In this article, we report on grade-one children's preferences for narrative and/or information books, and their perceptions of what boys and girls like to read. Data include responses on two book preference tasks by 40 children in four schools. Children chose books and explained the reasons for their choices. One task was a closed, force-choice…

Explores the tenets of both the New Criticism and reader response criticism, and concludes that there is a need for a new imperative in criticism that conceives literary understanding in terms of a communication process in which both text and reader are granted importance. (FL)

Finds (1) no relationship between stance taken in a free response and types of intertextual or autobiographical connections made by students in grades four, six, and eight; (2) descriptions of meaningfulness of intertextual and autobiographical connections was related to students' grade level; and (3) students made more connections to television…

A study generated a system for describing and analyzing the shifting focus from reader to text in written responses to literature, and explored the stances that readers adopt as they focus on personal, textual, and extra-textual concerns. Ten proficient and 10 less proficient undergraduate readers engaged in open-ended, exploratory written…

To learn more about how people read literary texts, with a view to improving the way literature is taught in schools, a study examined the extent to which the reading of literature is affected by variations in readers, texts, and situations. Subjects, 12 skilled (faculty) readers and 96 novice (undergraduate) readers, read a short story, either in…

What is pleasing about hypertext is what has always been pleasing about genre fiction: the creative process of reading. Genre novels are written to a formula--and often called formula fiction. Critics say they are written to make money and to make money only. According to C. S. Lewis, they "rot the mind." If looked at from the standpoint…

Presents the theoretical framework for examining texts in educational contexts. An actual reading lesson is analyzed in terms of the text structure and content, the nature of student-teacher interaction with the text, and post-reading discussion of the text. Tables outline the text structure and contrast teacher manual recommendations to actual…

Investigates the types and depths of cognitive complexity that 11th-grade readers of high, average, and low reading ability exhibited when given either text-based comprehension questions or reader-based journal response writing assignments. Finds significant differences between the groups in type and depth of cognitive complexity, engagement with…