There is growing consensus that, for trained readers, poetic-text processing involves a genre decision, which triggers genre-based conventional expectations and directs attention to the textual devices. This research examines how students recognize and process texts in poetic versus prose form at different points during their literary education.…

Recalls from five passages learned by undergraduates in the course of growing up in America were obtained. Recalls, while partial, were exact with no evidence of constructive memory. Results fit a simple model of associative chaining retrieval of passively stored surface structure units. (CHK)

The author suggests that the preconscious is the true locus of significant prose because of its greater amount of freedom to gather, compare, and rearrange ideas, and that the ultimate challenge to teachers of composition is to give freedom to their students' preconscious processes. (KC)

This discussion of language traces the relations between language, thought, and culture and illustrates the importance of language, of the English language in particular, in world developments. Suggestions are made for teaching the mother tongue. Teaching English in England is discussed as is teaching Welsh and English in Wales and French in…