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…

Discusses William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and how it encapsulates the idea of the romantic enabler. Considers other stories, fiction and non-fiction, that deal with the phenomenon of "romantic enablers." Describes how the enabling takes place in the titles discussed. (SG)

Investigates why it is that boys often appear to be more confident and adept than girls at speaking out in classroom contexts. Drawing upon a British classroom study of what constitutes "effective" speech in public contexts according to new examination criteria for English at age 16, argues that boys, when behaving in certain ways, appear to be…

Analyzes the discourse during a meeting of three diverse organizations as they attempt to resolve conflicting organizational interests. Explains that the three diverse groups were a waste disposal business, a grass-roots community organization, and a state regulatory agency. Notes that discourse analysis suggests that organizations with different…

In the new economy, increased polarization of rich and poor is supported by the rhetoric of lifelong learning policies focused on training as panacea. Adult educators are urged to analyze the new economy from alternative perspectives, adopt a holistic view of lifelong learning, and advocate more progressive policies. (Contains 47 references.) (SK)

Human and social capital discourses attempt to explain New Zealand's brain drain. Solutions related to each discourse involve offering incentives for returning or creating links so that expatriates can contribute to their homeland from abroad. Establishing such "diaspora networks" might be the role of adult education. (Contains 43…

Focuses on the dynamics of interracial electronic communication. Examines the misunderstandings that arose in this interracial discussion, situating the causes and consequences of the students' discourse within both the local context of the electronic forum and within wider cultural patterns. Suggests strategies for facilitating more productive…

Offers a method of selecting, analyzing, discussing, and testing from college reading materials that has worked significantly better than previous traditional approaches. Concludes that by employing greater student responsibility for what they read, students' interest, enthusiasm, and scholarly use of read material seems to have risen. (SG)

Investigated the use of complex syntax in narrative language samples of older children and adolescents with Down syndrome and a group of typically developing children matched on mean length of utterance. Findings indicate that syntactic development in individuals with Down Syndrome continues into late adolescence and is not limited to simple…

Analysis of a recent scientific event, and some of its linguistic and conceptual frames from both a lay and specialist perspective, shows that English for Science and Technology analyses could benefit from adopting a scientific method of investigation, some background knowledge of science, and reconsideration of ideas found in linguistics on the…

Draws a distinction between two kinds of summarization involved in discourse comprehension: abbreviated versions and brief accounts. English summaries written by Austrian university students are used to illustrate the different degrees of contextualization, or schematic priming, that influenced the amount of processing the students performed on…

Describes the seven main components of QUEST, a cognitive model of question answering that attempts to simulate the answers adults produce when they answer different types of questions, both closed class and open class. Illustrates how the model could be applied to different types of knowledge structures, including causal networks, goal…

Tests the QUEST model of question answering in two experiments. Examines which components of QUEST could predict good answers to why-questions and how-questions in the context of short stories. Supports the validity of arc-search procedures and structural distance for both question categories. Finds only partial support for number of information…

Tests the QUEST model of question answering in naturalistic settings and in settings with complex pragmatic constraints: telephone surveys, business interactions, filmed interviews, and interviews on popular television programs. Finds that QUEST explains most of the answers in these contexts and virtually all of the answers that refer to the…

Analyzes why conceptual ambiguity surrounds the subject of writing plans: why they are viewed alternatively favorably and unfavorably; why they are sometimes mental and sometimes written constructs; and why they are sometimes indistinguishable from writing goals. Concludes that one problem is the view of writing as product. (SG)