Two studies carried out by James Squire and Jesse Stuart explored processes used in reading the short story, ways of exploring student's processes, possibilities within the short story as a literary genre, and methods teachers can use. Squire's study showed that introspection and retrospection are useful in studying students' reading processes. In Stuart's study 89% of both higher and lower level readers did not perceive the main idea of the short story. In applying this research to the classroom, teachers must ask "how" and "why" questions so that students' means of arriving at an answer can be understood. Also, teachers should develop in their students an active rather than passive method of reading; students should ask themselves questions as they read such as, why was this title chosen? What is the writer's style? What do you learn about human behavior? What motivates the main characters? (Included are suggestions on how to let students build their own definition of the short story and how to teach sentence and paragraph writing using short stories.) (SRT)