This paper examines the paratextual structure of news texts, i.e., the headline system (superheadline, main headline, and subheadline) and the lead. In the first part of the paper T. A. van Dijk's interdisciplinary theory (1988) of "news in the press" is reviewed with special reference to the status and function assigned to the paratext.…

A study examined the effect of divided and alternating comparison/contrast text structures on the reading comprehension of the college developmental reader. In the divided pattern, all of the information about an object is provided and then all of the information about the other object is provided, while in the alternating pattern comparisons…

Highlights contemporary reading research as well as some implied instructional practices in four areas, including direct teacher explanation, reading-writing connection, top-level text structure, and main idea identification. (ARH)

Perspective Text Analysis is a way to measure competence by measuring the strategy of synthesizing, which intelligence tests or questionnaires cannot measure. This paper proposes the use of Perspective Text Analysis in the study of instructional materials. Perspective Text Analysis has been applied in various learning environments, and the results…

The arrival of the digital age requires new approaches to understand the literacies used in making meanings from multimodal communications, and a rethinking of the ways in which research into these areas can be used to support learners in the 21st century. This presentation examines the range of literacies children have developed and used to make…

Noting that nonfiction literature for children came of age in the 1990s, this book is a comprehensive tool for K-8 teachers, librarians, and students to use in learning to make good decisions about the quality of nonfiction titles. Each chapter in the book describes a specific aspect of the complexity found in nonfiction literature: the various…

Examines the language, structure, and imagery of the World Wide Web. Argues that the Web is not just a rich source of information but offers new ways of seeing and engaging with the world. Considers the nature of electronically mediated texts. Looks at the Web as a kind of metatext itself with mythopoeic resonances. (PA)

Investigates effects of prior knowledge on learning from high- and low-coherence history texts. Examines participants' comprehension in two experiments. Finds high-knowledge readers performed better on open-ended questions after reading low-coherence text. Indicates that low-coherence text requires more inference processes--these inferences are…

Examines the effects of reading and writing multivocal texts and argues that writers need to assume interpretive responsibility for creating new forms of discourse. (TB)

Presents two studies in which several genre conventions were tested on professional readers to verify the usefulness of applying genre conventions to business proposals. Indicates that applying genre conventions to document structure improved the readers' selection of information. Reveals that readers disapproved of persuasive style shifts, while…

Discussion of automatic abstracting of technical papers focuses on a knowledge-based method that uses two sets of rules. Topics discussed include anaphora; text structure and discourse; abstracting techniques, including the keyword method and the indicator phrase method; and tools for text skimming. (27 references) (LRW)

Discusses the automatic construction of abstracts from the texts of documents. Automatic sentence extraction is examined, including syntactic criteria and semantic relational criteria; textual cohesion is discussed, including the recognition of anaphors and noun phrases; text structure is addressed; and the concept of abstract-frames is described.…

Examines the effects of two types of comparison-contrast discourse structures on the initial learning and retention of unfamiliar scientific information by mature readers. Finds a demonstration of the mature reader's versatility in accommodating unfamiliar information, especially when it is presented in well-structured patterned texts. (MS)

Summarizes the results of five studies dealing with screen design for computer-based instruction (CBI) and provides suggestions for their application as well as future directions for research. Chunking, text density, and screen density are discussed as variables in screen design, and current research is described. (33 references) (LRW)

Describes the results of an analysis of 87 non-formulaic abstracts for structures of semantic dependency between sentences. An automatic structural simplification is presented which is based on an assumption about the use of the dependency structure, and the results of an evaluation of the method are discussed. (25 references) (CLB)