“God’s Absence During Trauma Took Its Toll”: Dialogic Tracing of Literate Activity and Lifespan Trajectories of Semiotic (Un)becoming

Scholarship on trajectories of becoming with literate activities is of growing interest in Writing Studies, particularly in accounts of writing grounded in cultural-historical and dialogic approaches, and in lifespan accounts of writing. The research reported here contributes to those conversations by tracing trajectories of becoming that are dynamically nonlinear, necessarily messy, and predicated on exceptionally complex streams of times, places, life experiences, artifacts, and literate activities. I draw from one case study with Alex, once a deeply faithful Christian who, over complex trajectories of semiotic becoming, lost her faith and was left to make sense of drastic perspectival shifts, in large part, through literate activity. Weaving analyses of talk across 2 years, 15 interviews, and multiple texts and textual interactions, I trace a narrative of Alex’s trajectories of unbecoming/becoming. I argue that Writing Studies needs flexible, theoretically grounded methods to trace becoming across lifespan trajectories and I address this imperative by showcasing one approach— dialogic animation protocols coupled with dialogic analyses.

China in Classics: Narrative Construction of Multiple Texts and the Value of the Times

As a spiritual wealth of the Chinese nation, traditional culture is the spiritual power and support for the survival and development of the Chinese people. In the new era, China emphasizes cultural confidence. Its inheritance and promotion of traditional culture have made cultural programs flourish. More recently, specific to multi-dimensional text, learning Chinese culture and extracting spiritual nutrients from TV programs has become an advantageous choice for the broad masses of people to enrich their spiritual life. Through the reconstruction of the text of classics and the narrative construction of the integration of multiple texts, China in Classic Books gives voice to ancient books. By expressing people’s humanistic feelings towards classics, it attracts young people’s attention and realizes mainstream values with its unique charm. Based on the creation rules and communication effects of China in Classics, this paper analyzes the exploration of the contemporary communication of traditional culture of TV programs.

The Contribution of Executive Functions When Reading Multiple Texts: A Systematic Literature Review

In the present-day knowledge society, people need to critically comprehend information across multiple sources that express diverse and contradictory viewpoints. Due to the complexity associated with this process, an important role can be played by Executive Functions, that is, cognitive control processes used to regulate mental functioning and behavior when automatized elaborations are not sufficient. The aim of this article is to review existing research on the roles of executive functions when reading from multiple texts. To identify the appropriate studies, we conducted a search in the following databases: Web of science, Scopus, PsycInfo, Eric. The search string was created by combining the terms used in past literature reviews on executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension. From the total number of 4,877 records identified, seven articles met all the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. Given the scarcity of studies on the topic, we decided to examine also eight articles reporting indirect evidence about the association between executive functions and multiple-text comprehension. Our review revealed that the study of the association between executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension is underdeveloped. The results seem to suggest that working memory is involved in surface comprehension, whereas results about sourcing and intertextual integration processes are mixed. Indirect evidence suggests that other executive functions, such as planning or monitoring, may be involved when learning from multiple texts. More research on this topic is needed given the increasing complexity of the contexts in which reading activities take place.

Excess(ive) Shame and Shamelessness

A look at a variety of texts by Calixthe Beyala that continue the treatment of the feminine in African literature in order to consider the phenomenon of “excess(ive) shame” and its risks and challenges. The consideration continues with a look at multiple texts by Soni Labou Tansi, as well as the play “Three Suitors… One Husband” by Guillaume Oyônô-Mbia.

What Research Tells Us: Multiple Texts

Chapter 5 opens by looking at the growth of computers in education and of online search technology. Today’s easy availability of online documents is profoundly reshaping the reading students are asked to do, diminishing traditional focus on single texts. Skills for searching online, scrutinizing sources, and synthesizing results are now emphasized in school curricula. One consequence has been a parallel focus on these skills in middle school and high school standardized testing. We examine research on students’ success in mastering these skills and consider how the emphasis on multiple online texts may be changing what we mean by “reading”. Less is known about students’ comparative ability to handle multiple print versus multiple digital documents, though we review some existing research. Our discussion reveals the relevance of document authenticity, distinctiveness, and physical senses in how we comprehend and interpret texts.

Strategies for Effective Reading Onscreen

Chapter 6 draws upon what we learned in Chapters 4 and 5 to identify effective strategies for onscreen reading, with both single and multiple texts. The chapter begins by emphasizing the importance of determining reading goals, along with thinking about who the reader is, how cost factors in, the importance of active learning, and ways of applying print strategies when reading onscreen. The first set of recommendations is for young children, while the rest of the chapter looks at strategies for school-age readers. In discussing use of single texts, we consider such issues as genre, complexity, scrolling, priming a reading mindset, annotation, and concept maps. The section on reading multiple texts includes the challenge of recognizing online fake news and the potential to use skills developed when scrutinizing online documents to advance the larger civic good.