Critical approaches to literature in secondary English require greater attention to narrative discourse. In this conceptual article, I provide interpretative tools from contemporary narratology and demonstrate their critical potential for high school English. In particular, I outline critical literacy's vital but overattentive focus on the…

Several studies have revealed the cognitive and linguistic benefits of balanced bilingualism, but the research on balanced biliteracy is still in its initial stages (Marinis et al. submitted. "Biliteracy Education Impacts on Cognition Selectively"). This study investigates the positive effects of balanced biliteracy on the development of…

Dialogue might be the most appropriate medium for reflections on translingualism. In a dialogue conducted by email over the course of ten days, Steven G. Kellman and Ilan Stavans consider the validity and implications of linguistic determinism. Their conversation examines whether some words that seem to embody the unique "Weltanschaaung"…

This study examined the narrative discourse production and executive function (EF) abilities of 46 neuro-typical adults (18-98 years old). Two questions were addressed: Is the analysis of narrative structure sensitive to changes associated with aging? & What is the relationship between measures of narrative structure and EF? Narratives were…

This study concerns the mechanisms involving temporal update in discourse comprehension, comparing traditional approaches based on "Aktionsart" and Iconicity against an approach based on narrative expectations. Our experiments suggest that readers pay more attention to fine-grained discourse properties (such as salient temporal…

A study was conducted to examine the differences in narrative essays produced by skilled and unskilled EFL student writers. Twenty-six Japanese university students participated in the study. They were told to write a narrative story based on six-frame pictures. The students were classified into two groups, skilled and unskilled, according to the…

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to evaluate a new measure of story narrative performance: story completeness. It was hypothesized that by combining organizational (story grammar) and completeness measures, story "goodness" could be quantified. Method: Discourse samples from 46 typically developing adults were compared with those from 24…

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze and interpret the stories told by one teacher, Ms. M, in a fifth grade science classroom. In this study, stories are defined as teacher utterances that are used in first person or third person narrative view, and are related to an experience that occurred outside the classroom. This research…

Re-reading James Moffett's work in the light of more recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, this paper presents a "deconstructive" account of Moffett's key texts. Understanding them as instances in themselves of rhetoric and textuality, and reading them at once "with" and "against" the grain, the…

Metadiscourse is a new and interesting field of inquiry which is believed to play a vital role in organizing and producing persuasive writing, based on the norms and expectations of people involved. Metadiscourse embodies the idea that writing and speaking are more than just the communication of ideas and presentation of ideational meaning. Rather…

The objective of this investigation was to analyze rhetorical strategies of Alice Walker in four narratives, namely, "The Color Purple, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and Now Is the Time To Open Your Heart". As such, this study helps to expand the body of investigation relating linguistics to literature and medium…

Assessment is essential for designing individualized educational plans (IEPs) for children. In order to contribute effectively to this process, assessments must be appropriate for the group, show neither floor nor ceiling effects, and help teachers formulate specific aims. Different attempts to develop such assessments for the writing of deaf…

This paper outlines a behavior-analysis approach to the field of narratology, the study of the narrative or story, with emphasis on nonfiction stories and the processes by which such stories distort the world they describe. Stories are described in terms of (a) a behavior-analysis adaptation of Todorov's (1977) analysis of the plots of stories in…

The article examines issues in the narrative evaluation of language disordered children. First, it is pointed out that the many types of stories and contexts affect narrative form and, second, that structural systems which contribute to narrative meaning are found both within and across utterance boundaries. (Author/DB)