Reading is construed as operating within the dynamics of the relationship of reader, text, context, and language system. Context is understood as the cultural and situational environment of the text, itself a semantic unit that is an instance of the language system. A related variable for reading is the awareness of the reader of the language…

The ideas, practices, and day-to-day impact of parent education should be critically examined, and Michel Foucault's conception of discourse provides a useful model for doing so. Contemporary discourses about becoming a parent achieve their authority in different ways. In contrast to the child care literature by so-called experts earlier in this…

An outline of a "co-emergent" pedagogical perspective describes the conceptual framework for an advanced university-level English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) course. The course framework, which involves choosing and studying a brief science fiction story, allows for transcultural encounters via a transactional literary approach in which…

Generally speaking English department faculty respond very differently when reading freshman writing than when reading most other kinds of writing. Mina Shaughnessy has pointed out that "ordinary readers" try to understand what they are reading, but the writing teacher, "like a lawyer examining a client's document for all possible ambiguities and…

A study investigated the effects of a prior knowledge activation strategy on students' ability to successfully engage in the ongoing comprehension of extended text. Data were elicited from 79 ninth graders who were enrolled in a required social studies class in an urban high school in the Southeast. Equal numbers of high and low readers were…

A collection in English of selected readings is presented from "Phau Xyuaum Nyeem Zaj Lus," a publication used as a Hmong literacy primer. The purpose of the collection is threefold: (1) to provide intermediate limited English proficient Hmong refugees with reading passages in English that they could relate to; (2) to present Hmong world views in…

Intended for elementary teachers, reading specialists, curriculum directors, and teacher trainers, this book provides readers with conceptual and theoretical insights and compelling accounts of classroom practice. The book argues that teaching and learning work best when they occur within a community of learners. The book provides interpretations…

Articles in this yearbook address the issue of emphasizing the basics in reading development, and also focus on the literary experience. Articles, listed by their authors, include: (1) "A Second Helping" (Myra Cohn Livingston); (2) "Not Only a New Curriculum but a New Teacher" (Marilyn Hanf Buckley); (3) "Reading--A…

A required freshman English course at Berkeley was designed on the assumption that: (1) students have already developed a set of sophisticated skills for reading popular culture texts--movies, television, and commercial literary genres--against and in terms of one another; and (2) these skills are not categorically different from those inculcated…

Defining myth as a cultural narrative in symbolic form that articulates a world view and offers consensus with that view, this paper uses a brief "New York Times" report on the Soviet shooting down of South Korean airline flight 007 as the basis for comparison of international news and myth. Following a review of the literature on myth…

A study examined whether teaching a specific reading strategy could improve the reading comprehension and memory of young (18 to 32) and older (62 and older) high school educated adults with average to high vocabulary test scores. The "plan strategy" was identified through an examination of what more than 1,000 adults wrote down as they…

Defining readability in both the narrow sense of formula use and refinement and the broader sense of the processing and comprehension of language, this paper argues for the need for more research focusing on readability as a way of improving the match between reader and text. Following a brief introduction, the paper reviews current readability…

Using two original children's books and adaptations of these books created by basal reader publishers, a study investigated (1) whether children prefer original, unadapted stories that may have longer sentences and more vocabulary items than are permitted by readability formulas for their grade level, or the adaptations of those stories, which…

Narrowly defining reading as a list of skills dealing with word attack and letter sounds is potentially crippling to readers, because it limits the instruction provided by those who write literature--authors, who, in creating text, create meaning. The nature of reading instruction should not structure the ways human beings come to deal with…

A study examined children's comprehension of and preferences for basal reader stories with differing levels of coherence. The subjects were 58 second grade students who each read orally three stories judged to differ substantially on the number of incoherences in the text. Incoherences were defined as confusing referents, unclear relationships…