Intended for middle school teachers interested in helping students (especially those with no experience attending theater) learn how to read and see a play by themselves, this paper provides a lesson plan based on W. W. Jacobs's dramatic play, "The Monkey's Paw." After furnishing a rationale for reading this particular play, the paper…

A study investigated the use of riddles beginning with How, When, and Why to see which question type was easier for low-achieving students to answer correctly, and to see if practice could increase the number of correct answers chosen. For comparison purposes, scores were also collected for an average-achieving group without practice, to see if…

The problems arising from treating word and sentence complexity as the direct causes of difficulty in comprehension are surveyed in this paper from the perspective of readability formulas. The basic choices and assumptions made in the development and use of readability formulas are discussed in relation to the larger question of text…

Designed to provide an alternative to the book report, this booklet presents ideas for students to use in responding to books they have read. These ideas may help to get students to react to their reading, to stretch their minds, to learn to think as independent human beings, and to use their imaginations in experiencing literature. The 152 ideas…

Focusing on the notion that the author supplies the words in a text while the reader supplies the meaning, this issue contains essays that combine literary theories with classroom practices. Following an introduction by R. E. Fitch, articles include "Teaching a Western: Jack Schaefer's 'Shane'" (J. R. Ruff); "Pragmatic Criticism in…

What kind of meaningful learning goes on when an introverted and intuitive traditional professor imparts his knowledge to an extroverted student of the new wave generation? In a project exploring how teaching personalities influence student learning, a traditional professor of literature and a "new wave" (defined as characterized by…

Although the complexities of the concept of audience in nonacademic settings are gradually being recognized, audience analysis continues to be viewed primarily as a cognitive, problem-solving activity. Grounded in decontextualizing research--such as protocol analysis--this approach to audience assumes that, to inform appropriate writing choices,…

An alternative approach to the teaching of literature views the reading of a poem, short story, novel, or other literary work as an opportunity for a person to create his or her own immediate response. The approach suggests that there is no constant, objective meaning for a piece of literature, only individual responses reflecting the…

A study of the ways adults socialize children into particular patterns of literacy by helping them develop the literary and social knowledge necessary for using and understanding print is described in this monograph. Specifically, the monograph focuses on adults and children observed over a period of 18 months at a preschool, and provides insights…

A longitudinal study was conducted to determine the extent to which the race of homicide suspects and victims influenced newspaper coverage of the crime and prosecution. Based on reader response, it was hypothesized that homicides involving members of minority groups would receive less newspaper coverage than those involving Whites. Coverage for…

To put the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, which is concerned with the dynamics of reader response to literature, into a theoretical framework, this paper first describes how modern aesthetics take an interdisciplinary approach and investigate--by cross cultural approaches and in human behavior terms--the phenomenon of art and…

A detailed plan for stages one and two of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project is presented in this paper and factors considered in the project's research design are discussed in depth. The first section describes the working hypotheses of the project--that there are primordial patterns in the response to literature that are common…

Prepared as part of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, this paper contains descriptions of the core group of readers (600 18-year-old students) and the special groups of readers (each composed of approximately 50 subjects) who participated in the investigation of the collective versus the individual nature of the reader response…

As part of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, both an introspection and an essay study were conducted with Turkish university prep-school students and junior college students to determine their responses to three fairytales: "The Snake, the Fox, and the Man,""The Gold Apple," and "Per Smed's Whip."…

There are two disconcerting aspects of the research studies selected and discussed in the publication "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" (1985). One is the kinds of reading materials that were designated as sources for meeting the various functions of reading; the other is the omission of the role of…