Identifies--and labels as elegiac romance"--a group of 19th and 20th century American, English, and European novels in which a narrator relates the story of a heroic, questing figure to whom he is committed in attempting to overcome the effect of loss which results from" the hero's death. (Author/RD)

Works by Mexican writers, Mariano Azuela, Carlos Fuentes, Mauricio Magdaleno, Austin Yanez, and Rosario Castellanos are cited. (DS)

Use of cognitive capacity was measured during reading of text in six experiments. Results were consistent with a comprehensibility theory stating that when more meaning is produced in reader's cognitive system while reading a text, more cognitive capacity is filled by reading it. (FL)

Analyzes parables--teaching stories--to explore the significance of these rhetorical devices as forms of discourse and as acts of relational communication. (PD)

American Indian narrative uses a rhetorical conception of narrative action, following one of two basic types of recurrent formal pattern of lines and verses and sets of verses, in pairs and fours or threes and fives, using pauses and/or syntactic particles to define the patterning, varying between different languages. (MH)

Drawing on the Kreilters' work with the psychology of adult artists, the authors show how children's story drawings develop the same four types of realities: origins, everyday experiences, normative realities (rules), and prophetic (anticipatory) realities. Illustrations are included. (SJL)

Retention of prose is examined as it is affected by (1) outlines as advanced organizers; (2) preexperimental familiarity with the material; and (3) text genre. Findings are discussed in the context of current theories in cognitive psychology, particularly those of structure, organization, and representation of knowledge and prose. (Author/GK)

Describes a game which can be used to acquaint students with the basic elements of narrative fiction. (DD)

This longitudinal study assessed the narrative language development of primary grade children with slow expressive language development (SELD) as toddlers who either had or had not moved into the normal range of expressive language by early school age. Deficits in narrative skills tended to disappear in children with a history of SELD, though…

Comparison of 14 verbally gifted 6-year olds with equal numbers of chronological-age and mental-age controls using a structural-developmental analysis found that the gifted children organized story plots in ways typical of children 2 years older, elaborated on basic plot structures more than control groups, and demonstrated advanced language…

Examined three- to five-year-old children's understanding of pretense and deception in folktales in which a villain deceived his victim by pretending to be someone else. Found that the three-year-olds were able to follow the pretense but were not able to grasp the false belief integral to the deception. (MOK)

Three strategies are suggested for teachers to use in developing the critical imagination of students: (1) the deconstruction of lived and told storylines; (2) the development of reflective ethical practice in line with post-structuralist understanding; and (3) the writing, telling, and adapting of stories that interrupt binary thinking. (SLD)

Discusses how narrators (distinct from authors) emerged in English prose works during the last decade of the sixteenth century. Reports that instances of the use of narrators can be found throughout the seventeenth century, but that it was another hundred years before the technique developed fully enough to constitute a recognizable narrative…

A computer program titled "The Bald Headed Chicken," written for the Apple IIE and Apple IIGS, is described. The program enables primary-level students, as well as limited-English-speaking students, to manipulate graphics and text to create their own stories which can then be saved on disk or printed. (Author/JDD)