Generating, weaving and curating: disciplinary processes for reading literary text

Purpose The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different participant groups. Design/methodology/approach The authors recruited literary scholars and first-year college students to read literary texts aloud and voice their thoughts. Transcripts were collaboratively coded and analyzed using a priori and emergent coding. Findings This study presents the findings in two ways. First, this study grouped the codes into four categories, namely, background knowledge, comprehension, disciplinary knowledge and building an interpretation. This described the differences in frequencies among the participants’ strategy use. Next, to more fully describe how participants read literary texts, this study presents the data using three processes, namely, generating, weaving and curating. These findings indicate a continuum of strategies and processes used by participants. Practical implications The study suggests using the ELA heuristic for instruction, which includes moving students beyond generating and weaving by asking them to do their own interpretive work of curation. This potential roadmap for instruction avoids a deficit mindset for students by recommending low-stakes opportunities that meet students where they are as they build their capacity for interpretive moves. Originality/value The findings help the field to gain an understanding of what novices and experts do when they read literary text, including both strategies and processes. This study also provide an ELA heuristic that has instructional implications. This study adds to the body of knowledge for disciplinary literacy in ELA in both theoretical and practical ways.

LA INTERPRETACIÓN COMO PRÁCTICA TEXTUAL: ENTRE SEMIÓTICA Y PSICOANÁLISIS

Aunque Umberto Eco se ocupara de explicar la evolución experimentada por la práctica de la interpretación en el ámbito general de los estudios semióticos, distinguiendo tres modalidades de intenciones (operis, auctoris, lectoris) que agotarían cualquier posibilidad de relación con el texto, y distinguiendo también entre una interpretación semiósica (relativa al significado) y otra semiótica (relativa a las reglas que la hacen posible), creemos necesario revisar algunas cuestiones para aclarar el sentido de un término que ha generado numerosas polémicas entre los analistas de textos literarios y/o artísticos. En concreto, aquellas que afectan a los puntos de conexión entre semiótica y psicoanálisis, cuya aportación ha sido decisiva para animar los procesos de lectura y repensar la relación entre enunciado y enunciación, llevando a algunos semiólogos a reivindicar el manejo de nociones freudianas y lacanianas que otros procuran evitar, al menos en su forma de interrogar cierta clase de producciones. Abstract: Although Umberto Eco was in charge of explaining the evolution experienced by the practice of interpretation in the general field of Semiotic studies, distinguishing three modes of intentions (operis, auctoris, lectoris) that would exhaust any possibility of relationship with the text, and also distinguishing between a Semiosic interpretation (related to meaning) and another Semiotic (related to the rules that make it possible), we believe it is necessary to review several questions to clarify the meaning of a term that has generated controversies among analysts. Specifically, those that affect the points of connection between Semiotics and Psychoanalysis, whose contribution has been decisive in animating the reading processes and rethinking the relationship between statement and enunciation, leading some semiologists to claim the handling of Freudian and Lacanian notions that others try to avoid, at least in their way of questioning certain kind of productions.

Ice Is Hot and Water Is Dry

To monitor students’ progress and adapt instruction to students’ needs, teachers increasingly use repeated assessments of equivalent tests. The present study investigates whether equivalent reading tests can be successfully developed via rule-based item design. Based on theoretical considerations, we identified 3-item features for reading comprehension at the word, sentence, and text levels, respectively, which should influence the difficulty and time intensity of reading processes. Using optimal design algorithms, a design matrix was calculated, and four equivalent test forms of the German reading test series for second graders (quop-L2) were developed. A total of N = 7,751 students completed the tests. We estimated item difficulty and time intensity parameters as well as person ability and speed parameters using bivariate item response theory (IRT) models, and we investigated the influence of item features on item parameters. Results indicate that all item properties significantly affected either item difficulty or response time. Moreover, as indicated by the IRT-based test information functions and analyses of variance, the four different test forms showed similar levels of difficulty and time-intensity at the word, sentence, and text levels (all η2 < .002). Results were successfully cross-validated using a sample of N = 5,654 students.

How teachers interpret displays of students’ gaze in reading comprehension assignments

Reading comprehension is a central skill in secondary education. To be able to provide adaptive instruction, teachers need to be able to accurately estimate students’ reading comprehension. However, they tend to experience difficulties doing so. Eye tracking can uncover these reading processes by visualizing what a student looked at, in what order, and for how long, in a gaze display. The question is, however, whether teachers could interpret such displays. We, therefore, examined how teachers interpret gaze displays and perceived their potential use in education to foster tailored support for reading comprehension. Sixty teachers in secondary education were presented with three static gaze displays of students performing a reading comprehension task. Teachers were asked to report how they interpreted these gaze displays and what they considered to be the promises and pitfalls of gaze displays for education. Teachers interpreted in particular reading strategies in the gaze displays quite well, and also interpreted the displays as reflecting other concepts, such as motivation and concentration. Results showed that teachers’ interpretations of the gaze displays were generally consistent across teachers and that teachers discriminated well between displays of different strategies. Teachers were generally positive about potential applications in educational practice. This study provides first insights into how teachers experience the utility of gaze displays as an innovative tool to support reading instruction, which is timely as rapid technological developments already enable eye tracking through webcams on regular laptops. Thus, using gaze displays in an educational setting seems to be an increasingly feasible scenario.

“GRASP ALL, LOSE ALL”: RAISING AWARENESS THROUGH LOSS OF GRASP IN SEEMINGLY FUNCTIONAL INTERFACES

From baroque proto-cybertexts to countercultural gestures by historical avant-gardes there is a longstanding tradition of disruptive strategies by artists at the interstices of societies’ demand for order, control and functionalism. For the avant-gardes, and their multiple artistic inf(l)ections, part of the strategy had to do with radical changes in the way sensory perception came to be depicted by Modernism. Placing emphasis on the confluence of several arts and media, the innovative character of their proposals had much to do with the ways in which they were able to embrace notions representing modernity, such as “simultaneity,” “dynamics”, “motion”, as well as ideas such as the symbiosis between human and machine. For that purpose, they searched to induce estrangement and defamiliarization, namely by using seemingly functional mechanisms in order to raise awareness through loss of grasp.&nbsp;Taking from the idea of raising awareness through seemingly functional mechanisms, I argue that non-functional/dysfunctional digital interfaces that are part of contemporary artworks dealing with digitally-based haptic reading processes (namely, digital literature) are largely influenced by early avant-garde artistic proposals. Through its metamedial aesthetic and poetic critique of digital media, digital literature reinvents inherited strategies of subversion and disruption already explored by modernism, raising awareness in regard to the artwork’s processes of signification and affect. Seen as a variation of a rich heritage of experimentation with seemingly functional mechanisms in the arts, such strategies reenact age-old tensions between tradition and innovation, while laying the foundation for (re)new(ed) ways of reading and writing in digital multimodal environments.

Effects of textual enhancement and task manipulation on L2 learners’ attentional processes and grammatical knowledge development: A mixed methods study

This study examined the extent to which textual enhancement and task manipulation affect the learners’ attentional processing and the development of second language (L2) grammatical knowledge. A total of 73 Korean college students read an opinion news article in one of four experimental conditions: (1) textually enhanced, careful reading, (2) textually enhanced, expeditious reading, (3) textually non-enhanced, careful reading, and (4) textually non-enhanced, expeditious reading. For the enhanced conditions, the target L2 construction, i.e. the use of English participle phrases in the restrictive use, was typographically enhanced using a different color. In addition, the reading task was manipulated in terms of the speed and the manner of reading, i.e. careful reading to remember textual information as accurately as possible or expeditious reading to figure out the gist as soon as possible. While reading the article, learners’ eye-movements were recorded with an eye-tracker to measure the allocation of attentional resources as well as reading processes. In addition, stimulated recalls were collected for qualitative analysis of learners’ attentional processes. The results revealed that both textual enhancement and task manipulation had significant effects on the way participants allocated their attentional resources during reading, while it did not affect their knowledge of the target constructions as reflected in their grammaticality judgment scores.

From Tutoring to Mentoring: Centering Adolescents’ Identities as Readers and Mentors in a High School Literacy Class

Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often focuses on the cognitive aspects of reading (e.g., skills, strategies). In this multiple case study, we draw on theories of identity and positioning to propose a conceptual shift from tutoring to mentoring to also describe the affective and relational dimensions of peer literacy teaching. In our analysis, we explore how two 11th graders positioned themselves as readers and mentors in a cross-age literacy mentorship class in a public high school in the northeastern United States. Data sources include mentor interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Our multiphase coding process identified three main themes: the importance of (a) texts and (b) relationships and reciprocity to mentors’ positioning, and (c) complexities of the mentor position. Findings suggest that school-based opportunities for youth to work collaboratively to understand their own and others’ reading processes may contribute insights into both the affective and the cognitive aspects of peer literacy teaching.