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Research papers on the relationship between oral and written language include: "Une distinction bien fragile: oral/ecrit" ("A Fragile Distinction: Oral/Written") (Francoise Gadet); "Oral et ecrit dans les representations des enseignants et dans les pratiques quotidiennes de la classe de francais" ("Oral and Written Language in Teachers' Presentations and in Daily Practice in the French Class") (Jean-Francois de Pietro, Martine Wirthner); "La lecture a d'autres: un oral public a partir de l'ecrit" ("Reading to Others: Public Speaking Based on Written Language") (Joaquim Dolz, Janine Dufour, Sylvie Haller, Bernard Schneuwly); "Discours oraux--discourse ecrits: quelles relations...au visuel?" ("Oral Discourse--Written Discourse: What Relationship...To the Visual?") (Alain Brossard);"Acces au langage et acces au recit" ("Access to Language and Access to Narrative") (Philippe Meirieu); "Approche linguistique de l'illettrisme" ("Linguistic Approach to Illiteracy") (Dominique Morcrette); "Etude linguistique du discours narratif sur images d'adultes illettres" ("Linguistic Study of Narrative Discourse Based on Pictures in Illiterate Adults") (Frederique Brin); "Interactions verbales en acces a la litteratie" ("Verbal Interactions in Literacy Learning") (J.-M. Oderic Delefosse); "Conscience linguistique et traitement de l'information ecrite" ("Linguistic Consciousness and Treatment of Written Information") (Jean Emile Gombert, Clara Martinot, Isabelle Nocus); "Representations sur les pratiques sociales de l'ecrit et apprentissage de la lecture" ("Notes on Social Practice Surrounding Writing and the Learning of Reading") (Genevieve de Weck, Nathalie Niederberger); "Debusquer l'auteur d'un texte derriere l'absence d'ecrit" ("Understanding the Concept of Author") (Francoise Cornaz); "Les enigmes d'un acces au langage ecrit bloque chez un enfant migrant" ("Enigmas of Blocked Access to Written Language in a Migrant Child") (Francine Rosenbaum, Stephanie Evard); and "De l'agir a l'ecrit chez les jeunes adolescents en institution: un regard pluridisciplinaire" ("From Acted Out to Written Out Among Institutionalized Adolescents: An interdisciplinary Approach") (Jean-Marie Villat, Raymond B. Traube, Daniele Gabus, Caroline Bertoldo, Nicole Kraenbuhl). Individual articles contain references. (MSE)

This paper describes an interdisciplinary 9-unit course at Pasadena (California) City College, entitled the "American Cultures Block Program." The block is divided into three distinct sections: (1) "United States History from 1865 to the Present"; (2) "Humanities Through the Arts"; and (3) "Introduction to Literature," a hybrid literature and composition course. The goal of the course is to show the connections among history, literature, music, and the arts, and the connections and common ground of the experiences of the diverse cultural groups in the United States. Specific topics and texts are explored, along with concerns related to the course composition. (EH)

As part of a larger ethnographic project addressing the construction of gender through literacy, this study focused on understanding how the children in one writing process classroom expressed their social selves in their written compositions, as well as how those compositions were engineered within the social dynamics of the classroom. The study considered written narratives, their nature, content, and the processes of their creation, in order to illuminate gendered patterns and the relationship among gender, ethnicity, culture, and social class. A participant observer conducted the study by spending 2.5-hour reading/writing blocks on one to three mornings each week during two consecutive school years in a school located in a poor, Latino, working-class neighborhood. Most of the children were immigrants, the classroom was Spanish-English bilingual, and all students were limited in their English proficiency. Data were gathered from 301 student-created books and analysis of their authorship, topics, characters, and illustrations. The analysis found that students struggled to understand their social identities through their narrative writing, that they wrote themselves into a range of possible existences, and that they displayed their understanding of the possibilities that were available to them, depending in part on their gender and social class. In general students did not voluntarily cross gendered borders in their writing, and when they did, their crossings were not equilateral: girls were more likely to move into territory that was defined by boys than vice versa. Appendices contain a list of topics of student-authored books and titles of classroom-published books in English and Spanish. (Contains 36 references.) (JB)

Current theory posits that comprehension and meaning involve not only text but also what the reader brings to the text and the contextual elements of the reading. A study investigated how eight students in grade 9 read and created meaning from short story assignments in their English classrooms. Concurrent think-aloud protocols from four short story readings were the primary data source, and these were supplemented by classroom observations and three interviews. The teacher also participated in three interviews. Results indicated that students used their experiences with written texts, personal texts, and sociocultural texts to create meaning for assignments given in this classroom context. These texts formed the basis of the coding system and included some overlapping codes for those responses drawing upon several textualizations. Classroom influences in the form of intertextual substances and processes related to which texts readers selected and used in their short story readings. In addition to these classroom elements, individual reading styles also were represented in the protocols. Findings suggest that communities, whether classroom, social, or cultural, influence not only the construction of texts but also how those texts are used by members of these groups to create meaning. (Contains 16 references.) (RS)

A study examined the effects of an integrated reading/writing curriculum on the narrative writing of students in general education eighth-grade classrooms. Subjects, 93 students (including 10 with learning disabilities) from middle to upper-middle socioeconomic backgrounds at a suburban middle school in western Oregon, were administered narrative writing probes pre- and post-intervention to assess students' ability to plan, organize, and write stories for topic prompts. Students were enrolled in four sections taught by two teachers; students from one teacher's classes served as the experimental group and the other teacher's classes participated in the control condition. Instructional materials included 10 short stories. The integrated reading and writing curriculum was designed in three interdependent phases: learning narrative text structure; learning a writing process; and learning to generate stories. Students in the control condition received instruction and practice on narrative text comprehension. Results indicated that students in the experimental group significantly outperformed students in the control group--their stories contained more fully developed ideas, content, settings, characters, and attempts to solve the central problem than students in the control classrooms. Results also indicated that all students in the integrated condition benefitted from the curriculum, although students continued to have difficulty generating well-developed stories. Findings suggest the potential value of investing in curriculum development that equips learners with transferrable and maintainable knowledge. (Two tables of data are included; 22 references are attached.) (RS)

Noting that magazines, as part of the broader category 'media,' are a powerful socialization force, a study investigated the socialization messages in teen magazines by examining their short stories for stereotypical portrayals. All fiction stories were analyzed for the years 1987-1991 in "Seventeen" and "Teen" magazines. The total number of stories was 104. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) teen-magazine fiction portrays teen protagonists as dependent rather than independent; and (2) teen magazine fiction segregates occupations stereotypically by gender. Previous studies have shown that high school students still stereotype occupations and career choices. Both hypotheses were supported. Through the stories, a teenage girl learns that male-female relationships are more important than just about anything else; that she is not supposed to act or be agressive or solve problems (others will do that for her); and that there really are male and female professions. (One table of data is included, and 25 references are attached.) (NH)

A short story assignment incorporates creative writing into the syllabus of a freshman composition class, while erasing the misconception that creative writing is something a "regular" student cannot do. Students write a rough draft both of a personal experience essay and of a short story. Based on peer-reviews of both, students choose one of the rough drafts to revise, and this revised paper represents their grade for the unit. Both rough drafts must be handed in with the revised paper--thus, the short story is not optional, yet students who are not comfortable with writing short fiction do not feel penalized in the grade book. Students are encouraged to write "short" short stories (1,000 to 1,500 words), and the use of shorter short stories as class readings helps to encourage this. Students' use of detail and vivid language improves, both in their fiction and nonfiction writing. (SR)

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a 20th century Russian linguist and literacy critic, texts represent battlegrounds for competing voices, including the author's, the narrator's, and the characters'. This concept of "heteroglossia" can be applied to a short story such as Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," about the--as it turns out, hallucinatory--escape from execution of a Southern sympathizer named Peyton Farquhar during the Civil War. College students were asked to identify the various voices they heard in the text, according to Bakhtin's scheme. Bierce's story lends itself well to such a task, since it is divided into three sections, each of which has a distinctive predominant voice. In the first section, the dominant voice is that of the formal, military establishment, while in the third section, it is desperate and unreliable, reflecting Farquhar's racing thoughts and frantic clinging to life, while at the same time hinting at something dreamlike and unreal. Less easy to identify is the voice prevalent in the second section which expresses the romanticized view of military life that led Farquhar to become involved in the war to begin with. The juxtaposition of the three distinctive voices gives the story the added dimension of an indictment of a romanticized view of war. Further, the voices in the story are readily recognizable, and students can extend their observations about competing voices to include thematic concerns. A more complex use of Bakhtin's theory developed through the discussion as students began to identify the social forces behind the voices they identified. The film version of the story is also interesting because, while it contains almost no spoken dialogue, it is still possible to identify voices. Using the film in conjunction with the story can be instructive. Both versions can be connected to Bakhtin's ideas, thus highlighting a dimension of the story that is certainly there but not often emphasized. (HB)

An exploratory study examined the relationship between adolescents' stance ("monologic" versus "dialogic") and several issues, including the degree to which adolescents explore tensions and contradictions in their writing and the nature of such tensions as related to gender and/or school attitudes. For the purposes of the study, "monologic" was defined as a rhetorical perspective or stance represented by an acceptance of a single version of reality while a "dialogic" perspective entails entertaining multiple, competing versions of reality. Subjects, 15 tenth-grade students in a suburban high school outside a large midwestern city, were selected based on their perceived differences in attitudes towards gender and school. Subjects completed questionnaires, read two short stories chosen for their portrayal of attitudes toward school and gender, and completed a variety of writing activities (including a short story) based on the stories. Interview transcripts, writings, and survey data for five of the subjects were subjectively analyzed and discussed by three judges to determine consistent patterns of their adopted stance and the types of tensions/contradictions. Results indicated that the two students who adopted a monologic orientation were relatively good students but were stuck in relatively static, absolutist versions of reality, and that two of the three students who adopted a dialogic perspective were not outstanding students yet were more likely to adopt multiple perspectives both in their story writing and responses. Findings suggest teachers need to employ activities that foster a more dialogic stance. (Two figures of data are included; 23 references are attached.) (RS)