Written in plain terms, printed in large type, and accompanied by illustrations, this legend of the Yakima Indians tells of how the crane came to be; it is the story of how Coyote turns a man into a crane because the man would not share his catch of fish. "In the old days people shared things. It was our way of life. If a person was hungry…

To ascertain, classify, and evaluate the quality of prose and poetry read to pupils in grades 4-6 by their teachers and to determine some of the situational factors that affected this reading, a 30-item questionnaire containing objective multiple-choice items (concerning teacher background, library facilities, and read-aloud practices) and…

The purpose of this selective bibliography is to provide the student of Southern literature with a list of the principal scholarship on a number of the South's writers and on some of the more prominent themes and areas of investigation in Southern literature. The first part of the book presents bibliographies on 23 general topics ranging from…

Writing research has long attempted to define and assess coherence in written prose; however the researchers have often ignored or inadequately met the needs of writing students who require a simple definition of coherence that they can use to revise their own prose. One exception is Joseph Williams, author of "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity…

This proficiency exam for ninth-year French is comprised of a composition test and a reading comprehension test. The composition test consists of general instructions, the description of a subject about which the student is to write a narrative, and space for organizing, drafting, and writing a final copy of the composition. The reading…

This study investigated the possible contribution of pictures serving a representation function to the recall and retention of information presented in written prose passages. The primary variable considered was the durability of picture effects; a second variable concerned the potential effect the presence of pictures had on the recall of…

A 3 x 3 x 2 factorial design was used with 120 undergraduate subjects to study the effects of question type on learning from prose. A 2,000-word reading passage on geological history was presented, with factual questions on each page. Questions were also presented after the reading activity. When compared to a reading only control group, the short…

This report compares a typical newspaper account of an event with other possible ways of narrating the event. It argues that journlists' beliefs about the appropriate format, style, and content for a news story work in concert to obscure the structure of the story and the relations among subparts, and thus serve to thwart their presumed goal in…

As the inexperienced writer becomes aware of the issues involved in the composition of effective descriptive prose, he also develops a consistent control over his materials. The persona he chooses, if coherently thought out, can function as an index of many choices, helping him to manipulate the tone, intent, and mood of this style; to regulate…

The teacher of English prose is responsible for teaching students three skills: the ability to react with appropriate sensibility to prose literature, the ability to understand written prose, and the ability to write prose that can be understood. A study of the precision and demands of the best modern novelists (Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Faulkner,…

English teachers must teach the reading skills which high school students need to handle informational reading matter and the more thoughtful magazines on the market, as well as the materials every adult encounters on the job or in pursuing a hobby. They must concern themselves with teaching students to read nonfiction prose for the following…

Difficulties in organizing and conducting an Old French course at the undergraduate level are commented on in this article. A section treating the basis of the difficulties focuses on content in literature and language areas. Time factors and traditional coursework accreditation are discussed. A general statement of problems mentions three areas…

This report presents a summary of the research designed to develop a psycholinguistics of comprehension and memory for meaningful written prose paragraphs. The approach departs from most previous ones by seeking to formulate an explicit theory, instead of relying on informal qualitative judgments as to paragraph structure, the scoring of data, and…

College students were trained on a hierarchical mapping technique designed to facilitate prose processing. The students studied a geology passage and five days later were given four types of tests. The treatment group significantly outperformed a control group; the major differences were attributable to concept cloze and essay exams. (Author/RD)

High school students studied a passage to achieve prememorized goals in three experiments. Inspection times and eye movements were recorded in goal-relevant and nonrelevant text neighborhoods. Goal-relevant sentences resulted in twice as many fixations. Qualitative differences were observed in style of subjects' responses to task demands.…