Integrating Word-Meaning Instruction Within Word-Reading Instruction

Despite strong theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that word meaning knowledge plays a critical role in word reading, interventions for students with word reading difficulties and disabilities frequently target word reading instruction in isolation. This article bridges reading theory to practice by describing one approach to integrate word-meaning instruction within word-reading instruction to support students who have mastered foundational phonics skills but require additional support to read multisyllabic words with accuracy and fluency. Included are the steps a teacher could use to implement integrated word reading and word meaning instruction utilizing the multisyllabic, academic vocabulary words students must be able to read and understand to comprehend complex science or social studies texts.

Image in Mikhail Gershenzon’s Theory of Reading

The work is devoted to the theory of reading by Mikhail Gershenzon in a double reflection – on the one hand, ideas about myth-creatin specific to the period at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, on the other hand, critical statements on interpretation strategy, suggested by the scholar. The article discusses the principles of constructing Mikhail Gershenzon’s theoretical ideas in the double focusing view. Considering slow reading not as a method, but as the art of revealing the poet’s vision, Mikhail Gershenzon drew the myth-making potential of poetry (in a broad sense) in the process of interpretation to the interpreted work itself. The art of reading is akin to the art of poetry (artistic creativity), designed to find in the word its living source – myth – to revive the “mystery of the word”. Thus, the poetic image becomes at the same time a way of thinking, merging with it, influencing the very form of thought. Mikhail Gershenzon developed, on the one hand, the theory of the poetic word of Alexander Potebnja, on the other hand, relies on Henri-Louis Bergson’s concept of médiatrice image. Poetic image becomes the dominant feature of Mikhail Gershenzon's reading theory. The criticism of the principles of slow reading reflected the transition to a formalists view on of evolution of artistic creativity as erasure of metaphor and obsolescence of technique.

The Transformation of the Reading Model in a Digital Culture

The article explores the transformation of the traditional reading model in the conditions of the modern information society and digital culture. The author considers the problem in the anthropological aspect as a radical cognitive restructuring of reading perception and modernization of reading practices. This requires a revision of the essential concepts of the reading theory and of methodological approaches to their study. Firstly, this concerns texts that change their nature in the digital environment and acquire a multimodal polycode character. Changing the medium and the way in which it is recorded leads to a change from linear, sequential reading to a parallel, divergent way of reader’s thinking, which significantly affects the depth of attention and understanding of the text. In this regard, researchers note the gradual replacement of slow, thoughtful reading by widely used scanning techniques, superficial search reading that realizes specific pragmatic goals. The modern reading model replaces the traditional, consolidating function with a differentiating one, related to the stratification of the readership and the formation of different reading subcultures and online reading communities. Internet reading, which is especially popular among young people, is becoming “social”, aiming at active online communication and the creation of its own fanfiction content. This removes the institutional distance between the author and the reader, and significantly changes the status position of reading, which loses its role as a terminal value and becomes a secondary, collateral occupation. Reader differentiation is also evident in the mental digital generational divide; reading practices of adherents of the traditional reading model become increasingly elitist in today’s socio-cultural context. This gap is exacerbated by the current trend towards the visualisation of reading, which accelerates perception of information but negates essential reading competencies. The transformation of the reading model has deep historical roots and is legitimate, so the reader’s ability to be “multitextual”, i.e. to switch to different modes of perception, choosing different reading strategies depending on the text and the situations, is important today This can be facilitated by education and book publishing that adapt to the characteristics of the new reading model.

On Teaching Strategies of Junior English Reading from the Perspective of Discourse Function

Reading is not only one of the difficult problems for students, but also one of the most important teaching parts for teachers. 126 students in Xingfeng Jiudu Middle School were taken as the research objects, and their English reading learning was investigated by means of questionnaire survey, so as to find problems existing in junior English reading teaching. Based on the three characteristics of discourse reading: integrity, comprehensiveness and applicability, the paper analyzes junior English reading teaching strategies from the three aspects of pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. The research shows that under the guidance of discourse reading theory, using the method of discourse reading teaching is beneficial to stimulate students' interest in reading and improve their reading ability. For English teachers, it is also a good way to improve teaching efficiency and reduce teaching pressure.

Preferential Engagement and What Can We Learn from Online Chess?

An online game of chess against a human opponent appears to be indistinguishable from a game against a machine: both happen on the screen. Yet, people prefer to play chess against other people despite the fact that machines surpass people in skill. When the philosophers of 1970’s and 1980’s argued that computers will never surpass us in chess, perhaps their intuitions were rather saying “Computers will never be favored as opponents”? In this paper we analyse through the introduced concepts of psychological affordances and psychological interplay, what are the mechanisms that make a human-human (HH) interaction more meaningful than a human-computer (HC) interaction. We claim that an HH chess game consists of two intertwined, but independent simultaneous games—only one of which is retained in the HC game. To help with the analysis we introduce the thought experiment of a Preferential Engagement Test (PET) which is inspired by, but non-equivalent to, the Standard Turing Test. We also explore how the PET can illuminate, and be illuminated by, various philosophies of mind reading: Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and Mind Minding. We propose that our analysis along with the concept of PET could illuminate in a new way the conditions and challenges a machine (or its designers) must face before it can replace humans in a given occupation.

Noise, please: let the body of the text unsettle your readings

Book Review: Anne M. Royston, Material Noise: Reading Theory as Artist’s Book. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019, 213 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-04292-5.

Representasi Makna Ideologis Kisah Aṣḥâb al-Kahf: Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes Dalam Surah Al-Kahf

The Qur’an which brings many messages of religion, moral and humanity sometimes gives the representation of messages that will be delivered. In many chapters of the Qur’an, Allah has given beautifully messages through the stories. The messages that will be delivered through the stories are the representation of religion purposed as the one of mankind servitude parts that called by ulu al-albab and ulu al-absar. In this context, the content of the message in the story of ashab al-kahf has an important message for human (ummah). The approach from language and semiotics aspects proposed by Roland Barthes has adequate mode of analysis for examining the ideological meaning within the text. It is all after the long process and mind mapping of reading theory that formulated by Roland Barthes, this paper argues that the concept of Roland Barthes will give the effects of ideological understanding and be able to represent the implicit meanings of ashab al-kahf story completely, at least close to intact, although the human not be able to interpret the meaning appropriately like the interpretation of the Glory (sahib al-nass). Through the mapping concept of Roland Barthes semiotics’ theory, the systemic interpretation and understanding of the religion purpose in proving the unity story in a chapter (surah) will be compiled.

Reading and Responding to Poetry: To Know, to Experience

Three poet-researchers conduct three different readings of Tishani Doshi’s poem A Fable for the 21st Century. We ask how as creative practitioners and critics we can negotiate the desire for mastery of a text, and the dangers a semiotic reading presents, allowing for difference, indecision, and complexity. We present our initial readings of the poem and summarize our discussions of them grounded in the transactional reading theory of Louise Rosenblatt and nuanced by assemblage theory. A final section includes three original poems written in response to Doshi, together with a brief discussion of them, and forms part of our conclusion.