This article considers the role of reader characteristics in processing and learning from informational text, as revealed in think-aloud research. A theoretical framework for relevant aspects of readers' processing and products was developed. These relevant aspects included three attentional foci for processing (comprehension, monitoring, and…

This essay is just one story in the ongoing conversation of how to approach teaching indigenous literatures in colonial educational institutions. Through sharing her experiences in teaching Richard Van Camp's "The Lesser Blessed," the author hopes to reveal the power of this particular text and the way its effects on students who…

Claims that Tom is a character eminently suited to the multiplicity and subjectivity arguments of reader response criticism (RRC), that meaning is a relation between an author, a text, and a reader, not an object, as New Criticism held, and not a procedure, as RRC assumes. (RAE)

Reiterates some of the major tenets of reader-response theory. Describes the "writerly" text as a source of activity rather than of meaning, and examines Gary Paulsen's "The Winter Room" as an example of the active writerly text. (SR)

Offers a Pyrrhonist reading of "Hamlet." Describes an experiment in teaching that attempts to reconstruct for literature students the prudential-ethical context of human rhetoric, placing "prudentia," or practical wisdom, at the center of their own imaginative involvement. (PRA)

Explores themes relating to human transition as they appear in "Charlotte's Web" and four other stories using pigs as a subject. Discusses the motifs common to all these texts that recur in the film "Babe." Considers how the cycle of life and death is ceaseless, and pigs symbolize the necessary transitions that people must all…

In this article, the author redefines "text" and "poem" so that attention will be focused on the reader. The text, she argues, lies inert on the page until the reader comes along and brings it to life in the act of reading, reacting, and reflecting. A poem, then, must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It is…

There is an abundance of theory concerning the effects of reading literature. Some researchers do reveal effects, but few explain them. When they do, the textual features examined are neither necessary nor sufficient for literariness. Three experiments are presented here that study the relation between literary text quality and literary reading…

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

While visiting the classroom of an English teacher on campus, the author noticed a large number of literature textbooks that were being replaced with a newer edition. In this article, she describes a project, which was inspired by these discarded literature textbooks, designed to introduce students to an art form based on ideas rather than…

High school teacher Melissa Troise challenges students to recognize the relationships that exist between literary theories, such as Marxism, feminism, and postcolonialism, and urges students to expand their contexts for reading texts by accessing and combining theories. Troise believes theory provides students with the potential to better…

Discusses ways in which reader response journals can be useful as a teaching method. (SRT)

Describes how one teacher uses children's literature to help children learn about the Holocaust. Shares reactions from some of the students to the literature. (MG)

Argues that recognition of the reader's role in the production of meanings in literary works has major consequences for the theory, research, and teaching of literature. Discusses the need to include the reader's role when writing the history of literature; develop new language for the description of the meanings of works; and develop new models…

Investigates the relationship between text type, tone, and readers' responses of 58 students. Finds that narrative and expository text were not responded to differently. Finds that subjects made fewer text-based and more reader-based statements when reading descriptive text than when reading expository or narrative text. (MG)