A qualitative study analyzed the kind of questions that second graders posed for discussion when the only directive was to ask anything that seemed important or interesting. Subjects, students in a second-grade classroom in Athens, Georgia, represented a cross section of their community. They were approximately equally divided in regard to race,…

Noting that too many people, including college teachers and administrators, view literature as entertainment and, thus, impractical in the "real world" of employment, a teacher at North Hennepin Community College in suburban Minneapolis supports requiring literature as the primary reading in Freshman English classes. After remarking that…

The summary information in this report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public in Alberta, Canada with an overview of results from the June 1998 administration of the English 33 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

In her literature and composition classes, an educator encourages students to correlate their memory and imagination to the rhetorical elements of logos, pathos, and ethos and construct regenerative structures of knowledge through a comprehensive and objective understanding of a contextualized problem. She employs Bakhtin's dialogic method of…

Administrators can acquire a broader range of material drawn from Shakespeare and, by implication, from other great authors as sources for a fuller cognizance of life. The vast field of Shakespearean scholarship and criticism overshadows the works themselves. Nevertheless, adults can rediscover Shakespeare through performances and recreational…

This article describes a series of Scandinavian studies in reader response from 1968 to 1990. Studies chronologically discussed in the article are: (1) "Rhythm in Poetry"; (2) "The Esthetic Experience"; (3) "Meaning in Literary Texts"; (4) "Tension"; (5) the "Ram" study; (6) the…

Literatures created by American Indians illustrate the positive potential that expanding the literary canon has for helping to achieve a more democratic classroom. Expanding the idea of what constitutes a text worthy of study enhances students' degree of involvement in and sense of connection to curriculum content and helps them become better…

The reader is a component part of the only form of a text which can be discussed meaningfully as a message. As readers with different linguistic backgrounds experience texts in fusions with their own personalities and their own social and cultural backgrounds, these dynamic texts differ in different languages. Accordingly, intranslatability exists…

While story grammar and cognitive science theories of stories state or imply that a story will be more interesting if the protagonist experiences difficulty in attaining his or her goal, neither theory considers that the importance of the goal may also affect how interesting the story is. The structural-affect theory, however, defines stories on…

To honor the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Louise M. Rosenblatt's book "Literature as Exploration," this book offers 12 essays that demonstrate the extraordinary influence of Rosenblatt's work on the teaching of literature, on literary theory, and on educational research in all English-speaking countries. Further, it evinces…

Because newspapers have begun switching from evening to morning publication with increasing frequency, a study investigated subscriber response to change in publication time and in subscriber behavior over time. In follow-up to an earlier study on subscriber reactions to the conversion to morning publication of the weekday Eugene (Oregon)…

A study was conducted to determine how a population viewed the prospect of receiving news and information electronically. Subjects were 529 students attending Stanford University (California) in the heart of the "Silicon Valley" computer industry. The survey was conducted by mail with a telephone follow-up, and included 108 questions on usage of…

A study tested the validity of arguments leveled against reader-response methods of reading instruction, which--if these criticisms are correct--would produce lower comprehension scores on objective tests and less accurate recall from students. Subjects, 84 college freshmen in four developmental reading classes, were taught using one of four…

One way to elicit good writing from students is to expose them to great literature and have them write about the attributes they share with a character, or about the experiences they have had that parallel those in a work of fiction, or about how a work of fiction compares with real "life." Using James Joyce's "Dubliners" as a…

The effects of wait-time, the pause following a teacher question and the pause after a student response, on the length and number of student responses were analyzed at different cognitive levels. Data were obtained from 95 students in grade 4 and from 5 teachers using a wait-time of 5 seconds. Four oral discussion sessions by teachers and students…