Explores the tenets of both the New Criticism and reader response criticism, and concludes that there is a need for a new imperative in criticism that conceives literary understanding in terms of a communication process in which both text and reader are granted importance. (FL)

Explores the possibility that literary theorists and reading researchers are unconscious of each others interests, goals, and assumptions. Seeks to explore how the gaps between these two areas might best be bridged. (EL)

Discusses the concept that a philosophical approach to reading "Hamlet" is the easiest for students to comprehend. (DF)

Describes a study that investigated how young readers respond to text when a teacher uses an anticipation exercise within the framework of a small or large group discussion. The dynamics operating in classroom situations that use anticipation in small or large group contexts are observed and described. (FL)

Provides examples of using the Directed Reading Activity as a framework for teaching students to comprehend literary text at varying levels of response. (HOD)

Suggests five important but seldom asked questions that can direct a reader's attention to some basic properties of literature. (RBW)

Describes a project in which children were given in-depth experiences with a range of quality stories and then were interviewed using a series of open-ended questions to obtain their responses. The project was intended to gain insight into the process by which children make sense and meaning from stories. (HTH)

Describes some of the discussions and writing that first grade children engaged in as the result of their exposure to literature read aloud. (HTH)

Explores a preschooler's repeated attraction to two books, and what it means in terms of the child's literacy before she learns to read. Describes the child's advancing critical skills. (HTH)

Suggests that teachers and children may have different ideas about how people talk about stories in classrooms. Describes how teachers loosened their attempts to control children's talk and subsequently shared control with them, and collaborated in exploring stories and in teaching/learning to read. (HTH)

Urges that beginning writers be shown that by maintaining a consistent and appropriate rhetorical stance they not only signal their own role but also indicate the proper role for the audience to play. (MM)

Discusses the role of literature in the secondary school English curriculum, then examines the current state of literary criticism and analysis in the classroom. (FL)

Reviews the use of the ERIC index term "Reader Text Relationship" with a view to deriving a tentative definition of the term. (FL)

Attempts to show how each of three influential critical theories--deconstructionism, reader response criticism, and authorial intention--implies a particular view of how literary discourse is or should be processed and indicates that each view is in part justified, but not to the extent claimed by the critics themselves. (CRH)

Examines eight major reader roles and suggests that the role the teacher assumes depends on the situation in which the writing is produced. (MM)