Throughout its history, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has addressed the question: How can literature be fully revealed to students at all educational levels? In answering this question, NCTE has (1) clarified the rationale and objectives for teaching literature, with a view to reconciling concepts of literature as both an…

This paper presents a history of Danish studies in reader response research, including the addition of questionnaires to the research. The paper describes nine studies in reader response research, including information on their stages, persons responsible, supporters, funding institutions, internal reports, and publications. Five additional…

Using a college course on William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" as a case study, this book presents an alternative approach to teaching poetry. Divided into seven sections with 19 chapters, the book describes how students can develop and exercise an historical imagination in the…

Intended to help secondary school English teachers integrate literature study and composition instruction, this booklet explores the relationship between literature and composition and suggests ways of designing instruction so that students may write effectively about the literature they read. The first portion of the booklet discusses such…

This paper discusses "Comments," a computer tool developed to study computer support for response to writing. The paper presents two primary theoretical perspectives to support the use of response to writing in learning to write: (1) writing is a social act; and (2) writing is a skill whose acquisition requires more than one reader so…

As a response to the artificiality of the traditional reading comprehension test, this booklet provides alternative means of testing that are within the guidelines of the British National Criteria. Ideas for testing informative, persuasive, autobiographical, and literary materials are presented in the booklet--carefully chosen to provide material…

Seven people who both write and read various kinds of reports in their professions were asked to read and respond to identical sets of student reports over a four-month period in order to determine whether they responded to personae. Attached to each unevaluated and unidentified student report was a form with 15 different response areas that…

To develop a model of newspaper readership more closely related to explanation of readership behavior than prediction, a study used a combination of demographic and political participation variables in a multivariate analysis of data obtained in a national survey. Information from interviews of approximately 1,200 adults conducted in 1979 was…

Written literature has evolved over a long period to an entity separate from oral tradition. Written literature aspired to perpetuation, to the creation of written "monuments." This aspiration caused authors to find the means of multiplying authentic versions so that they could popularize their "original" form unchanged. On the…

Intended for junior high and high school English teachers, the articles and features in this journal focus on adolescent literature and the young adult audience. Articles in the journal discuss (1) politics as an emerging topic in young adult novels, (2) teacher attitudes and practices relevant to the use of the young adult novel in secondary…

The responses of 422 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students were analyzed in a survey that sought (1) to determine what poems selected for the survey were most enjoyed by the students; (2) to analyze the most popular poems considering such characteristics as the form, content, certain poetic elements, and age of the poem; and (3) to determine any…

Discusses the negative impact of poetry instruction based on scansion, biography, genre theory and formal principles. Describes three alternative lesson plans using imagist poetry, specifically that of Williams, because it rejects formal traditional rules and provokes student response. Concludes that students appreciate stylistic traits and that…

Describes the Directed Reading-Writing Activity (DRWA) as a framework that helps high school students write about the information they acquire through reading. Discusses how the DRWA's three steps--preparation, involvement, and reaction--extends the thought processes associated with reading comprehension into effective writing. (AEW)

Maintains that the literature curriculum should reflect our pluralist society, not a canonical tradition. Suggests pairing canonical works with works instantiating pluralism. Describes a unit on the novel for a ninth grade honors class and the use of an "adolescent problem novel" in a sophomore intermediate class. (SR)

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)