The teacher of literature can help children become aware of and sensitive to the world around them--its beauty, good, and evil. In teaching poetry, the teacher must choose poems he likes, read them aloud to the students, lead class discussions about student reactions to poems, and allow students to write and to memorize poetry for enjoyment. The…

A successful, elective minicourse in the literature of terror and the supernatural examined various literary works in the light of six goals: to examine the terror motif in fiction (in print and other media), to try to understand the reasons for the continued appeal of the literature of terror, to investigate why representative authors have…

An Afro-American literature course was established at Chicago City College to present a survey of writers who reflected the Black experience in America and to examine their works as artistic entities in their historical and sociological context. Background lectures on many aspects of Afro-American literature accompanied studies of material grouped…

A sample of 264 eleventh-graders, stratified by selecting those who performed above selected scores on the Iowa Test of Educational Development to eliminate lack of adequate reading ability as a variable, were tested to determine the relationships between their emotional responses to literature, their ability to judge prose quality, and their…

A discussion and analysis of a novel, "The Pigman," are given. The story is described as one that appeals to adolescents and also is a good means for exemplifying how an author works. The plot is described as the story of three lonely people--two teenagers and an old widower. It is a novel revealing the duality of life through the use of…

Written by a group of English teachers in elementary and secondary independent schools, this second volume of the English notebook is divided into three sections: "Evaluations of Compositions Written in Class,""Tests on Comprehension of Prose," and "Tests on Comprehension of Poetry." Focusing on grades five through nine, these tests and…

College students read passages and answered either verbatim or parphrased adjunct questions either inserted in the text or massed at the end of the passage. Passage review was varied. On the post-test containing unfamiliar paraphrased questions, students given inserted paraphrased adjunct questions outperformed the others. Paraphrased questions…

Performance of high school students in reading comprehension tasks varied according to organization of the passage (structure and linkages); context (student characteristics); reading time; and length, content, and familiarity of the material. The tasks included immediate free recall and recognition of a fact, main idea, and inference. (Author/GDC)

Good writing is seen as good thinking--thinking carefully, not just grasping for the opinion nearest at hand, and clearly. Its primary purpose is to communicate with the reader. Good writing can be learned--to think honestly, to say things clearly, to avoid pomposity, and to consider the reader. (MLW)

A paired-associate memory task with pictures and words as items was used to categorize fourth graders into four learner types (high/low picture x high/low word performance). Poor paired-associate learners profited more than did good paired-associate learners from picture aids on the prose task. (Author/BW)

Children 5, 7, 9, and 11 years old were presented short narrative passages imbedded with three types of problems which could only be identified by using three specific evaluation standards. Although older children used standards more effectively, overall problem identification was considerably better than that reported in noninstructed settings.…

A study of 11-year-old children concluded that the detection of changes in prose material is related to an individual's sex and level of extraversion. (Author/IS)

This book discusses basic craft elements of writing, illustrates from adult and children's literature what constitutes an engaging passage of description, and then illustrates how that craft can be taught in a workshop environment. In addition, this book includes involvement experiences that help teachers experience these craft elements. After an…