Introduces four essays on psychoanalysis and the teaching of literature that appear in this issue of "College English" and discusses in general how the psychoanalytic phenomenon of resistance applies to the teaching and comprehension of a piece of literature. (JC)

Argues that literature instruction should enable readers to find the connections between their experience and the literary work. Explains how discussions can be guided to focus on students' reactions, perceptions, and associations with a text. (MM)

Provides a basis for understanding reading comprehension through the interactive components of metacognition (person, goal, task, and strategies). Suggests specific classroom techniques to encourage students to become self directed readers. (RS)

Probes William Wordsworth's relationship to the young reader. Concludes that although many young people today cannot have the direct, immediate experience of nature that overawed Wordsworth, they can, in a room where they sit down together and read a poem, "learn a contemplative solitude--and respond to [a] poem in their individual…

States that comprehension of expository text and the ability to summarize are factors in students' success with such material. Describes a model that induces students to use existing schemata to create new and necessary expectations while providing a technique for explicitly teaching the components of effective summaries. (JK)

Explains how to teach F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in three stages: before, during, and after a close look at the text and outlines the novel's narrative structure. (HOD)

Notes that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is frequently encountered in textbooks that ignore the existence of the original audience. Argues that textbook editors thereby misinform students by failing to show how writers recognize and write to particular audiences, and how writers' specific audiences determine many of the authors'…

Argues that the focus of content area instruction needs to include an emphasis on factors that motivate students to read their textbooks. Presents five strategies to link reader and text: using analogies; relating personal anecdotes; disrupting readers' expectations; challenging readers to resolve a paradox; and introducing novel and conflicting…

The study compared effects of two ways of making text more explicit for learning disabled (LD) children: by adding supportive information or asking inference questions at the ends of episodes. Adding elaborative content enhanced story understanding while asking inference questions was not more effective than the explicit version of the text alone.…

Examines how visual literacy (the ability to interpret the visual images of advertisements, illustrations, television, and other visual media) can promote creative and analytic thinking. Provides several instructional strategies to teach visual literacy through book illustrations. Notes that visual literacy is essential in a world increasingly…

The persona Robert Frost communicated to most of his wide, diverse, and often non-academic audience was that of a rather isolated New England farmer, who--because of his limited experience with city folk and urban living--was untouched and thereby uncorrupted by the ways of the world. In teaching Frost, as in teaching any poet, some sort of…

Discusses a reader-response approach to teaching Nathaniel Hawthorne's RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER. (MM)

Argues that, in their roles as responding audiences for student writers, teachers need to be clear as to whether they are taking the perspective of writer or reader. (FL)

Describes a three-step process to help teachers honor what children bring to each reading situation and to model for children the importance of accessing appropriate knowledge sources before reading. (FL)

Proposes that literature can be examined to see how it works simultaneously as a constraint upon and liberating means for women. Discusses "Yellow Women" by Leslie Marmon Silko and "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter, exploring the role of a reader's context for understanding a story. (PM)