Research in English: Research Briefs.

10-second review: Teachers’ questions. Response to literature. Pre-reading activity.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” RL Larson and A Bechan. Research in the Teaching of English (December 1992), 446-465.

Teachers’ questions. Found that participation in literary discussion groups did not significantly affect fourth-grade students’ critical thinking performance, reading comprehension or attitude toward reading. A qualitative analysis of questions revealed that all but one treatment-group teacher asked predominantly lower level questions. CF Schulhauser. P. 449. 1991. [Comment: Implication is that asking higher level questions might improve fourth-grade students’ critical thinking, comprehension and attitude toward reading. RayS.]

Response to Literature: Only five 10^th-grade students. Two responded to both real situations and literature with absolutest interpretations of both. Two responded to both real situations and literature with multiple, competing versions of both.  R Beach. P. 449. 1991. [Comment: If students respond to reality with locked-in opinions, they will respond similarly to literature. If students respond with multiple interpretations of real situations, they will do the same with literature. Only five students, but worth thinking about. RayS.]

Pre-reading Activity. Found that when middle school students wrote about relevant personal experiences before reading on the same topic, they enjoyed and comprehended the text more, were on-task more often, offered more sophisticated responses to the text and liked the text more. LS Hammon, et al. p. 450. 1991. [Comment: Writing about personal experiences on a topic produces better results with reading something on the same topic. Interesting. The same thing might be true when writing about nonfiction topics. RayS.]