Does rhetorical competence moderate the effect of rhetorical devices on the comprehension of expository texts beyond general comprehension skills?

Many studies have demonstrated the facilitating role of rhetorical devices in text comprehension, but there are also studies where rhetorical devices have not shown such effect. The present study sets out to explore whether readers’ knowledge of rhetorical devices (that is, rhetorical competence) moderates their effectiveness beyond general comprehension skills and, consequently, whether rhetorical competence may be considered a component skill of reading comprehension. 192 sixth- to seventh-grade students were assessed on rhetorical competence and were required to read a difficult marked text with specific rhetorical devices (a refutation, an objective, and four organizational signals) or the same text without them. After reading, students produced a summary in order to obtain three dependent variables: main ideas (as a measure of participants’ ability to select relevant information from the text), causal links between them (as an indicator of participants’ ability to grasp the logical structure of the text and to organize its ideas), and the combination of main ideas plus causal links (as an indicator of participants’ global comprehension of the text). Analyses controlling for general comprehension skills and other important variables (working memory, prior knowledge, decoding) demonstrated that: (a) readers of the marked text scored higher in terms of all dependent variables, and (b) rhetorical competence level moderated the effect of rhetorical devices on the composite measure (main ideas plus causal links) and on the organization of the summary by means of causal links.     

The body in the bathtub(浴缸)

1.Jack received a telephone from his sister,Mary,at about 12 p.m. Mary asked him to go to her home at once.     

The Discussion of the Character of Santiago in“The Old Man and The Sea”

"The Old Man and The Sea"is Hemingway latter years’masterpiece,with which he was awarded the Nobel prize in1954.As the protagonist of the novel,Santiago plays a vital role to the novel’s motif.Hemingway expresses his attitudes toward the life through the image of Santiago.The paper intends to explore the character of Santiago from different facets and angles.In the end,we reach a conclusion that Santiago is a strong-willed man with a young,indestructible soul,he is kind,sensitive as well as hardworking.In a ward,he is a perfect Hemingway hero.     

Obama in Selma: Deixis,rhetorical vision,and the “true meaning of America”

I argue that Barack Obama’s immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of American history,” and sacred moments in U.S. history extended and enlarged the relational, spatial, and temporal contours of the national narrative in his 2015 speech on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. In so doing, the president offered a compelling (re)definition of patriotism, civic responsibility, and “the true meaning of America.” More broadly, I argue for an expanded notion of deixis within rhetorical scholarship. Beyond a linguistic “pointing” to bodies, places, and objects within the audience’s immediate vicinity, I detail how indexicals bring various images before the eyes of the audience, link individual texts to their political, historical, social, and cultural contexts, and direct our attention to the most important parts of the national narrative even as they deflect our attention from other parts of the story. Ultimately, I suggest that deixis illuminates theories of rhetorical vision in ways that have gone unnoticed, and it is only when we recognize the psychological and cognitive effects of deictic speech that we can fully appreciate the central role phantasia plays in persuasion, deliberation, and moral judgment.     

The “All-But-the-Dissertation” Student and the Psychology of the Doctoral Dissertation

Completion of the dissertation is an important milestone and often a major obstacle for PhD candidates, some of whom become and remain all-but-the-dissertation students. All-but-the-dissertation students usually disappoint both themselves and their departments. Thus it is important to understand the psychology of the dissertation. A review of doctoral dissertations on the topic of dissertation completion is followed by a discussion of developmental conflicts that frequently influence dissertation difficulties and then a presentation of the dynamic psychotherapy of a patient struggling to complete a dissertation. Problems in both external reality and internal fantasy are noted. The importance of understanding specific developmental conflicts and individual dynamics in treatment of this population is emphasized.     

The Effect of“Metacognitive Strategy”on the Use of“Advance Organizer”

“Advance organizer”is a practical teaching strategy proposed by American modern educational psychologist Ausubel in 1960. This research considers learners’use of metacognitive strategy in the teachin...     

The Effect of “Metacognitive Strategy” on the Use of “Advance Organizer”

"Advance organizer"is a practical teaching strategy proposed by American modern educational psychologist Ausubel in 1960.This research considers learners’use of metacognitive strategy in the teaching activities of"advance organizer",trying to explore the effects of metacognitive strategy in the"advance organizer"teaching practices and testing whether"advance organizer"can effectively help students understand and retain reading materials.Further researches should be focused on how to conduct learners’"metacognitive strategy"training and employ learners’metacognitive strategies into"advance organizer"teaching activities.     

Hurricane Katrina and the chōric object of rhetorical studies

This essay reads former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin’s infamous radio interview given during the aftermath of Hurricane to rethink both the popular narrative about the federal response to Katrina and, more broadly, the displacement of rhetorical objects both popularly and within rhetorical scholarship. Drawing upon Julia Kristeva’s early work, I advocate for a turn to a particular understanding of chōra, which positions critics in provisional relation objects of rhetorical study. Finally, I tender a reading of Nagin’s post-Katrina radio interview. The essay ultimately argues that: (1) the chōric function of Nagin’s interview simultaneously spurred political change and displaced the appearance of having done so; and (2) if rhetorical studies is to avoid remaining complicit with the politics of such displacement, scholars should attend carefully not only to what counts as rhetorical, but also to those objects that do not count but nevertheless function rhetorically. Reconsidering the object domain of rhetorical studies in this way not only opens up new objects for study but also accounts for how they might function outside of already established narratives.     

对“The Land of the Lock”的设计

英语课堂上“以教师为中心”的现象处处可见,为改变这一局面,本文对《大学英语》第三册第三课“The Land of the Lock”进行了设计。该设计主要以“top—down”阅读策略为主,用以提升学生把握篇章内容的能力和猜词能力,力争做到“以学生为中心”。     

The Use of Defamiliarization in “The Old Man and the Sea”

Defamiliarization is an important theory of the Russian formalism.Hemingway might not have been influenced by formalism,but defamiliarization assumes an integral part of his creation.His use of defamiliarization makes The Old Man and the Sea an epoch-making masterpiece.The paper is an attempt to explore the artistic charm of the novel by analyzing Hemingway's use of this artistic technique.     

The Appreciation of “Everyday Use” from the Perspective of Post-structuralism

"Everyday Use" is well-known story written by Alice Walker, who is a very famous black female writer. This paper will focus on using the decontructionism strategy to dismantle the binary oppositions of the story. The binary oppositions are "Pretty VS. Ugly, Civilized VS. Unenlightened, Hang VS. Use and The Mainstream Culture VS. Non-mainstream Culture". By analyzing, the paper concludes that no culture can be defeated and each culture needs to be passed on. Different cultures should respect each other.     

The Realistic Meaning of“the Human World”From“Chuang-Tzu”

The human world is always changing; one generation is different from another. It is easy to do nothing, but rather difficult to do something without hurting the spirit. Only those who have no prejudice and do not insist on their own selves can follow the changes and not suffer. Everything has its natural ability. And as to human beings, the best way of protecting ourselves and getting an advantageous position in the human world is to forget what must be forgotten; to beuseless; to let everything do its own work according to its own ability and have its own names.     

“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies

This essay begins with the observation that the term “voice” is frequently used in rhetorical studies literature. Interestingly, rhetorical “voice” means different things to different scholars. This essay seeks to accomplish two tasks related to “voice.” First, it clarifies the conceptual confusion regarding “voice” found in the literature by relating it to a tension between “speaking” and “language.” Second, to avoid this tension, this essay presents a case study in which a notion of “voice” is posited that is constitutive of the public acknowledgment of the ethical and emotional dimensions of public discourse.     

A Study on the Symbolic Meanings of the “Sea” in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Romantic period of England. This paper focuses on the exploration of the symbolic meanings of the image of "sea" from three aspects: the image of "Destiny", "God", and "A loving mother", then concludes that the "sea" has spiritual connotation which can give inspiration to human beings.     

The Grammatical Functions of the “Verb ing” in English

ＸｕＹｏｎｇｓｈｏｕＴｈｅｒｅａｒｅｔｈｒｅｅｋｉｎｄｓｏｆ”ｖｅｒｂ＋ｉｎｇ”ｉｎＥｎｇｌｉｓｈ：ｔｈｅｐｒｅｓｅｎｔｐａｒｔｉｃｉｐｌｅ（现在分词）,ｔｈｅｇｅｒｕｎｄ（动名词）ａｎｄｔｈｅｖｅｒｂａｌｎｏｕｎ（名词化的动名词）．Ｔｈｅａｎａｌｙ...     

The grand emotion of “Ode to the west wind”

The imagine of Shelley's Ode to the west wind vividly represent manly beauty. Reading this poem, we feel a vast boundless and grand emotional world.