Using a narrative procedure, this study replicated Zaitchik's (1991) result that children are more likely to acknowledge another's belief when they are told about reality than when they see reality for themselves. The article argues that these children were acknowledging alternative rather than false belief. (20 references) (Author/CK)

Describes an ethnographic study that traced the narrative thinking strategies successfully used by adolescents in two self-contained special education classrooms as they made sense of their textbooks and composed original stories based on subject matter studied. Notes role-playing and composing original texts inspired by structured play also…

Instruction in narrative text structure on first graders' listening and reading comprehension was examined with a view to documenting strategy instruction and transfer of learning in beginning readers. Of interest was whether or not first-grade students (n=35) would, following instruction within the context of listening to stories, gain in…

A study of two contemporary American novels, told in first-person narration, explored the distribution and function of relative clauses in literary narrative. For comparative purposes, data from oral conversation, 2 written expository works, 6 other novels, and 20 short oral narratives were also considered. Three types of relative clause are…

A study investigated whether direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelationships could enhance children's organization in story writing. It was hypothesized that the special instruction could provide children with an internalized prototype story structure that could serve as a heuristic or planning device for organizing…

Noting the persistence of presidential "story" despite its critics, this paper maintains that presidential storytelling involves rhetorical skill and yields rhetorical benefits, and thus qualifies as strategic discourse. Initially examining presidential stories disguised as reports, termed "presidential episodes," the paper…

Preschool and first-grade children's story production was studied. Participants were 96 children who were asked to relate stories about two familiar events: baking cookies and taking a trip to the beach. Story events were depicted in line drawings in a coloring book. Half the sample was assigned to a preview condition in which children narrated…

Experienced teachers enrolled in two graduate reading classes examined seven informal reading inventories (IRIs)--three at the elementary level and four at the secondary level--to (1) discover what text types (narrative or expository) they used at each level to measure student comprehension skills and determine instructional levels and (2)…

A case study examined the whole-part application of the language experience approach to reading as used for students whose reading development is severely delayed. The subject, a third-grade female student reading on the first-grade level as determined by the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (Woodcock, 1987), participated in a reading…

Noting that writing should be part of the instructional/learning strategies used in every classroom across the curriculum at all grade levels, this guide presents activities for using various kinds of writing in the content areas. The guide presents the activities according to the following writing types: (1) journal writing, (2) letter writing,…

In order to investigate the factors that affect the ability of children to decode and elaborate television information, a study was conducted in which verbal ability, spatial ability, and amount of home television viewing were examined, along with viewer attention and three levels of instruction, for their direct and interactive effects on…

The double issue of the journal, "Bilingual Resources," presents nine articles pertaining to American Indian education in various perspectives, poetry by four American Indian poets, and identifies 27 publications about American Indians. Subjects of articles include: evaluation and recognition of narrative competence within peer group…

The task of unscrambling and reordering the sentences for six stories was completed by 455 third, sixth, and ninth grade students from three cultural groups (black, Anglo, and Hispanic) in a study of how sociocultural differences in story schemata affect reading comprehension. The results showed that the greatest effects were for grade level and…

A study is presented that considers the narrator's knowledge of conventional schemata for stories and the cognitive factors which seem to be affecting the selection and organization of material for narration. Children ranging in age from 3 years 10 months to 7 years 4 months were asked to watch a video tape cartoon and recount the story to a…

The compositions of sixth, tenth, and twelfth grade students were used to determine whether narrations or arguments of high syntactic complexity were rated higher than narrations or arguments of low syntactic complexity. Selection of the compositions was made in pairs--one of high syntactic complexity and one of low syntactic complexity--each…