Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This is a study of the social content of 50 Readers used in the education of young American students during the Reconstruction Era, 1863-1877. Analyses of social content from every tenth page of text reveal themes that emerge from a framework of nine categories-character, religion, nature, nation, other cultures, family, education, gender/class, adventure/fantasy-that define the nation. In addition to these analyses, the study presents one Reader in its entirety and two Readers written especially for the freedmen. Plentiful selections from the Readers allow users of the study to arrive at their own conclusions about how well or how poorly the Reconstruction-era Readers were guiding future directions. The fundamental finding is that nineteenth-century Americans believed that moral character was the bedrock of the nation and that it needed to be fostered in the young. / 2031-01-02

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to make a thorough investigation of the state-adopted readers for the first and second grades to determine if they have literary qualities that would encourage the reading and appreciation of good literature.

The purpose of this study is to set up criteria for judging the mechanical features and the content of fourth-grade readers and to determine if the fifteen fourth-grade readers of this study fit these criteria.

The purpose of this study is to set up criteria for judging the mechanical features and content of sixth-grade readers and to determine whether or not the fourteen sixth-grade readers of this study fit these criteria.

This project resulted in the creation of a prototype for a new book series entitled Instructional Readers that will be linguistically engineered to assist English-language learners in acquiring academic and content-based vocabulary in the sciences. The development of the prototype represented a process of trial and error, with decisions firmly grounded in extensive research concerning linguistic features that assist vocabulary growth while reading. The end result, the prototype entitled Cellular Transport, reflects the author's best attempt to combine these features. The project write-up details the steps used in writing the prototype to aid in the creation of similar instructional readers in the future.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / Imagery may be defined as a picture seen in one's mind. It is the ability to create pictures, to hear sounds, to smell odors, to taste, and to feel in one's mind as one reads. All these factors contribute to the varying degrees of mental imagery possessed by different individuals. It may be assumed that people visualize when they read. A writer may give a description of a person or a place, and the reader can recreate the scene in his own mind. The reader's picture may be clear or it may be vague. However, since every individual is different the same sentence or paragraph may appear differently to the subjects being tested. [TRUNCATED]

Plainsong or Polyphony? Australian Award Winning Novels of the 1990s for Adolescent Readers. Using a musical metaphor of plainsong (to allude to monophonic sameness) and polyphony (to allude to multiphonic difference) this thesis seeks evidence of similarity (plainsong) or difference (polyphony). The texts considered are judged to have both literary merit and to meet the particular needs of Australian adolescent readers. Adult concerns about the suitability of particular Young Adult (YA) novels imply that there is an agreed archetype for this genre; an implication that this thesis explores using variety of critical perspectives, chiefly Narrative Theory, Reader Theory, Althusser’s concept of the hail and the work of Pecheux. Bakhtin(1981) applied the musical metaphor of polyphony to describe the novel as a genre in which an author orchestrates its themes through ‘the social diversity of speech types’ and ‘the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions’ (p. 263). This study considers both polyphony and its opposite, plainsong, in its inquiry into two aspects of individual authorial voices. The first relates to the authors’ representations of adolescence as portrayed through their protagonist[s]; the second to the authors’ beliefs about their adolescent readers as reflected in the various ways each author tries to attract and engage their audience. This study finds that whilst patterns of similarity exist in the texts, these patterns shift when the novels are viewed from different critical perspectives. This thesis demonstrates that whilst the authors appear to share similar ideas about adolescence, they have different perceptions about what they can and cannot do in novels addressed to adolescent readers.

The Future Relationship of Print and E-Readers was based on reviewing print formats as they have been, are becoming and could be in the future. This research focused on people's experience with e-readers, tablets, smartphones and laptops. Examining print includes how advertising is processed in different formats. The primary research for this study was done through an electronic survey, after obtaining IRB approval. The results are displayed through different charts and graphs, showcasing the different statistics. There was some cross tabulation as well. In the future, it appears that both mediums could prove themselves valid if they are willing to present themselves as two unique formats that are also able to provide unity to an overall product brand image as well as internal advertising. In the future, the public will be more aware of the different uses of these formats while increasingly using them. Advertising will parallel this trend by increasing as companies grow in utilizing this format to communicate with the public. / text