Argues that coping with the complex demands of a story not only increases readers' enjoyment of literature, but also aids in intellectual and interpretive enjoyment. (HOD)

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)

Describes a study contrasting hierarchical and causal approaches to story understanding indicating that when the number of causal connections increases, the likelihood of summarization for both goal and other statements increases. Suggests that the importance accorded to a statement in a story structure is the result of causal reasoning during…

Asking how what an individual knows shapes the ways in which he or she reads, this book starts from the premise that any productive theory of narrative must take into account the presuppositions the reader brings to the text. The book explores how prior knowledge of literary conventions influences the processes of interpretation and evaluation. It…

Efferent teaching asks the student to read for a predetermined answer, focusing on another person's ideas of the text's meaning. Aesthetic teaching allows for literature to be read and experienced as art through the reader's personal transaction with the text which focuses on one's own interest to create and understand the meaning. This paper…

Jeffrey Wilhelm extrapolated 10 different dimensions of response to reading, which he grouped under the headings of "evocative,""connective," and "reflective" dimensions. A study used these dimensions of response to measure some of the activities set by a group of teachers and some of the written and oral work…

Surveys 44 high school students regarding their textbooks: including how often they use textbooks; which is their least favorite text and why; which is their most favorite text and why; and what they would do to make textbooks more enjoyable and readable (discussing graphics\illustrations, teen interest topics, organizational patterns, vocabulary,…

Examines persuasive text, first describing it and discussing it with reference to relevant philosophy and rhetoric, and then asking whether it is successful: do written texts change the minds of their readers? Notes that research on designing text to disabuse students of scientific misconceptions points to text features that authors could use to…

Reports on a study of what children actually bring to the act of reading picture books in terms of their expectations, their reading or life experience, or their understanding of artistic styles. (TB)

Examined 6-, 9-, and 14-year-olds' imagination of the unknown within a storytelling context. Performed phenomenological analysis of the two youngest groups' drawings and the oldest group's story on the "heffalump" theme. Derived eight categories providing an image-analysis of the concept of the "unknown" structured as "something-otherwise," that…

Examines relationships between readers' implicit models of reading processes and reader engagement. Notes that a factor analysis produced factors corresponding to a transmission model or to a transactional model. Finds that endorsing a transactional model was related to higher recall of expository text, and that individuals high on the…

Describes a two-week unit about Benjamin Franklin, and discusses what happens when 9- and 10-year olds use their own language and life experiences to learn new content. (SR)

Determines how race and gender of columnist and reader interact to influence readers' perceptions of the credibility of the opinion column. Examines whether regional differences would relate to credibility, using 594 students from two universities 2,500 miles apart. Finds no differences in credibility by race or gender of the columnist until…

Studies the students in the author's classroom to search for the personal connections to the stories they read. Hopes to discover how students' connections revealed themselves to show story's importance in their developing lives. Concludes that students do connect with stories. Suggests stories bond students with one another in a way they might…

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)