Considers two CD-Rom narratives as examples of high quality, interactive multimedia texts currently available. Looks at how verbal and visual texts draw the reader into an interactive response and the extent to which multimedia elements shape the reader's experience of the text. Bases findings loosely on fieldwork involving responses of four…

The differences in off-task behavior rates exhibited by kindergarten students during narrative and non-narrative-based social studies instruction was investigated. Off-task behavior was operationally defined and students were observed during eight different lessons. Four lessons employed story narrative picture books and four lessons used…

Explores the nature of the picture story book event from a semiotic perspective. Describes a classroom event in which a picture story book was constructed during teacher-student-text interaction in a second grade classroom using involving oral reading and discussion, interpretations of the main character's traits, letters to the author, and…

Examines the role of the teacher in enhancing students' reading comprehension. Finds that the teacher is a more significant factor in the comprehension of lengthy natural texts than is the ease of the text itself. (MG)

Describes a young child, age two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half, as he interacts with three types of storybook media (CD-ROM, Language Experience Approach, and traditional) at home with his mother. Reveals seven distinct episodes of interaction, which were compared across storybook media experiences. Finds that the proportion of engagement in…

This paper examines visual and affective factors involved in the reading of foreign language texts. It draws on the results of a pilot study among students of post-compulsory school stage studying French in England. Through a detailed analysis of students' reactions to texts, it demonstrates that the use of "authentic" documents under…

Reading is construed as operating within the dynamics of the relationship of reader, text, context, and language system. Context is understood as the cultural and situational environment of the text, itself a semantic unit that is an instance of the language system. A related variable for reading is the awareness of the reader of the language…

Max Headroom, the computer-generated media personality, presents a good opportunity for an investigation of the degree of intertextuality in television. Max combines narrative genres (science fiction and film noir), television program types (prime-time episodic narrative, made-for-TV movie, talkshows), advertising and programming, and electronic…

Two experiments investigated the role of text coherence in junior high school students' comprehension of science texts. Found that text coherence improved readers' comprehension, but also that giving readers with sufficient background knowledge an incoherent text that forced them to infer unstated relations engaged them in compensatory processing,…

This text provides a linguistic analysis of discourse register in English, Nukulaelae Tuvaluan, Korean, and Somali, using a multi-dimensional analytical framework and including sociocultural descriptions. Methodology included a description of the text corpora, linguistic features, and computational/statistical techniques used; theoretical issues…

This article discusses the reading fluency and comprehension problems of struggling secondary students who can read, with assistance, on a fourth-grade reading level or above. Difficulties with vocabulary and sentence construction are described, along with problems with pronoun reference and noun substitutions, metaphor, and conventions of print.…

Interviews with 16 deaf high school students and 9 teachers found that teachers underestimated the extent of students' independent comprehension of 3 types of text. The text perceived to be most difficult by both teachers and students was the most interesting to students (but not teachers) and fostered use of a greater variety of metacognitive…

Uses a cognitive processing perspective to revise fifth grade social studies texts, to describe those revisions, and to demonstrate their effects empirically. Finds that students reading the revised text recalled more material and answered more questions correctly than did those reading the original text. Concludes that a text-processing approach…

This research review focuses on the effects and implications of text organization, both physical presentation and text structure, and on reading comprehension, with special emphasis on the comprehension of diverse learners. The review includes students in kindergarten through college, who are high and low readers and comprehenders; low…

Investigated is a reader's ability to comprehend written text that is highly novel with few semantic cues. The theoretical perspective, assessment theory, materials and methods, and the results of this study are discussed. (KR)