The politics of not reading: writing for power

One of the most remarkable developments in British publishing for young people in the last decade was the emergence of several paperback series aimed at the “reluctant reader” market-teenagers who could read adequately, but who had found little to interest them in the fiction they had met. The way was pointed by Macmillan's Topliners, which remain the most successful series, publishing not only British titles but also American novels, such as Paul Zindel'sThe Pigman and Glendon Swarthout'sBless the Beasts and Children. Nelson's Getaways and Longmans' Knockouts have followed suit. Increasingly, these series have published authors who have written with their audience firmly in view. John Crompton has published three titles in Topliners:Up The Road and Back (1977), which follows the adventures, mainly sexual, of an adolescent boy hitchhiking from South-East England up to Scotland;Wild and Penned (1978), which is a compilation of animal stories by various authors, such as Gerald Durrell and Henry Williamson, who is John Crompton's favourite nature story writer and who is represented by four pieces; andA Fox Under My Bed (1979), which is an interlinked set of stories and reminiscences of his own adventures with animals and birds in the countryside of Hampshire and Kent. Cle invited him to give a personal view in response to the question, “Why do you write for reluctant readers?”     

幼儿快速视读教学的实验研究——运用快速阅读原理 开发幼儿潜能

一、课题的提出 　　“快速阅读法”是一种从文字材料中迅速全面地吸取有用信息的科学方法，也是一种高效率的思维方法和记忆方法。 　　研究表明，小学生经过快速阅读的训练，不仅阅读效率得到大幅度提高，一些非智力因素也获得明显的发展，创新综合素质得到有效培养。在此基础上，我们设定了一个新的探索领域：能否把快速阅读的基本原理迁移到幼教领域，用以开发幼儿的潜能呢 ?在现实生活中，儿童的阅读活动并不是小学阶段才开始，不少婴儿对图文并茂的彩图读物就很感兴趣了。近年来，幼儿期的早期阅读活动已经成为幼儿园各类活动中不可缺…     

英语阅读与写作能力

英语与汉语是两种完全不同语系的语言,写作能力是掌握英语的一种基本技能,在以往的阅读教学中,我们只注重单词、词组、句型和语法知识的讲解,忽略了通篇内容,更忽略了文章的语篇衔接。本文旨在探讨通过有效的英语阅读学习,使学生不断提高和完善英语写作能力     

Namewriting: A step toward writing and reading

Teacher, I can read all the names on the locker, said Nikki, and to her teacher's amazement, she did. The teacher had expected this class of three year olds to learn to recognize their own names, but she hadn't forseen that some would learn all the other children's names as well.Sally Hruska, a former early education teacher, is a doctoral student at Michigan State University in Lansing. The teachers from Marquette-Alger Head Start provided many of the teaching ideas in this article.     

The montessori method: Some recent research

This paper on recent research with the Montessori method includes a brief review of this method for educating preschool-age children and criticisms leveled against it, and a review of comparative research studies in relation to several types of non-Montessori preschool programs with economically disadvantaged and middle-class populations. The comparative results are discussed in relation to three kinds of preschool experience: no schooling, traditional early childhoodoriented programs, and structured cognitive-oriented programs. The findings are interpreted in terms of Hunt's conceptual leel matching model.

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Résumé Cet article à propos des recherches récentes sur la méthode de Montessori comprend une brève revue de ce système pédagogique appliqué aux enfants préscolaires et des critiques de ce système, et des études comparées avec les nombreuses sortes de programmes préscolaires non-Montessori qui traitent des populations économiquement désavantagées et des populations de classe moyenne. Les résultats comparatifs sont discutés par rapport à trois sortes d'expériences préscolaires: par d'école, les programmes traditionnels préscolaires, et les programmes structurés orientés vers la cognition. Les conclusions sont interprétées en employant le modèle conceptuel de Hunt.

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OISE     

The writing road to reading: From theory to practice

Orton-based programs include essential elements that insure success for teaching language to regular and special education children. This paper traces the theoretical foundations of The Writing Road to Readingby Romalda B. Spalding (1990) from the beginning concepts taught Mrs. Spalding by Dr. Samuel T. Orton through its validation in current cognitive science and learning theory. Pilot project locations and success statistics with regular and special education children in Arizona, Louisiana, Maine, and Texas are presented. It explains how direct, multisensory instruction in seven processes necessary for skilled reading and principles of skill learning and instruction are incorporated in the Spalding Method.     

Teaching reading through writing

This article discusses a teaching method called reading through writing (RtW), based on the use of computers rather than handwriting. The pupils use the computers in pairs and decide themselves what they will write about. The use of this method is studied via a questionnaire to 22 teachers and via seven Master's and two Bachelor's theses, observing and interviewing all together 21 teachers and 68 pupils. The results show that the method is a good teaching tool; it inspires pupils to write, develops social and communication skills and is in itself creative. It seems to be well suited to pupils with individual needs. However, the information gathered does not clearly demonstrate its effectiveness for teaching pupils to read and write. Hence, more research is required.     

The interrelationships among preschool predictors of reading acquisition for German children

A sample of 169 German children were tested in general verbal ability, verbal memory span, phonological awareness, lexical access speed and accuracy, and letter knowledge in preschool. These tests were used as independent measures predicting performance on second grade reading comprehension, word discrimination, and word decoding speed. Tests of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were also given over a year later in elementary school. After determining that the influence of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness on reading comprehension was comparable when measured in preschool and elementary school, the effects of all preschool measures on the three dependent reading measures were assessed. These analyses revealed differential main effects and interactions for the three dependent measures. However, a significant three-way interaction among lexical access, memory capacity, and phonological awareness was found for all three reading measures. These results indicate that the interaction and subsequent effects of these linguistic skills precedes and influences reading acquisition. This is contrary to the view that these skills interact as a result of reading experience. The implications of these results, as well as comparisons of conducting such studies with German rather than English speaking children are discussed.     

Knowledge, writing, and language outcomes for a reading comprehension and writing intervention

Many students struggle with gaining knowledge and writing about content text material and therefore require effective intervention. In a randomized controlled trial study, 77 low-achieving fourth-grade students received reading comprehension instruction or reading comprehension plus writing instruction or were assigned to a no-treatment control. Knowledge outcomes were evaluated through students’ retelling and performance on a standardized reading test. Written language-based outcomes were analyzed using a computer software program for semantic and syntactic measures. Analyses indicated that students in reading comprehension instruction and reading comprehension plus writing instruction outperformed the control group on oral and written retelling, a standardized reading test, and semantic measures. Syntactic measures, however, did not show statistically significant differences by treatment or control group. Implications for including language instruction and assessments within multi-component instruction are suggested.     

Undergraduate students searching and reading Web sources for writing

With the Internet-evoked paradigm shift in the academy, there has been a growing interest in students’ Web-based information-seeking and source-use practices. Nevertheless, little is known as to how individual students go about searching for sources online and selecting source material for writing particular assignments. This exploratory study focuses on the Web-based searching and reading practices of a group of undergraduate students at a university in Hong Kong in preparing their end-of-semester written assignments. The data drawn upon included interviews and the students’ process logs and their notes from reading. The study revealed that the students employed a range of search engines to conduct online research, they skim-read and read around search terms to select sources and source content, and they took indexical notes to document their decisions over citations for their essay. The paper ends by pointing out some pedagogical implications of the study and suggesting in-depth case studies as an avenue of further research.     

Orchestrating expertise in reading and writing

With increased attention focused on the economic cache afforded through literacy and numeracy skills, governments around the world have turned their attention to developing the expertise of their teachers. Improving teachers' levels of competency leads to improvement in student achievement. In this qualitative case study, we focus on the Educational Foundations Program, in Ontario, Canada, established in part to develop competencies in the area of literacy instruction by addressing teachers' content knowledge. Serious questions about the ways in which the notion of ‘expertise’ is understood and developed arose as the programme was implemented. We examine notions of expertise and the experiences of teachers, administrators and curriculum leaders charged with orchestrating expertise in reading and writing in their respective districts.     

Generous reading: Discovering dialogic voices in writing

This paper describes an approach to the assessment of EAL written composition in the primary school. It draws upon related work in literacy as social practice and socio‐linguistic approaches to language learning to develop an approach to writing assessment that builds upon students’ linguistic strengths and traces their written words to sources in the immediate context and wider world. Following Joseph Tobin (2000) this approach is described as generous reading. Generous reading references poststructuralist literary theory through a focus on close reading of texts using a multidisciplinary approach. This paper describes the purpose, theory, and methods for generous reading followed by examples and a discussion of implications for instruction and assessment.     

Creating critical classrooms: reading and writing with an edge

Since the foundation in this country in 1950 of the Institut für Film Und Bild the production of AV aids for tuition and education has been promoted in many ways.