Literary texts offer rich opportunities for language learning. However, can second language (L2) learners fully understand L2 literary texts? According to Bernhardt (2001):"the act of reading in a second language is extremely tricky -- is even trickier with literary texts that are inherently ambiguous, full of metaphor and intertextual relations to texts to which the readers have no access" (p.198). In other words, L2 readers are often poorly equipped grammatically, linguistically and culturally to cope with literary texts in which it might be difficult to recognize figurative language, to comprehend metaphors, to identify underlying cultural assumptions and above all to think critically while navigating those complexities. Therefore, during the reading process, L2 readers encounter gaps in the text which necessarily compel them to use whatever background knowledge they possess in order to create meaning. The purpose of this research is to see exactly how post-secondary L2 readers use their existing background knowledge to understand literary texts and what they do when confronted with text passages for which they lack such knowledge.

This thesis is an analysis of female prophecy as it is constituted, represented or performed in seventeenth-century texts. I consider both the way in which prophecy is socially constructed and the role of prophetic experience in the development of feminine subjectivity. I argue that interpreting prophecy within the context of psychopathology or feminism (to take two examples of critical practice) colludes in the early modern objectification of women's speech and somatic experience. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I argue that prophecy needs to be understood as a media event and as a site of discursive proliferation. In this study, I examine texts which participate in the explication of a prophetic event and interrogate their intentions and functions. I suggest that an inclusive reading of prophecy allows the critic to recuperate women's agency. My study of prophecy combines the seventeenth-century notion of prophecy as a category for diverse linguistic and bodily manifestations with an analysis of the rhetorical strategies of the prophetic text. In the course of this thesis I consider: 1. the work of various scholars who have attempted to explicate the relations between gender and radical religiosity; 2. how a comparison between hysteria and prophecy illuminates the primacy of psychopathology in the interpretation of seventeenth- and nineteenth-century women's experience; 3. the interplay between scriptural models of prophecy and early modern biblical exegesis; 4. the role of texts in (in)validating female bodily experience and 5. how seventeenth century antisectarian texts attempt to police the female creative imagination.

This study will look at fantasies of the mechanical body in a series of close readings of key modernist and contemporary texts. It will argue that these texts are sites of resistance or repression, in which unconscious and / or cultural narratives about the death drive have left their traces. Part One, Chapters 1-3, explores the links between war and fantasy, and between fantasy and gender. Chapter One looks at the art and writings of the Italian Futurists and English Vorticists, with the focus on Marinetti and Lewis, to consider how the rationalized bodies of the soldier and worker might be seen as the covert problems underpinning the fantasy, returning to it in the form of the repressed. Chapter Two concerns the writings of Ernst Jünger, where war, modern labour, the incursion of danger into everyday life, and photography are seen to provide signs of the emergence of the Typus, an organic construction, who has learnt to see himself as devoid of feeling, turning the death drive into the will to power in acts of aggression, and for whom the function of the eye is the same as that of the weapon. Chapter Three investigates the problem of war-shock and the shocks of cinema in First World War film footage of shellshocked soldiers, Lang's Metropolis, and Chaplin's Modern Times. It shows how discourses of hysteria, feminization and commodity relations form the common ground between the cultural reception of both shelishock and cinema, and how film-makers and critics responded to both sets of debates. Part Two, Chapters 4-5, explores the links between the machine, the maternal body and the death drive in the Terminator and Alien films, and considers the question of affect, mourning, and identification in Cronenberg's Crash.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This thesis offers an exploration of how one brings a Tibetan sacred text to being - and to voice - in the unfamiliar, and perhaps unlikely, landscape of Northern California. Through 16 months' fieldwork with a Nyingma Buddhist community based in Berkeley, California I ask how the production of the sacred is undertaken here by American volunteers who are largely neophytes to Tibetan Buddhism. Against a backdrop of the history of Tibetan textual production - largely populated by masters, monastics, and artisans - I explore what kind of work (both physical and imaginative) American volunteers must undertake in order to render themselves effective creators of the sacred in this American industrial setting. Drawing on current research that explores the adaptive capacities of Tibetan Buddhist traditional practices, I will offer a new facet to this flexibility through an investigation of the ways these texts and their surrounding practices are creatively deployed to meet the needs of their American makers. In this work I follow the sacred objects through their entangled physical and social creation in the various branches of this California community, from the construction of spaces ripe for sacred work, through fundraising, printing, and finally to the distribution of texts to the Tibetan monastic community in Bodh Gaya, India. In the conclusion I return to the question of how an American volunteer becomes an effective creator of a Tibetan Buddhist sacred text in Berkeley California, contributing a unique and rich case to the study of diasporic Tibetan text production. Ultimately, I will demonstrate that the very practice of creating and deploying Tibetan sacred texts offers a frame through which volunteers come to re-interpret and re-shape their spatial and temporal landscape. This dissertation seeks to bridge often disparate fields of study, allowing encounters between (and contributions to) such bodies of work as: the anthropological study of making, craft, and innovation; media and religious practice; the affective temporality of sacred relics; and the cross-culturally unique, agentive qualities of books.

[Abstract]: Designing, developing and delivering effective technical education for diverse groups of adult learners is important for both the learners and the future of the technical discipline. The many nuances associated with adult learners, combined with the challenges associated with exploring technically complex topics, make effective technical education difficult to achieve. An understanding of adult learners and teaching, coupled with a robustdevelopment framework can help produce effective teaching strategies and technical texts for diverse groups of adult learners.A literature review focusing on current research regarding adult learners was conducted to investigate some of the nuances of the adult learner. Specifically, thedifferences between adult learning and child learning were explored which lead to research on the role of experience in learning, the different approaches adult students typically take to learning, and the likely diversity in preferred learning styles within groups of adult learners.The literature review also investigated the role of the teacher in adult education, focusing on the need for learning facilitation in adult education. The desirable characteristics of teachers of adults were also investigated leading to an appreciation of the attitudes, attributes and approaches that teachers can take to enhance the learning experience for adults.A conceptual framework for the development and delivery of adult education courses was proposed and explained. The framework was based on established complexproblem solving principles and covered the entire lifecycle of an adult education course fromthe identification of a need for a course through to its delivery (and revision). The framework was based on a top-down approach to educational design. This was articulatedusing a VEE diagram that explained how the lifecycle stages (decision, design, development,and delivery) could build upon one another through concepts such as traceability, ongoingverification and feedback. The principles of adult learning and teaching were integrated intothe framework via the activities associated with the design, development and delivery of courses.The framework, and the information contained in the literature review, has been applied to the development of three different technical courses for three different groups of adult learners. As a result of the application of the framework and the development of thesecourses, a number of technical texts has been written and published to support the courses.The adaptability and success of the framework are evidenced by the ongoing and expanded adoption of the courses to support adult education, the publication record being established by the texts, and the positive student and peer review of the adult teaching strategiesemployed in those courses.It is concluded that the framework and the analyses arising from the literaturereview have the potential to be of value and interest to other teachers responsible for thedesign, development and/or delivery of adult education in technical fields.

This is an essay in the field of English literature didactics. It argues for the use of authentic texts in literacy acquisition. Specifically, the aim of this essay is to justify the use of the novel Push in an English language classroom in Sweden by presenting a literature lesson plan and validating it by three intrerview responses from teachers at a senior high school. I believe students may find the theme of the novel engaging and motivating. The lesson plan is outlined as a student writing project. In this writing project, students will practice reading, speaking and writing skills. The project also includes peer- response which is an activity mentioned in the Englsih 5 syllabus. The lesson plan aims to achieve the learning outcomes of what the Swedish curriculum and syllabus state. The project is validated by a questionnaire, sent by e-mail to teachers at a senior high school in Gävle, regarding the relevance of the proposed lesson plan. Since only three teachers found it possible to participate this essay should be considerate as a pilot case study. However their answers and my analysis provide practical teaching guidelines and indicate the relevance of this particular lesson plan.

Several researches asserts that as teachers are responsible for the content of teaching and by formulating teaching "Why, ""How" and "What", that will also give signals to students about what is important knowledge. This essay addresses the difficulties teachers may face in terms of self-disclosure student texts and awareness of this in the design of teaching and writing tasks. Research shows that self-disclosure and self-therapy student texts exist and that teachers are experiencing a difficulty with regard to assessment and treatment. Through qualitative interviews examined seven teachers' design of any, to the student, self-disclosure information from curriculum and policy documents. Another purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which teachers, through the information they give to their pupils, may affect the texts students submit.   It turns out that the respondents are united in the belief that they, through their data, may affect the texts they receive from their students when they are the ones that control the content of teaching, and they agree that the curricula gives them a great choice for design data. The survey shows that the perception of the curriculum that will open up for self-disclosure texts differ as some of the respondents believe that the curriculum is very much about the students way to express feelings and opinions, while others believe that they may try to package this data in another purpose or exercise. This essay shows that there are different approaches on self-disclosure students texts, some encouraging these texts and others are trying to stay more neutral in the choice of writing topics.

While much research has separately considered informational texts and students who struggle with reading, few studies have looked at how these two interact together and what the possible benefits might be. This study provides descriptive information about the perceptions of informational texts from three striving readers. Each student was interviewed and additional data were collected about the students’ literacy environments from their parents, teachers, and classrooms. Results showed that the three students spoke positively about informational texts and that two of the most attractive qualities are interesting material and making meaning from pictures. Within their classrooms, the three students were exposed to a considerable number of informational texts. While the professional literature advocates the use of informational texts for the benefit of boys, it is interesting to note that the two girls in this study chose to read a considerable number of informational texts. It is concluded that informational texts appealed to the three striving reader study participants. Ideas for helping parents and teachers use informational texts with striving readers are presented.

While much research has separately considered informational texts and students who struggle with reading, few studies have looked at how these two interact together and what the possible benefits might be. This study provides descriptive information about the perceptions of informational texts from three striving readers. Each student was interviewed and additional data were collected about the students’ literacy environments from their parents, teachers, and classrooms. Results showed that the three students spoke positively about informational texts and that two of the most attractive qualities are interesting material and making meaning from pictures. Within their classrooms, the three students were exposed to a considerable number of informational texts. While the professional literature advocates the use of informational texts for the benefit of boys, it is interesting to note that the two girls in this study chose to read a considerable number of informational texts. It is concluded that informational texts appealed to the three striving reader study participants. Ideas for helping parents and teachers use informational texts with striving readers are presented.