Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113).

Although scholars have long advocated the use of informational texts in the primary grades, gaps and inconsistencies in research have produced conflicting reports on how teachers used these texts in the primary curriculum, and how primary students dealt with them during instruction and on their own (e.g., Saul & Dieckman, 2005). Thus, to add to research on informational texts in the primary grades, the purpose of this study was to examine: (a) a first-grade teacher's use of science informational trade books (SITBs) in her classroom, (b) the ways students responded to her instruction, and (c) how students interacted with these texts. My study was guided by a sociocultural perspective (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978), providing me a lens to examine participants during naturally occurring social practices in the classroom, mediated by language and other symbolic tools. Data were collected by means of 28 observations, 6 semi-structured interviews, 21 unstructured interviews, and 26 documents over the course of 10 weeks. Three themes generated from the data to provide insight into the teacher's and students' practices and interactions with SITBs. First, the first-grade teacher used SITBs as teaching tools during guided conversations around the text to scaffold students' understanding of specialized vocabulary, science concepts, and text features. Her instruction with SITBs included shared reading lessons, interactive read-alouds and learning activities during two literacy/science units. However, there was limited use of SITBs during the rest of her reading program, in which she demonstrated a preference for narrative. Second, students responded to instruction by participating in guided conversations around the text, in which they used prior knowledge, shared ideas, and visual representations (e.g., illustrations, diagrams, labels, and captions) to actively make meaning of the text. Third, students interacted with SITBs on their own to make sense of science, in which they demonstrated their interest in reading the texts, formed connections to science, used reading strategies, and adjusted to the text type and variations of text complexity. The findings indicate the teacher's practices with SITBs were supportive of literacy and science learning for students at various levels of reading development. However, her inexperience with informational books and her preference for narrative demonstrates a need for training to assist her in providing guided and individualized reading instruction with SITBs, as well as provide students with full access to these texts in the classroom. Further, the teacher's overgeneralizations for science during instruction with SITBs indicates the need for training to strengthen her knowledge of science that would better prepare her to convey information and critically read information presented in these texts. Finally, the students' engagement with SITBs and their use of strategies to make sense of these texts on their own, indicates the first graders were motivated and capable readers of informational books.

The purpose of this study was to create a valid and reliable survey to measure third through fifth grade students' attitudes toward reading across three mediums: print, e-reader, and Internet. The theoretical framework pulls from self-determination theory and affective models to guide the development of a survey intended for use with intermediate elementary students. The Attitude Toward Reading Survey (ATRS) was developed and field-tested, revised, and field-tested again. Data analysis included confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha reliability, and cumulative logit modeling. The results indicate the survey is a reliable and valid tool for teachers to use. The ATRS could be strengthened from future field-testing with a larger sample across a more diverse population of students.

Black Mourning: Readings of Loss, Desire and Racial Identification explores a diverse archive of African American literary and cultural texts in order to reveal loss as a necessary condition of racial identification. To support this assertion, this study broaches a theoretical gap that persists between black literary and cultural studies and revisionist approaches to psychoanalytic theory. Using the lens of trauma theory, Black Mourning reframes cultural memory and black subjectivity in ways that supplant performances of racial authenticity with an affective politics. Black expressive culture and performance aesthetics undergird this critical model. Chapter One "Jean Toomer's Cane and the Erotics of Mourning" configures cultural memory in relation to the formation of modern blackness. Chapter Two "'Nobody Knows My Name': Ann Petry's The Street and Black Women’s Blues Protest" uses a blues aesthetic to access hidden texts of black female sexual trauma. Chapter Three "The Queerness of Blackness: Marlon Riggs's Black Is … Black Ain't" looks at embodied trauma as an a foundation for reimagining black collectivity. The fourth chapter "Archiving Blackness: Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Post-Soul Aesthetics" moves beyond fixed narratives of race to conceptualize innovative ways of archiving blackness. / text

This dissertation is a case study that explores how 8th grade former English language learners, or RFEP students, interacted with texts in their social studies class across a unit of study on World War II. This study is based on three assertions: we have a limited understanding of language and literacy among newly reclassified adolescent English language learners due to a shift in state language policy, examining students' interactions with texts in a secondary content classroom is a valuable perspective, and the decisions teachers make to meet the perceived needs of their students warrants examination. The primary source of data in this study was the text annotations students completed when reading the teacher adapted texts. Annotations included any underlining, circling, questioning or commenting on the texts. Annotations were analyzed for patterns across students and across texts. Analysis of texts for linguistic features and structures was completed using the Coh-Metrix (Graesser, McNamara & Kulikowich, 2011) text analysis tool. Analysis of teacher talk during whole class text annotations as well as interviews with teachers and students showed additional patterns. Three key findings emerged: the teacher is a designer or relevant, meaningful and comprehensible instruction, teacher modeling matters to RFEP students, the adapted texts were used as instructional tools to promote content learning. These findings suggest directions for future research and have implications for practice. A critical area for research is the selection and adaptation of content area texts. With the advent of the Common Core State Standards and their emphasis on primary source documents and complex texts, it is essential to explore which texts are used and how they are adapted to facilitate access to those texts. This study also indicates the possibility for the further use of text annotations as a primary source of data for research and to facilitate instructional decisions by the teacher.

Given current changes and trends in foreign language (FL) education (National Standards, waning interest in FL study), educators need to develop intellectually stimulating tasks to encourage personal, inter-/intrapersonal and cultural growth. Although many researchers postulate that fictional texts are a superior means to accomplish this goal (Swaffar, 1992; Shanahan, 1997; Einbeck, 2002), only few have experimented with using them as a basis for culture learning (Scott and Huntington, 2002) or measured their overall efficacy for FL learning. This study investigated the effectiveness of fictional media in the German intermediate FL classroom using a multi-faceted research design incorporating different data sets (questionnaires, student journals, and CMC chats), which underwent quantitative and/or qualitative analyses.The pre-posttest format for of three questionnaires assessed changes in learners' responses to FL attitude and motivation for study, course interest, the National Standards, perceptions about the intellectual content of fictional media, motivation, and enjoyment. Results showed that literature provides educational value beyond the level of language acquisition and encourages a multitude of learning dimensions.Students' CMC journals written about fictional media were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001) to ascertain changes of word usage in certain categories over the duration of the semester. A qualitative analysis using Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser 1992 & 1998) showed emergent changes and themes relevant for culture and language learning. In addition to the journals, learners' CMC chats were also analyzed qualitatively to investigate the social nature of L2 language use and its pedagogical implications (Vygotsky, 1986). Shifts in categories and the emergence of themes were attributed to the effect of Text content/Genre rather than Time, and learners' chat did not evidence co-constructivist/dialogic learning as first postulated.

The aim of this study has been to get a better knowledge and understanding of the way teachers are working with reading comprehension in the grades 1 and 2, which was done through description of 5 teachers way of working. The theoretical basis of this study grounds in the sociocultural perspective. I based my study on Vygotsky’s theory which claims that strategies transferred from adults to children through social interaction get internalised and then used independently. I have also made use of several theories that specifically deal with reading comprehension that allowed me to identify this area of teaching as a complex one, consisting of several elements. In order to understand a text on a deeper level a reader has to be able to infer, or read between the lines. In order to be able to develop their comprehension to this level pupils need to be educated in that. Methodologically this is a qualitative study based on interviews with five teachers, three of them work as teachers at the elementary school, and two – as teachers for pupils with special needs. All of the respondents work in three different schools in Stockholm area. The result of this study shows that almost all of the teachers interviewed work with different elements that reading comprehension consists of. Only one teacher works actively to give pupils an idea of reading comprehension on a deeper level.

Tiriamoji medžiaga. Šiame tyrime individualųjį tekstą reprezentuoja 600 sakinių imtis, parinkta iš mokslinio stiliaus filosofijos veikalų. Veikalus bandyta klasifikuoti pagal skirtingų žanrų tekstus. Statistiniam tyrimui pasirinkti filosofijos veikalai skirstomi į dvi grupes. Pirmąją grupę sudaro veikalai : „Būtis ir pasaulis: tyliojo gyvenimo fragmentai“ (1990), „Sietuvos: eseistikos rinktinė“ (1992), „Konservatoriaus išpažintys: 1988 – 1994 metų tekstai“ (1995); antrajai priklauso „Alfa ir omega: ontotopijos metmenys“ (1999), „Niekis ir esmas“ I tomas (2005), „Niekis ir esmas“ II tomas (2005). Darbo tikslas – aprašyti, kokio pobūdžio sakiniai (ilgi ar trumpi, vientisiniai, sujungiamieji, prijungiamieji, bejungtukiai, mišrieji) vartojami filosofo veikaluose ir kaip (ar) sakinio struktūra priklauso nuo teksto tipo. Atliekant tyrimą, siekta išsiaiškinti, ar nuo atmainos priklauso ir kalbos priemonių atranka bei jų išsidėstymas, ar minčių dėstymas išlaiko tą patį logiškumo principą, ar sakinių sandara tampa kondensuotesnė ar atvirkščiai – kalba ima laisvėti. Svarbu išsiaiškinti kiek gauti duomenys reprezentuoja mokslinį stilių, o kiek jie yra individualus, skiriasi tik mokslo publicistiniams tekstams būdingomis ypatybėmis. / A subject of performance destined philosopher patent individuality. There are saying that in Lithuania on that time is just one philosopher – Arvydas Šliogeris. Do not plumb in it how much is it right, but a spread of performance and discussing subjects no doubt very useful for community of philosophy education. Individual author style, usable idea and conception logic character commanding a chance to apply his performances to the academic investigation and aplenty philosophy subject par terminology do not let to blame the works of A.Šliogeris to the others functional styles. The analyzed material comprises of 600 sentence, randomly chosen from books, which are considered as philosophy texts. Works were tried to type in different genre of texts. For investigation were picked works of philosophy are dividing to two group. The first group was made of works: Būtis ir pasaulis: tyliojo gyvenimo fragmentai“ (1990), „Sietuvos: eseistikos rinktinė“ (1992), „Konservatoriaus išpažintys: 1988 – 1994 metų tekstai“ (1995); the second „Alfa ir omega: ontotopijos metmenys“ (1999), „Niekis ir esmas“ I t. (2005), „Niekis ir esmas“ t. II (2005). A object of work is to write what kind of character is sentences (long or short, simple sentences, coordinate, asyndetic ) are using in philosophers works and as sentence structure depends on text type. Very important to clarify how much got facts are representing scientific style and how much is individual, is just difference scientific sentences par... [to full text]

Jodey Castricano investigates the role of stories in structuring our social and cultural reality.

Magistro darbe, remiantis iš šešių interneto svetainių surinktais žurnalistų ir žurnalisčių straipsniais, analizuojama vyrų ir moterų kalba. Dviejų sukurtų tekstynų duomenys apima tekstus nuo 2002 m. iki 2009 m., o jų bendra apimtis – 3 177 706 žodžiai. Darbo tikslas – nustatyti žurnalistų vyrų ir moterų kalbos ypatybes publicistikos tekstuose. Tikslui pasiekti, buvo keliami šie uždaviniai: surinkti žurnalistų ir žurnalisčių straipsnių tekstynus; išsiaiškinti, kokios ypatybės būdingos sakytinei ir rašytinei vyrų bei moterų kalbai; išanalizuoti vyrų ir moterų kalbai būdingas ypatybes; ištirti lyčių kalbos skirtumus remiantis sukurto tekstyno duomenimis; išsiaiškinti, ar galima iš teksto bruožų įvardinti autoriaus lytį. Nustačius sakytinei ir rašytinei vyrų bei moterų kalbai būdingas ypatybes, publicistiniai tekstai tirti pagal 10 formaliosios kalbos, gramatinių ir leksinių ypatybių: žodingumą ir ilgumą, dažniausiai vartojamus žodžius ir kalbos dalis, tematiką, netikrumo ir abejonių, jausmų raišką, spalvų aprašymą, neiginių, deminutyvų vartoseną ir kitų žmonių citavimą. Atlikus žurnalistų ir žurnalisčių straipsnių analizę nustatyta, kad žurnalistų straipsniuose žodžių vidutinis ilgis yra šiek tiek didesnis, todėl tekstyno kūrimo metu jų straipsnių prireikė mažiau, o tai reiškia, kad vyrai rašo ilgesnius tekstus. Nors vidutinis žodžių ilgis moterų straipsniuose yra mažesnis, tačiau labai ilgų leksemų (19−25 raidžių) jos vartoja daugiau. Taigi trumpesnės apimties tekste jos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The language of men and women in media texts is analysed in this master thesis. The two created corpora include texts since 2002 to 2009 and they have 3 177 706 words. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the language of men and women in media texts. The following tasks were raised to achieve this aim: to collect men and women articles and create corpora, to find out what specific features of both spoken and written language of men and women are, to analyze the specific features of men and women language, to examine gender differences in language developed on the basis of corpus data and find out whether it is possible to understand the author's gender from the identified text features. Men and women media texts were investigated under 10 features of formal language, grammatical and lexical attributes: vocabulary and words longitude, commonly used words and part of speech, themes, uncertainty and doubts expression, feelings of resolution, colors expression, negatives, usage of diminutives and citations of other people. After analysis of men and women articles, it was identified that men use slightly longer words and men‘s articles are longer texts. Although the average length of words in articles by women is lower, they use more very long tokens (19−25 characters). Thus they use more complex structure of words in shorter texts. Women also use richer vocabulary as their type-token ratio index is higher. Women write more emotional articles and they use more interjections... [to full text]