Writing skills are essential for success in the 21st-century school and workplace, but most classrooms devote far more time to reading instruction, with writing often addressed in isolation or excluded. In this insightful professional development resource and text, leading researchers discuss why and how to integrate writing and reading…

Notes that PowerPoint is an especially useful program for teaching text structure to college reading students. Discusses how this may be accomplished, as well as directions for creating a presentation from the preexisting templates and backgrounds provided in the program. Directs how to print overheads and handouts of the presentation. (SG)

Examines the effects of two types of comparison-contrast discourse structures on the initial learning and retention of unfamiliar scientific information by mature readers. Finds a demonstration of the mature reader's versatility in accommodating unfamiliar information, especially when it is presented in well-structured patterned texts. (MS)

Reports on a study of genre and register that reaches the following conclusions concerning the teaching of language and literature: (1) teaching should concentrate on the move structure of genres and the concomitant move registers rather than the general register of a genre as a whole; and (2) the teaching of reading and writing should be…

Argues that in the last 10 years the field of cognitive science has added much to the understanding of how to promote text comprehension. Focuses on the role of questions, text structure, and causal network theory as an approach to comprehension enhancement. (RS)

A current trend in composition consider writing a social act where texts are produced because of and in response to social contexts. Classroom practices are just beginning to change and acknowledge the power that discourse communities assert on writers. Composition teachers must also acknowledge the importance of community-governed reading…

Analyzes the use of graphic aids in electronic texts by using four conceptual differences distinguishing printed and electronic texts. Proposes that these four differences can act as a theoretical framework informing the use of such graphic aids. Discusses the need for and the ramifications of such a theoretical model. (HB)

A study investigated how a knowledge or lack of knowledge of basic text structures, such as comparison and contrast and cause and effect, contributes to the reading process in remedial adolescent readers. By observing a group of graduate students and through the close study of a few adolescent case studies, a researcher attempted to determine if…

Three studies examined the impact of different instructional reading materials and subsequent analysis of comprehension by retellings. The first study investigated the influence of the presentation of the material. Subjects, 83 freshmen enrolled in a biology course, were shown one of four combinations of course material involving a slide…

Noting that little in language can be understood without taking into consideration the wider picture of communicative purpose, content, context, and audience, this book address practical uses of various approaches to discourse analysis. Several assumptions run through the chapters: knowledge is socially constructed; the manner in which language…

This research review focuses on the effects and implications of text organization, both physical presentation and text structure, and on reading comprehension, with special emphasis on the comprehension of diverse learners. The review includes students in kindergarten through college, who are high and low readers and comprehenders; low…

This book presents 25 essays and studies that explore the interplay of a variety of factors that provide the fuel for individual and collaborative explorations into the nature of literacy. Essays and studies in the book are "Patterns of Response: Struggling Readers Respond to a Real Book during Transactional Literature Discussion" (JoAnn Rubino…