After teaching in rural North Carolina for about six years, the author was on the verge of giving up on teaching Shakespeare to her students. Although they seemed to enjoy the action and the drama of Shakespeare's plays, the lack of connection between the students and the language and culture of the plays interfered with her ability to generate a…

This is a conceptual paper, based on several semesters of collaboration in which the American author interacted with students in the Taiwanese author's EFL classes in Taiwan. The best native language users are typically those who read extensively, especially reading for pleasure in their youth. This gives them a large vocabulary and an intuitive…

For much of this century, text linguists have recognized that various tokens called "metadiscourse" may help explain how texts function. In linguistics, metadiscourse has a more concrete meaning than it typically does in composition: it refers to specific words, phrases, and clauses which are primarily intended to help the reader…

Explains the details of a method of teaching text structure that proved successful in improving both reading comprehension and summary writing of fifth graders. Reports that students quickly learned how to attend to and remember main ideas from problem-solution passages in their textbooks and how to write summaries. (MG)

Examines advantages and disadvantages of using textbooks as the basis for curriculum and instruction, discussing textbooks as the predominant instructional medium. The article describes attributes of good textbooks and text structures, identifies strategies for improving readers' text comprehension, and notes teachers' role as facilitators in…

Readability formulas applied to materials for hearing-impaired students do not account for important factors in reader-writer-text interaction. Factors include the reader's purpose, cultural background, and extent of background knowledge; writers' assumptions about readers; the text's structure, content, and cohesion; and the role of…

This empirically-based model depicts the interactive, constructivist process of reading and three classes of variables that influence reading. Teacher variables include presentation, instructional intervention, instructional climate, and behavior management. Text variables include text language, relevance, organization, story structures, and…

Intended to help teachers both improve students' text comprehension and better understand the teaching-learning process involved, this book focuses on comprehension and concept development as the central core of an effective educational program. The book's five sections deal with teaching explicit comprehension skills, precomprehension and…