In defining an audience, writers make guesses about the mutual knowledge shared between writer and readers, and thus send cues to readers that exclude them from the audience for a specific discourse. Often writers assume that readers possess more knowledge than they actually do, and so make it impossible for readers to function within the world of…

Shares some of the classroom practices that have worked well in teaching "Naked." Presents a summary of introductory comments about the story and a description of the sketching activity. Offers interpretive commentary on a selection of representative student sketches that reflect significant features of the story. Provides general…

Suggests that many so-called "theme" or "idea" stories are among the most memorable short works ever written; yet for some readers--inexperienced readers in particular--they present formidable difficulties. Illustrates this with, and provides teaching suggestions for, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." (SG)

Describes a studio project designed to help students (1) utilize the digital environment to organize typography and images that represent the socio-political context their solutions were required to identify; and (2) explore the empirical variables that help readers to access and contemplate the content presented by their text. (PA)

The advent of postmodern criticism has brought about numerous changes in the way those in the academy read and teach the reading of texts. From Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?" to Roland Barthes'"The Death of the Author" and beyond, critics and theorists have sought to decrease the author-ity of the material that is read.…

Reasons that teachers of literature should have as their focus not what writers do but what readers do in the process of reading literature. Concludes that readers construct literary works based on their own experience, education, and ability to imagine in response to a writer's suggestions. (JAD)

Discusses the use of reading frames in teaching "The Waste Land" in India. Suggests that there is nothing more exciting in the classroom than a reading frame that affords correlated, intertextual recognitions. (RS)

Describes how a "strip story" activity (reassembling a text from strips of paper containing the text's sentences) develops reciprocity, the interaction between reading and writing as the reader negotiates a text and the writer assists the process. (MM)

Notes that students' own experiences and assumptions often affect their comprehension of and response to text. Argues that drama, with its distinctive oral and visual cues, enables students to construct meaning, and that working in groups helps them communicate that meaning more clearly. (SR)

Describes how two teachers have translated scholarship in the fields of ritual and performance studies into classroom practices (for the college literature course) that engage students in ritual enactment of imaginative literature and in communal making of meaning. (SR)

Advocates making technical writing courses more vertical in structure by including an extensive study of at least one specific form of technical documentation. Examines how students can gain experience in the vertical process by designing, writing, testing, and producing user manuals for on-campus cooperative education clients. Lists the benefits…

Describes an interactive approach to reading instruction in which, by manipulating text on a computer screen, learners literally write "between" and within the lines, integrating their own thoughts with the text. (SR)

Describes the effects (both positive and negative) personal knowledge about students has on student writing conferences. (MM)

Describes a model of visual communication which provides a framework for teaching students to analyze and design technical documents as visual systems. Notes that by integrating the writing and design processes, students can adapt visual language to the rhetorical variables of each communication task. (MM)

Offers a means for writers to analyze their own texts through the construction and use of a tool--called a reader's outline--that students build from their rough drafts. Notes that the reader's outline facilitates more effective detection and diagnosis of problems and helps point the way to solutions. (SR)