Describes an introductory exercise from an undergraduate class taught at the Pratt Institute (New York). Students are asked to move away from their desks to stand in the middle of the classroom. Addresses the students' reactions to moving beyond their normal space in the classroom. (CMK)

Fourth-grade students who participated in a yearlong, whole-class teaching experiment not only reconceptualized natural numbers but also generated flexible solution strategies to perform numerical computations mentally and in writing. Students' reconceptualization of number was mediated by their perceived resemblance between the physical action of…

In this interview, Gunther Kress proposes how English needs to expand beyond its traditional linguistic frame into a semiotic frame which recognizes not only the visual but other modes. He argues also for a shift to forms of production in which the acts of reflection and meaning-making are fused, rather than separating the production of new…

College second language instruction can no longer afford to apply uniform methods and curricula to an increasingly diverse student population. To be realistic, it must be integrated with individual interests, attitudes, personality, and values. The best approach is for students to go individually to the countries of their target languages. The…

Although television is highly dependent on language and semiotic analysis, its form can best be analyzed through the structural notion of transformation. The critic's task becomes the articulation of structural laws intrinsic to television. One such law has to do with how television structures time. Television programming transforms action into…

This investigation of cognitive effort begins with a review of cognitive principles relating to memory and graphic encoding of information. The cognitive framework described allows explanation of improved memory due to reparsing of graphic representations. It also provides the basis for optimizing graphical material design to insure best retention…

The role of pragmatic particles such as "you know,""I guess," and "man," which occur primarily in spontaneous speech are examined. Pragmatic particles and impromptu speech are defined in terms of prototypes and the social and cognitive causes for the two phenomena are discussed. A distinction is made between core and…

To help students develop a broadly generative approach to reading and writing about literature, teachers of literature should employ not only systematic procedures, but also the eclectic and utilitarian spirit of rhetorical invention. A semiotic perspective offers the most solid theoretical foundation for establishing a genuinely heuristic…

Semiotics, the study of signs of all kinds, can be subdivided into (1) semantics, dealing with the meanings of signs and systems of signs; (2) pragmatics, dealing with inferential meaning; and (3) syntactics, dealing with the structure and systems of signs. As such, semiotics provides a useful framework for conceptualizing curriculum. Such a model…

Foreign language teachers should exploit the American affinity for television and movies by using foreign language feature films and shorts in the classroom. Social and political history and literary trends illustrated in the films may be discussed and absorbed along with the language. The author teaches such a course in the Department of Italian…

With the belief that the sense of confusion prevalent among secondary school composition teachers arises from the lack of a unifying theoretical construct within which they can teach, a theory of the art of writing was devised, based on James L. Kinneavy's "Theory of Discourse" which offers a unifying description of the relationships among…

Texts from a variety of genres (letter, narrative, biography, film scenario, and dialogue) and a variety of French authors of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries are provided as examples of discourse with the common theme of passion and as sources for the study of the semiotics of passion. (MSE)

In this paper we focus on the role of signs in students' perceptive processes underpinning the generalization of numeric-geometric patterns. Based on a videotaped Grade 9 classroom group activity undertaken by three students and framed by a cultural-semiotic theoretical perspective, we carry out a microgenetic analysis of an elementary form of…

Building on the author's groundbreaking work in "Building Superheroes," this book traces the influence of a wide-ranging set of "textual toys" from children's lives--church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays--upon school learning…

This study examined how women who work in the professions and who have been mothers for 1 to 4 years construct and coordinate their roles as professionals and as mothers, in terms of both the symbolic meanings of these roles and the practical organization of their daily activity related to these roles. Fifteen women participated in extensive…