Argues that revisionist and ecological criticism are two different activities. Describes the differences, then proposes ecological approaches for the study of literature, rhetoric, and composition. (FL)

Examines an avant-garde illustrated book and suggests that "deviant" books urge a kind of reading that gives visibility to the text and seeks out relationships created between two volumes--the book and its words. (DF)

The idea of experience needs to be examined before the experiential aspect of literary reading can be understood, and before literary reading as an ethical practice can properly be defined. Open-mindedness is necessary when fostering student interpretations of a literary text, just as it is necessary for accepting the varying life experiences of…

Notes that students' own experiences and assumptions often affect their comprehension of and response to text. Argues that drama, with its distinctive oral and visual cues, enables students to construct meaning, and that working in groups helps them communicate that meaning more clearly. (SR)

Outlines the internal usability review, a systematic examination of documentation to identify basic usability issues and solve problems. Discusses typical user problems and explains the review steps that eliminate documentation problems before they become problems for the customer. (SR)

Presents and discusses three sets of texts that are excerpted from essays written for a second-semester, first-year composition course at a regional public university. Considers the relationship of the linguistic and sociolinguistic markedness of texts. Explores what the sociolinguistic markedness should be in the writing classroom given the…

Addresses concerns that, if a student uses a second-hand textbook already highlighted throughout the text, it may interfere with reading comprehension. Investigates highlighting: in the first experiment preexisting inappropriate highlighting interfered with performance on a reading test; in the second experiment, advance warning on the negative…

Notes undergraduate students read both a one-sided text on educational reform and a two-sided nonrefutational text on the V-chip; and that they completed topic-specific beliefs, knowledge, and interest measures and reacted to specific text characteristics. Finds that although both forms of texts affected readers, the effects varied by the type of…

Recognizes the importance of rethinking how the author's students read particular texts rather than which texts they read. Explores the concept of reading for multiple meanings rather than attempting to nail down "the meaning." Describes how she selected specific ideologies represented in "The Scarlet Letter" to use as various…

Examines the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' strategies to identify and state a text's main idea. Identifies three methods of constructing the main idea: automatic construction; draft-and-revision; and topic/comment. Concludes that expert readers' construction of the main idea is often a mediated, strategic task. (RS)

Considers the stories that children read, hear, and make part of their lives. Focuses on the text with the understanding that texts live only when read by a person in a particular context. (MG)

Argues that reading specialists' lack of success in persuading content area teachers to help their students read and study texts in social studies, science, and mathematics is a result of reading specialists' lack of careful thought about text structures. Discusses the text structures of textbooks in these content areas. (RS)

States that the books remembered most vividly and most fondly are the ones that go beyond the bounds of ordinary existence. Strives to offer adolescents, in books written by the author, a chance to experience something outside their normal routine. (MG)

Investigates some of the mechanisms by which instructional objectives affect learning. Finds that with specific objectives, the secondary-task reaction times while reading objective-relevant material were longer, reading times were longer, and recall was greater than with either a general objective or with no objectives. (MM)

Discusses two distinct views on what a quote is: the exact words of a speaker, or a journalist's rewritten or fabricated version of the speaker's words. Argues that paraphrasing allows writers to taint the evidence and causes the loss of the speaker's voice and the loss of credibility and independent corroboration. (SR)