Challenging the Visual Discourse of Reading: or,Do Teen Readers Look Like Google Images?

Popular culture images of reading tend to portray readers as solitary individuals deeply immersed in reading a single text in a quiet, undisturbed spot. Yet, in our documentation of adolescent students reading in Singapore secondary schools, we find that there are many ways and modes of reading, much of which is social in nature. Through the use of comparative, critical visual analysis, this paper expands the understanding of what it means to read and to understand how adolescent readers experience reading in school contexts. Visual images serve to disrupt dominant readings of what counts as reading to elicit new considerations for engaging adolescents in reading.     

学前儿童图画故事书阅读理解研究

本研究通过对90名4-6岁儿童自主阅读图画书后的故事复述语料进行分析,探讨汉语学前儿童的图画故事书阅读理解能力发展.研究发现汉语学前儿童对图画故事书中图画形象、事件行动和角色状态的理解水平随年龄增长而显著提高;儿童对图画故事书的理解遵循由图画形象到事件行动再到角色状态的发展顺序;有利于学前儿童阅读理解的是容易引起儿童关注的图画形象、由不同图画形象之间的关系直接表现的事件行动、由图画形象的大小、色彩等可直接观察到的信息表现的角色状态;儿童图画书阅读理解的难点分别为不容易引起注意的图画形象、未由不同图画形象之间的关系直接表现,需要联系前后页图画信息进行理解的事件行动、与未关注和理解的图画形象相关的事件行动和角色状态,以及角色的内部心理状态等.     

Re–valuing the role of images in reviewing picture books

This paper discusses the narrative role of images in three prize–winning children’s books: ‘The Rabbits’ by John Marsden and Shaun Tan; ‘Joseph had a Little Overcoat’ by Simms Taback; and ‘The House that Jack Built’ by Gavin Bishop. It is argued that the contribution of images to interpretive possibilities of the narrative are typically not sufficiently addressed in reviewing picture books. In dealing with this aspect of images in picture books, an approach to ‘reading images’ as described in the book of that title by Gunther Kress and Thao van Leeuwen is suggested as a productive resource for reviewers and teachers.     

That Seductive Thing: Representing the Illiterate as Readers

In “That Seductive Thing: Representing the Illiterate as Readers”, it is argued that a historical approach to representations of readers and reading may highlight some issues pertaining to books and education. Far from being simple and neutral illustrations of some cultural practices and commodities in the past, both images and texts about books, reading and the illiterate are here considered as forms of perception and normalization of reading through the representation of (socially) contrasting readers. Thus, images and texts are in fact cultural discourses used to promote and to impose certain models of social behaviour. Yet, they are also part of the doxa which legitimate the “natural” supremacy of written forms of cultural transmission and, therefore, the excellence of books and schooling in the making of “the reader”. This guiding perspective in understanding problems of books and education is analysed here with a closer look at questions of age, race and schooling in Portuguese society during the first half of the 20th century. In that period, several institutions (State, School, Church and so forth) participate, not necessarily in the same way, in what we might call “the Portuguese battle for (national) literacy”. Books and school education are important topics within those social politics fighting “illiteracy”, generating images which represent the advantages of education and of a “culture of books” and, though in different and divergent ideological and political circumstances, creating a certain sociology of reading.

     

电子媒介时代阅读困境的批判性解读

我们正处于一个以图像和符号为主要特征的电子媒介时代。图像崇拜成为现代文化的盛景,视觉享受凌越文字阅读成为人们的新宠,语言沦为形象的注脚,线性思维被非线性视像浏览所打破,文字的意涵被深度消解,由此带来的阅读困境值得我们深思。     

The Famous Five and the Autotopographical Two: Interpreting Blyton Across Differences of Time,Space, and Race

This article presents a small case study of two childhood readers of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, who meet in a research project devoted to a different but related topic. One is Indian by birth and background, the other, Canadian. Their experience of this series is separated by distance (many thousands of miles), time of reading (nearly fifty years), and divergent racial and cultural perspectives. Yet both include Blyton in what Alison Waller calls a “lifelong reading act,” and both recall the experience as one involving enthusiastic personal engagement coupled with the questions and assumptions of an outsider to the Englishness of the books. Their common experiences and memories provide a language for exploration that sheds light on many components of the experience of reading fiction. Their responses to online images of the Five’s favourite location for adventure, Kirrin Island, showcase both commonalities and distinctions in reading processes. Three themes are explored in depth: reading as an outsider, good enough imagining, and the interactions of reading and memory.

     

双重代码理论及其在英语阅读理解教学中的应用

双重代码理论认为,人类的大脑具有语言和非语言两套表现系统,语言系统处理语言信息,非语言系统处理非语言的输入。读者在使用语言系统的同时,会激发非语言系统,从而产生相应的意象和情感反应。对于外语的阅读教学来说,指导学生有意识地利用意象和情感反应以及隐喻是有效的教学方法。     

儿童:特殊的文学接受群体

儿童作为一个特殊的文学接受群体，呈现着不同于成人的文学接受特点。个体阅读需要、作品吸引力和成人引导是促成儿童主动的或被动的阅读动机。在阅读兴趣选择上儿童表现出明显的渐变性和群体差异性。形象思维是儿童文学接受的主要思维形式。以直接印象介入作品，从故事层面感知而不以理性去判断作品是儿童文学接受中的主要特点。与成人相比，儿童阅读活动还明显带有感性冲动性，即情感性。     

Improving early reading comprehension using embodied CAI

An embodied approach to reading comprehension suggests that emerging readers must learn to map words and phrases onto their remembered experiences, but this is made difficult by the necessity of focusing attention on decoding. Having children manipulate toys to correspond to what they are reading overcomes this problem, but introduces its own problem for the classroom, namely having to provide a classroom full of children with manipulative. In this article, we demonstrate that having first- and second-grade children manipulate images of toys on a computer screen benefits their comprehension as much as physical manipulation of the toys. In addition, manipulation on one day facilitates reading in the same domain one week later. These findings encourage the use of manipulation of text-relevant images as an educational technology for enhancing early reading comprehension. The findings also set constraints on theoretical accounts of embodiment while reading.     

Differences between skilled and less‐skilled young readers in the retrieval of semantic,phonological, and shape information

This study aimed to determine whether the reading skills of third‐grade schoolchildren are associated with their preferences for semantic, phonological, and shape competitors (images or printed words) after being exposed to a spoken critical word. Two groups of children participated: skilled readers and less‐skilled readers. Through a language‐mediated visual search, children's fixations on the three competitors and a distractor were measured. When looking at images, both groups of readers preferred to look at the semantic competitor. When reading words, both groups showed a preference for the phonological competitor, but only skilled readers were sensitive to semantic information. These results suggest that early reading skills influence access to different types of representations in response to hearing a word, and they confirm the existence of a cascaded activation of information retrieval in childhood.     

幼儿园开展多元阅读活动的实践与思考

作为21世纪的教育者,我们应该给幼儿创造一种全方位的阅读空间。我们应该跳出传统的“阅读”来看如今的“阅读”,拓展早期阅读的范围和内容,丰富方法和手段,逐渐以图像阅读文化取代文字阅读文化,带领幼儿走进图的世界。在研究过程中,我们经历感情投资、稳定发展及回归生活三个阶段,分别对幼儿多元阅读的环境创设、兴趣培养、阅读内容、阅读模式及社会实践进行实践探索。     

‘Reading’ pictures: what do they reveal? Young children's reading of visual texts

What does the ‘reading’ of pictures reveal compared with the reading of print? The researcher examines aspects of visual literacy through the responses of young children to two picture storybooks. The findings emphasise how images can evoke different levels of response. The study confirms that we need to reconsider the nature of reading and reading education in an environment where words and print are no longer the dominant medium. Examples of responses are shown from children who are native speakers of English, as well as from children for whom English is a second language.     

An Examination of the LVA Approach to Teaching Reading

The Language Vocabulary Acquisition (LVA) Approach is a revolutionary method of reading instruction for emergent and developing readers. It is an intense reading program with high levels of student participation, engagement, and interaction with print text, that yields high outcomes in phonological awareness, reading and writing fluency, and comprehension. The LVA Approach quickly immerses young African-American children into print text, bombarding them with a preponderance of new words, ideas, and general understandings about their surroundings and the world in general. This approach enables them to develop expansive word knowledge, resulting in reading, writing, and thinking competencies at or above their grade level and national norms. This approach focuses on the printed text—words, words, and more words—rather than visual images, picture clues, and illustrations.

Research studies on literacy development supported the use of printed text in children's initial efforts in reading (Gough and Hillinger 1980). Words, word constructions, and vocabulary development are the beginning steps to the LVA Approach. Children are able to take the skills learned in the LVA Approach and apply them to children's literature and standard basal reading texts. The LVA Approach was developed by Angela L. Davis who successfully introduced it to her first-grade class during the 2000–2001 school year. This article describes a three-year pilot effort to improve the reading competencies of primary-age children at Bouchet Academy, a Chicago Public School (CPS) located on the southeast side of the city.     

“读图时代”文学理论教学存在的问题及对策探析

“读图时代”文学理论教学还存在多方面的问题：教材内容陈旧、观念滞后,理论性过强、实践性偏弱;学生爱好“读图”,讨厌“读文字”,长于视像思维而弱于诗意体验;教师教学观念落后、教学模式封闭、教学手段单一。要解决这些问题,需要多方共同努力：文学理论教材要适应时代发展需求,改编与修订工作刻不容缓;学生应该拓宽阅读面,做到既会“读图”,也不排斥“读文字”,在“读图”与“读文字”的过程中提高自己的思考能力;教师应该更新教学观念,不断自我学习,根据学生的知识储备和思维习惯讲授课程内容,利用多样化的教学方式引导学生进行有效阅读。     

Reading the weather: ruling passions,numeracy and reading practices in an Australian farming community

Research on multi‐modality has expanded our understanding of reading: as well as reading written text, the social semiotic perspective of Kress and van Leeuwen suggests that we read images, and the work of Moss explores children watching television in terms of reading practices. Research in the New Literacy Studies has expanded both the notion of what counts as reading and where we look for reading practices. In this case study I will examine the reading practices of an unemployed teenage boy in an Australian farming community. I will show how one of his ruling passions, the weather, leads him to engage in a variety of reading practices (and associated writing practices) in a variety of semiotic modes, drawing in different ways on numeracy knowledge. These range from reading (and recording) rainfall levels, reading weather charts and weather reports on television and indeed reading the signs of weather changes in the environment surrounding the farm where he lives with his family. None of these are reading practices in the conventional written‐text‐oriented sense, yet all of them contribute to his ruling passion for reading the weather. I conclude this case study by arguing that both research on multi‐modality and the New Literacy Studies point in a similar direction: towards expanding our notions of what counts as reading and the contexts where reading occurs.     

双重代码理论在英语阅读教学中的应用

阅读教学在英语听、说、读、写四项技能训练中占有重要的地位.双重代码理论认为,我们在阅读的时候使用语言和非语言两套表现系统.通过实验证明,意象能有效提高英语阅读理解能力,并对英语阅读教学有一定的启示.     

试谈散文意境的开拓

教学散文时注意开拓散文意境 ,有利于丰富学生的语汇 ,培养语感 ,还能为学生写作奠定基础。开拓散文意境可用渲染气氛 ,展示形象、反复阅读、发挥想象等教学手段和方法     

论网络多媒体的阅读理解

现代远程教育离不开网络阅读,网络阅读需要使用视觉语言。在信息社会中读者往往会先解读图象,这意味着“视觉时代”与“读图时代”已经到来。面对这么多以视觉传递、视觉接受信息为主的社会,读者必须将视觉语言符号转换成信息,才能加速信息传递与互动。理解网络多媒体,对提高网络阅读效率,提高网络学习效果,具有重要意义。     

Hemispheric object naming and interhemispheric transfer functions in reading disordered subjects

This study measured unilateral, tachistoscopic naming reaction times of normal and reading disordered children to objects representing two levels of picture vocabulary age. Results of an ANCOVA procedure on the latency data showed main effects for group and stimuli, but not visual field. The latency results suggested parallel, central picture naming operations for each group, with the reading disordered children evidencing significantly longer naming reaction times to each level of stimuli. Arc Sine transformed error data were submitted to an analysis of co-variance procedure and showed a significant stimuli x group interaction. Post hoc tests showed accelerated error rates following right hemispheric stimulation, suggesting anomalous interhemispheric transfer of visual images in the present group of reading disordered children. In addition, left hemispheric stimulations produced significantly more naming errors for the reading disordered subjects as compared to the normal children. Such findings may suggest that a group of higher-ordered processing operations may accompany reading disorders.     

Disturbing Reading: J.M. Coetzee's ‘The Problem of Evil’

A literary representation can give us grief. J.M. Coetzee's ‘The Problem of Evil’ follows the crisis of reading of his main character Elizabeth Costello as she struggles to comprehend discursive images of evil. Costello's trouble with reading is not attributed to a cognitive deficiency in her ability to read the text but to a psychical disturbance she experiences while reading. Thinking through our ‘disturbances’ while and after reading gives readers an opportunity to rethink reading as affected by the thoughts and words of others.