expository text. Comprehension of each text was assessed with a free recall prompt, three cued recall prompts, and 12 multiple-choice questions. Tests from the…

The aim of this study was to go further than considering only cognitive factors to extend the understanding of the complex, dynamic underlying knowledge revision processes. Fifth graders were assigned to 2 reading conditions. Participants in 1 condition read a refutational text about light, whereas participants in the other read a traditional…

Provides information and discussion of the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. Explains what makes a good nonfiction book for children and discusses several books that have been honored in the first two years of the award. (MG)

Offers some thoughts on the structure of the choices presented in the hypertext read-only file called "WOE" (included on a disk with this journal). (SR)

Offers a monomeric narrative intended as a side-chain narrative to "WOE," a hypertext read-only narrative computer file included on disk with this journal. (SR)

Argues that arrangement (the second canon of rhetoric) can be productively rethought as the canon that both implies and produces the relationship between discourse and space. Suggests that electronic writing (hypertext) can make important contributions to a discussion of arrangement and that arrangement must be an active consideration in…

Argues that technical communication editing is most effective if it deals with structure first, and that structure deficiencies can be detected by applying a range of logical analysis criteria to each text part. Concludes that lists, headings, classifications, and organograms must comply with the laws of categorization and relevant logical…

Discussion of models that have been developed to structure text documents for information retrieval focuses on XML and its proposed query language XQL. Considers efficiency of the query engine and shows that an already existing model, Proximal Nodes, can be used as an efficient query engine behind an XQL front-end. (Author/LRW)