The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of dialogue journal writing, journal writing without dialogue, and regular classroom instruction on the reading comprehension of college students enrolled in a developmental reading class. Also, the effect of the journal writing on the college students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was investigated.The subjects were 77 freshman college students enrolled in six credit/no credit developmental reading classes at a mid-size midwestern university. Two of the classes wrote dialogue journals in which the teacher responded in writing to what the students wrote. The second two classes wrote in journals but received no written feedback. The last two classes received regular class instruction with no journal writing.The Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used as the post test. The results of a three-way analysis of variance with nesting indicated that there was no difference in the reading comprehension scores among the journal writing only, the dialogue journal writing, and the control groups. The results also indicated that there was no difference between the reading comprehension scores of males and females.A second three-way analysis of variance with nesting was conducted using the students' mean responses on the Wingenbach Reading Strategies Questionnaire. The results indicated that there was no significant differences within the classes in each treatment or between the males and females in the three treatment groups.The control group did score greater when contrasted with the two treatment groups on the questionnaire. The dialogue journal group also scored greater than the journal writing only group.The results of this study indicated that journal writing with or without dialogue did not affect the reading comprehension scores of the students in this study. Another finding of this study, suggested that teacher interaction either through additional class time or written dialogue can result in greater metcognitive awareness of reading strategies. / Department of Elementary Education

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The problem selected for study in the present research project is to determine the reading interests of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and graduate students enrolled in the North Texas State Teachers College, Denton, Texas, during the first semester of the 1942-1943 school year.

"Response to literature" is an educational notion which generally refers to an oral or written reaction to a non-expository published work such as a short story or poem. This historical analysis investigates conceptions of response to literature in research with adults and college students. The dissertation problem derives from an apparent shift in emphasis from the text towards the reader in research on response to literature (Purves, 1985). The underlying assumption of this suggestion is that there are historically predominant research conceptions. This dissertation documents these ideas with adult and college readers' responses to literature. The procedure was first to establish foundation conceptions of "response" and "literature" from theoretical considerations of these terms. Next, studies derived from major bibliographies were examined in order to determine the general emphasis based on the research purpose, literary work, and response task. Predominant research conceptions of both "response" and "literature" were delineated by decades, from the first cited study in 1912. Results of the analysis concerned conceptions of both "literature" and "response". First, research conceptions of "literature" generally focused on print, rather than oral performance. In addition, there was a general research move from the use of meaningless syllables and fragments of poetry (1910-39); through the use of a diversity of genres such as newspaper articles, comprehension test items, and novels (1940-69); to a contemporary focus on short stories and poems (1970-89). Second, research conceptions of "response" supported the suggestion of a general shift from conceptions which focused on textual elements such as rhythm, sounds of language and literary merit (1920-39); through those which focused on aspects of the reader such as personality changes, preferences and developmental differences (1940-69) ; to those which emphasized elements of response itself such as process, stance, and context (1970-89). Possible reasons for the shifts in emphasis were explored in relation to general societal conditions and the changing image of the college student. From an educational perspective, the observed changes suggest a move towards empowerment of the learner in the classroom. This trend corresponds to the increasing pedagogical emphasis on holism and collaboration / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate