The media landscape in urban India has changed so rapidly in the past 10 years that it is not easy to consider the ways in which these changes interact with people's lives and beliefs. Apocalyptic pronouncements about the ways in which MTV-style television, films and the Internet are destroying "genuine" Indian culture by promoting…

Narrative understanding has been identified as a primary mode of human thought that informs us about the nature, causes and consequences of human actions and interactions and, as such, underlies social knowledge. Although considerable work has focused on exceptional narrative ability in children aged 12 years old or younger, to date there have…

In this article "teacher as public art" is used as a metaphor to describe and explain the all-too-common perceptions and experiences of professors of color, especially women, within the academy. Highlighted throughout this discussion are: (1) the relevance of locating self within the context of people and place; and (2) the importance of bringing…

Intended for teachers of grades 4-8, this book provides tools and resources to help students fall in love with literature. The book contains reproducible glossaries containing over 200 literary, genre, book content, and book construction terms, along with removable flashcards, to make reviewing language arts essentials easy, enjoyable, and fun.…

Synectics is the use of thinking in metaphors, or figurative language in general, to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways or the unfamiliar in familiar ways. W.J.J. Gordon and his Cambridge Synectics Group isolated ways to think metaphorically by using artistic problem-solving mechanisms most people possess in their experiential background. This…

Lexical derivation in the Navajo verb system is described, with examples. Derivation involves four broad processes: (1) straightforward use of verbal roots and adverbial-derivational prefixes, with their base meanings; (2) extension of base root meaning, often by metaphor, to permit application to disparate concepts; (3) figurative use of…

Three universes of discourse are at work when writers create or use a metaphor: the analogical or metaphorical universe from which they borrow words, things, and relationships (sometimes called the "vehicle"); the contextual universe in which the analogy is being used (sometimes called the "topic"); and the metauniverse, or the comprehensive…

This paper explores the extent to which existing accessibility metaphors can help to develop our conceptualizations of accessible e-­learning practice in higher education and outlines a proposal for a new rainbow bridge metaphor for accessible e­-learning practice. The need for a metaphor that reflects in more depth what we are beginning to…

Designed with junior high school students in mind, the activities in this booklet are offered as ways to stimulate interest in writing using as little as ten minutes of class time. The activities are arranged in six sections: (1) developing observation skills and paying attention to details; (2) word play, descriptive words, and word collections…

The experiments described in this paper compare inference-based and expectancy-based models of the comprehension of indirect, non-literal expressions. The inference-based model claims that the comprehension of non-literal meanings requires more and deeper processing than the comprehension of literal meanings. The expectancy-based model rests on…

There are a number of reasons for using creative writing in elementary and secondary English curricula. When students practice using figurative and literal language, they improve their speaking abilities, and their language becomes more concrete, more explicit, more descriptive, and more interesting. Writing poems and short stories forces students…

THROUGH A CLOSE LOOK AT 18 SELECTED LYRIC POEMS, THIS TWO-PART NINTH-GRADE UNIT DISTINGUISHES THE LYRIC FROM OTHER KINDS OF POETRY. PART 1 DEALS WITH THE TECHNICAL DEVICES OF POETIC LANGUAGE, THE POET'S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON HIS EXPERIENCES, AND THE DIFFERENT TONES, ATTITUDES, AND SUBJECTS SEEN IN THE POEMS OF DICKINSON, FROST, KEATS, HOUSMAN,…

MATERIALS FOR THE NEBRASKA ELEMENTARY ENGLISH CURRICULUM INCLUDE AN ANCILLARY POETRY MANUAL FOR GRADES ONE THROUGH SIX. ATTENTION IS GIVEN TO INCREASING THE CHILD'S PLEASURE IN POETRY, BROADENING HIS KNOWLEDGE OF POETRY, AND HELPING HIM TO EXPRESS HIMSELF MORE CREATIVELY. CHILDREN ARE ENCOURAGED FIRST TO ENJOY THE READING OF POEMS AND THEN TO…

As the inexperienced writer becomes aware of the issues involved in the composition of effective descriptive prose, he also develops a consistent control over his materials. The persona he chooses, if coherently thought out, can function as an index of many choices, helping him to manipulate the tone, intent, and mood of this style; to regulate…

The eleven essays in the present volume are by faculty members at the University of Texas at El Paso and deal generally with issues peculiar to the American Southwest. It is hoped, however, that the collection contains "enough that is of universal interest to avoid the taint of parochialism." Essays discuss (1) problems involved in teaching in…