‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’: The Great Gatsby in the 1980s

This essay illustrates the application of reception study, the subfield of literary history that emphasises the historical experiences of readers, to pedagogical contexts by investigating the teaching of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) in American high schools during the 1980s. Focusing on the episode in which Jay Gatsby leads Nick and Daisy on a tour of his mansion, the analysis draws on published lesson plans and other primary source documents and reimagines the contemporary cultural contexts to reconsider the novel’s lessons about social class during a decade that saw escalating wealth disparity, mirroring Fitzgerald’s 1920s and anticipating our present.     

The case for orthographic knowledge

Scholes (1998) argues that phonemic awareness cannot be the driving force behind reading development, because this skill develops as a consequence of learning to read. Evidence is reviewed which supports the view that the role of phonemic awareness has been overstated, but it is clear that awareness of phonemes in spoken words does make some contribution to the development of word recognition skills. Scholes also argues that due to the irregularities of the English spelling system, a phonics approach to reading cannot work since it relies on knowing what the word is. This ignores the fact that there is a considerable amount of evidence that a phonics-based approach is a very effective way of teaching reading. Phonics is not a branch of phonetics – children can even ‘sound out’ irregular words and still obtain the correct pronunciation. They may activate words which look and sound like the target word – i.e. activate orthographic information – and select the most appropriate word using contextual information. Although, as Scholes argues, the ultimate purpose of reading is comprehension, the unskilled reader has to learn to recognise the building blocks of the sentence, i.e. words, and failure to capitalise on the alphabetic nature of English would make it as hard to learn to read as Chinese.     

Visual Processing Deficits in Children With Slow RAN Performance

Two groups of 8- to 10-year-olds differing in rapid automatized naming speed but matched for age, verbal and nonverbal ability, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and visual acuity participated in four experiments investigating early visual processing. As low RAN children had significantly slower simple reaction times (SRT) this was entered as a covariate in all subsequent data analyses. Low RAN children were significantly slower to make same/different judgments to simple visual features, non-nameable letter-like forms and letters, with difference in SRT controlled. Speed differences to letter-like forms and letters disappeared once RTs to simple visual features were controlled. We conclude that slow RAN children have difficulty in discriminating simple visual features that cannot be explained in terms of a more general speed of processing deficit, a deficit in making same/different judgments, or to differences in word reading ability.     

Patients' perspectives on the role of prepared childbirth education in decision making regarding elective labor induction

The purpose of our study was to explore reasons why nulliparous women chose to have an elective labor induction and to identify the influence of prepared childbirth classes on their decision. The study included 1,349 nulliparous women at term who participated in a survey regarding their choices for childbirth, their attendance at prepared childbirth classes, and their experience with labor and birth. Sixty-three percent of women who attended childbirth classes and did not have elective induction reported that classes provided helpful information to assist in their decision-making process. Study results suggest attendance at prepared childbirth classes can be an effective source of information regarding elective labor induction and influential in women's decisions regarding whether or not to have elective labor induction. Women perceive prepared childbirth classes positively and find the information provided valuable.