Examines the challenge and future of language, typography, and technology in various juxtapositions. Compares book and screen, typographic history and future. Discusses need for language reform and user studies, and examines technology's impact on human communication. Uses an "abecedary" order to make unexpected connections and provide…

Examines degree to which three types of tasks affect the selection of main points in instructional texts. Finds, on average, type of task did affect the number and kind of selected text fragments, but the variation between the students was large. Suggests findings provide more insight into three ways of identifying main points. (RS)

Uses content analysis to compare two community newspapers for indices of elaboration identified through various theoretical sources. Traces the relationship of economic development and technological growth to use of elaborative elements in text describing science and technology. Concludes there were strong correlations for breadth and depth in the…

Notes new Internet writing environments differ significantly from print forms: they allow texts to evolve--to change their purpose and audience over time. Suggests they allow for new forms of collaboration--texts organize themselves without an omniscient editor shaping them. Concludes that, as a profession, composition instructors need to…

Describes the intermediate forms of children's informational and story composition across the elementary grades. Finds that even the youngest children differentiated between the genres with over half of all kindergartners and first graders producing texts classified at some level of organizational complexity above labels and statement, and by…

Examines how one organizational genre, the work order, functioned to orient different groups so that work could be accomplished, and could be credited within the normal hierarchy of the organization. Implications emphasize the political aspect of genre as a form of social action. Concludes the work orders as a genre both triggered and concealed…

Describes the idea of creating a glove for each of the comprehension strategies for use with different text structures. Notes that the gloves serve as a multisensory approach by providing visual clues through icons on each finger and the palm. Discusses three different gloves: the prereading glove, the narrative text structure glove, and the…

Many students enter high school unskilled in the art of reading to learn from science textbooks. Even students who can read full-length novels often find science books difficult to read because students have relatively little practice with the various types of expository text structures used by such textbooks (Armbruster, 1991). Expository text…

This study investigated the representations that readers construct for narratives describing a sequence of events. Participants read narratives describing 4 successive events in chronological order (Event 1, Event 2, Event 3, Event 4 [E1, E2, E3, E4] Experiment 1) or in nonchronological order with E1 being mentioned in a flashback (E2, E3, E1,…

This qualitative study investigated written discourse in the form of personal letters written by ten people with aphasia following stroke and ten people with cognitive-language disorder as a consequence of traumatic brain injury, and compared their performance with 15 non brain-damaged writers. Personal letters perform the dual function of…

This study examined whether the graphemic structure of words modulates the timing of handwriting production during the acquisition of writing skills. This is particularly important during the acquisition period because phonological recoding skills are determinant in the elaboration of orthographic representations. First graders wrote seven-letter…

College students with either high or low prior domain knowledge (PK) read a text chapter presented in short pages on a computer monitor. Half of the participants read with headings present and half with headings absent. The computer recorded time spent reading and rereading each short page. Learning was assessed through a structured recall task.…

The current electronic text format is inherent to the problem of text integration, or, alternatively, cohesion deficit, which greatly affects reading comprehension. The question remains as to whether well structured hypertext would enable L2 readers, particularly ESL readers, to overcome potential difficulties in integrating information and…

A study examined the ability of 204 students in nine Illinois high schools to process and recall information contained in four newspaper elements: story texts, graphics, index boxes and pullout quotes. Students were randomly assigned to read the front page of one of 20 newspapers and answer questions based on information in the stories. Students…

This compilation explains the Strategic Reading Project (SRP), a long-term staff development project for schools committed to improving their students' ability to read strategically. Noting that the SRP has been designed for elementary schools, the compilation points out that the project is adaptable to high schools. The Project Team Notebook in…