The purpose of this article is to identify the types of readers' characters, to study the literary preferences of readers' characters and the influence that the book has on the inner world, to analyze the positive and negative aspects of the influence of the Internet on the reading process. This study used a content analysis design and a…

In "Skellig," "Kit's Wilderness," and "Clay", David Almond employs various types of intertextuality to enrich his narratives. Through the use of allusion, adaptation, collage, and mise-en-abyme, he encourages his adolescent readers to seek out precursor texts and to consider the interrelationships between these texts and his own. By so doing, he…

Three experiments investigated how readers manage their mental representations during narrative comprehension. The first experiment investigated whether readers' access to their mental representations of the main character in a narrative becomes enhanced (producing a "benefit") when the character is rementioned; the first experiment also…

In this article, the authors examined readers' sensitivity to the match between characters' goals and characters' actions. In Experiment 1, readers integrated actions consistent with characters' goals more easily when there was a match between the extremeness of the actions and the urgency of the goals. In Experiments 2 and 3, characters'…

The impulse toward comedy in the poetry of Canadian author Margaret Atwood occurs as a by-product of an interaction between scripted text and performing reader. Reading, then, may be profitably viewed as a rehearsal for both. In the classroom, this stylistic approach to Atwood's poetry can be emphasized over thematic analysis. In her poetry,…

During the past 15 years, a fundamental change has taken place in literary criticism, with a decline in New Criticism (literature viewed as a public object) and an increase in reader response criticism (literature viewed as a private experience). New Critics considered the meaning of a literary text to exist within the text as an independent and…

To examine the effectiveness of various writing devices, a study used Richard Carter's Signalled Stopping Technique (SST) to compare these devices as used in two student-authored science stories. The SST indicates how messages are mentally processed, and uses the following seven stops: (1) C (confusion); (2) R (reread); (3) Q (question); (4) T…

Investigates patterns in readers' ratings of imagery, affect, and story structure in selected short stories read in a college classroom. Concludes that texts constrain the renditions of individual readers when they read for enjoyment. Finds that imagery appears to mediate affective associations of text viewed as structurally important. (MM)

Outlines five variations of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity that can help students become independent readers of narrative text. (NKA)

Analyzes how two groups of eighth graders and their teacher create literary texts during small group discussion, and suggests the importance of talk as a means of constructing meaning. (NKA)