The challenge facing the nonnative instructor is make his or her cultural uniqueness an asset instead of a liability. If nonnative speakers can never be fully accepted by American students because of their accent and different communication styles, they can employ teaching styles and methods that showcase their strong points. One teaching method…

Stories have always been the means of making a message, of exploring the relationship between past and present, and of giving significance to events. A noted native artist and writer described the "talking stick" of his tribe as a talisman which gives the person who possesses it the right to speak and hold the attention of the tribe. A…

The development of narrative competence is an important part of the English curriculum in the early secondary school years. A study examined how four seventh-grade girls (two novice and two expert writers) responded to computer-based metacognitive guidance in the form of procedural facilitations. The facilitations were designed to assist the…

Using a teacher-researcher perspective, a study assessed a preschool storytelling program designed to promote children's narrative development. The program included workshops, child-teacher conferences, and adult and child performances. A preschool class of 17 four-year-olds listened to adult-told stories, rehearsed their own stories with a…

The typical assignment in introductory literature courses asking students to interpret the meaning of a work is inappropriate for most college students because it makes demands they cannot meet, it does not give them transferable skills, and it does not promote a love of literature. Instead, teachers should give assignments that encourage students…

An upper-division graduate level course at a Northwestern university teaches storytelling by using a rhetorical approach. Students submit three story summaries in assigned format at each class session. Each summary includes a statement of the point or moral of the story, a complete bibliography, and a listing of the story's source. The assignment…

Designed to pilot a particular technique for eliciting imaginative constructions centered on the microcomputer, this exploratory study used a "projective" type method with a game format that required group performance. Students in a mixed class of 88 graduate students enrolled in a course on social thought were directed to generate…

Storyteller Monroe Brannon, although a native of Louisiana, was a long time resident of Gary, Texas. Mr. Brannon shared his fantastic memory of events and people which go back to the 1890s when he was two and half years old. He was keen observer of all that he saw and heard and forgot little. And so he was able to provide stories on a wide range…

The issue addressed in this paper is the relationship between form in fictional prose and form in other uses of language, particularly those uses important in composition theory. Form in composition theory has traditionally had two ways of identifying units of analysis: (1) the sentence and semantic units, and (2) pragmatic and rhetorical units.…

The best thinking and writing is at once personal and public, both infused with private meaning and focused upon the world beyond the self. The goal of writing teachers is to help students learn to negotiate between the two, to locate those dynamic points of connection where experience gives rise to inquiry. Notwithstanding the often eloquent…

Voice is a useful critical concept for studying texts, and can be classified into three types: (1) audible voice--how much the reader "hears" the text; (2) dramatic voice--what kind of speaker or writer is implied in the text; and (3) one's own voice--the relationship of the text to the actual writer. Written language is more likely to…

Since derivatives are more likely to occur in expository or informational prose than in fictional, literary prose, a study was conducted to test the hypothesis that systematic contextual development of vocabulary is more apt to occur in informational selections than in fictional literary ones. The teaching of prefixes and the use of prefixed words…

Examination of representative stories told by black American children of West African descent in South Carolina shows that specific cultural motifs have been preserved in the oral tradition of black communities. Typical stories are tales of the supernatural, such as the Hag story about mortals who shed their skin at night to do evil deeds.…

Noting that writers frequently use reading aloud to evaluate written drafts, two studies were conducted to determine the extent to which holistic scores assigned by readers to college freshman essays correlated with holistic scores assigned by listeners. One study used 39 narrative essays, the other used 39 expository essays. The results of the…

Procedural guidelines developed by the Audio Standards Committee of the National Library of Australia to help improve the overall quality of production of audio materials for visually handicapped readers are presented. This report covers the following areas: selection of narrators and the narration itself; copyright; recording of books, magazines,…