Difficult Text Research Articles

Proofreading in Young and Older Adults: The Effect of Error Category and Comprehension Difficulty.

Proofreading text relies on stored knowledge, language processing, and attentional resources. Age differentially affects these constituent abilities: while older adults maintain word knowledge and most aspects of language comprehension, language production and attention capacity are impaired with age. Research with young adults demonstrates that proofreading is more attentionally-demanding for contextual errors which require integration across multiple words compared to noncontextual errors which occur within a single word. Proofreading is also more attentionally-demanding for text which is more difficult to comprehend compared to easier text. Older adults may therefore be impaired at aspects of proofreading which require production, contextual errors, or more difficult text. The current study tested these possibilities using a naturalistic proofreading task. Twenty-four young and 24 older adults proofread noncontextual (spelling) and contextual (grammar or meaning) errors in passages that were easier or more difficult to comprehend. Older adults were preserved at proofreading spelling errors, but were impaired relative to young adults when proofreading grammar or meaning errors, especially for difficult passages. Additionally, older adults were relatively spared at detecting errors compared to correcting spelling errors, in keeping with previous research. Age differences were not attributable to individual differences in vocabulary knowledge or self-reported spelling ability.

‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ or ‘What’s a feminist practical theologian doing amongst a bunch of distinguished philosophers?’ A riff on Professor Joe Margolis’ paper

Rather than offer a detailed or close reading of Margolis’ paper, I ‘riff’ on some key motifs and themes from his paper from the perspective of a feminist practical theologian. I highlight affective and moral dimensions of the experience of engaging with difference, as exemplified in my own experience as a non-philosopher of engaging with a difficult philosophical text, before going on to nuance and add depth to the notion of religious diversity via multidimensional models of faith. I call on feminist and ordinary believers’ approaches to inter-religious encounter to illuminate my central concern, namely to root philosophical discourse on pluralism within lived experience, particularly the lived experience of women of faith.

LA COMPRÉHENSION DES TEXTES EN FRANÇAIS LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE : QUELLES DIFFICULTÉS

This research aims to determine the factors which make reading texts difficult to understand for students who learn French as a foreign language. The research was carried out in French Reading Comprehension Lessons and it involved 23 first year students of Program in Teaching French as a Foreign Language, studying at Anadolu University, Faculty of Education. A four sectioned survey, prepared by Lin (2002), was used as a data collection tool and there were multiple-choice sentences for each section. The survey contains three general categories which are thought to cause problems for reading comprehension as grammatical, contextual and sociocultural. To analyze the obtained data, the frequency distribution analysis was applied. The data obtained from the first part of the survey showed that the most important factor that makes understanding difficult texts is unknown words. It was also found that a complicated syntax and content caused problems. Responses to the second part of the questionnaire show that different meanings of words in texts, in which sense they are used, content of the text, and the idioms used, also cause problems. The third part showed that poor performance in reading comprehension and annoying context makes learning difficult and causes anxiety. From the data collected in the last part of the survey, we can say that a simple syntax facilitates comprehension of texts and phrases. At the same time, it was found that the socio-cultural background and having no unknown words in the text are factors that facilitate understanding.

The Frøyhov inscription and early Germanic *ing-

Abstract The bronze figurine from Frøyhov bears a short and difficult early runic text which seems to represent some sort of name. First published in the late nineteenth century, the inscription may most regularly be interpreted as Inga(n)da, a form which features the early Germanic onomastic element *ing‑. Germanic *ingseems best to be etymologised as a reflex of IE *h2neḱ-/h2nenḱ- ‘reach, attain’ and the Frøyhov form taken either to be a maker’s inscription or a theonym, the figurine itself clearly representing a religious expression.

Difficult Knowledge and the English Classroom: A Catholic Framework Using Cormac McCarthy's The Road

In this article, the authors explore the generative possibilities of risk-taking in the Catholic school English classroom. They associate pedagogical risk with what Deborah Britzman (1998) has called “difficult knowledge”—content that causes students to consider social trauma. Incorporating difficult knowledge meaningfully requires English teachers to take significant pedagogical risks, especially in the Catholic school classroom. Drawing on critical theology and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) as a difficult text, the authors employ a case study looking at how the traumatic difficulty of the novel could be fruitfully taught at a Catholic school. How might students reckon with The Road in a way that recognizes the terrible difficulty of its subjects? How might this difficulty help them to better understand their schools, their communities, and themselves? In engaging these questions, the authors provide new possibilities for class discussion, student engagement, and assessment.

Should We Be Afraid of Simple Messages? The Effects of Text Difficulty and Illustrations in People With Low or High Health Literacy

It is often recommended that health information should be simplified for people with low health literacy. However, little is known about whether messages adapted to low health literacy audiences are also effective for people with high health literacy, or whether simple messages are counterproductive in this group. Using a two (illustrated vs. text-only) by two (nondifficult vs. difficult text) between-subjects design, we test whether older adults with low (n = 279) versus high health literacy (n = 280) respond differently to colorectal cancer screening messages. Results showed that both health literacy groups recalled information best when the text was nondifficult. Reduced text difficulty did not lead to negative attitudes or less intention to have screening among people with high health literacy. Benefits of illustrations, in terms of improved recall and attitudes, were only found in people with low health literacy who were exposed to difficult texts. This was not found for people with high health literacy. In terms of informed decisions, nondifficult and illustrated messages resulted in the best informed decisions in the low health literacy group, whereas the high health literacy group benefited from nondifficult text in general, regardless of illustrations. Our findings imply that materials adapted to lower health literacy groups can also be used for a more general audience, as they do not deter people with high health literacy.

Sinifying Joyce: Appraising Second-Language Confucian Readers’ Constructions of Meaning in Ulysses

This paper explores how Chinese students construct the meaning of Joyce’s Ulysses . Second-language learners are known to use reading strategies with difficult texts such as Ulysses . This study of 157 undergraduate Chinese nonspecialists who read parts of Ulysses in an English literature general education course explores how Confucian values shape Chinese readers’ responses to Ulysses , in both reading strategies and content areas. Survey data was collected using a 4-point Likert scale. Qualitative data was gathered using six appraisal terms. Student reflections were analysed using Corpus Tool. Results indicate the primacy of culture in shaping individual readings. Second-language learners use metacritical reading strategies in making sense of this difficult text. However, the inclusion of culturally challenging material, and complex interiority and narrative moved these proficient second-language readers beyond their usual concerns with accuracy of translation and synthetic overviews of complex plot and character detail, towards literary reading. The challenges of Ulysses as a text induced appreciation of unreliability in narration, postmodern theories of meaning, and the disjunctures and discontinuities of the self, expressed in interior monologues, and disqualified in the social performance of identity.

To space or not space? Interword spacing effects on Chinese children's reading materials

This study investigated different Chinese on-screen text layouts to see if they improved the reading speed and comprehension of Taiwanese children. A number of different experimental treatments were used. These were: interword spacing (unspaced, semi-spaced and fully-spaced), text difficulty (easy and difficult) and text direction (vertical and horizontal). The experiment involved 84 children aged between 10 and 11 years old. In the experiment the children were asked to read articles. The time they took to read these articles was recorded. The children also partook in comprehension tests to determine how much they had understood about the articles they had read. The results showed that horizontal text was read more quickly than vertical text and was better comprehended. The results also showed that fully-spaced difficult text was read more quickly than semi-spaced difficult text, and unspaced difficult text was also better comprehended.

Difficult texts

The biblical accounts of seeing (and hearing) God are mixed in kind, but the clear assumption of most traditions is that no one can, in fact, see God. There was consistency in this respect with the results of a recent survey of Winchester churchgoers’ perceptions of God, which also produced one or two surprises. Seeing (and hearing) God is a matter of interpretation, and has much in common with signs and analogies.

Role of text and student characteristics in real‐time reading processes across the primary grades

Although much is known about beginning readers using behavioural measures, real‐time processes are still less clear. The present study examined eye movements (skipping rate, gaze, look back and second‐pass duration) as a function of text‐related (difficulty and word class) and student‐related characteristics (word decoding, reading comprehension, short term and working memory). Twenty‐four third and 20 fifth graders read a relatively easy (below grade level) and more difficult text (at grade level). The results showed that skipping rate mainly relied on text characteristics and a three‐way interaction of grade, text difficulty and word class. Gaze durations depended mostly on student characteristics. Results on look backs showed more and longer look backs in difficult texts. Finally, second‐pass duration mostly relied on grade level. To conclude, this study shows that both student and text characteristics should be taken into account when studying online text reading development.

“If I point, do they look?”: The impact of attention–orientation strategies on text exploration during shared book reading

The current study examined the effect of pointing to the words and using highlighted text by examining eye movements when children in preschool, Grade 1 and 2 were read storybooks of two levels of difficulty. For all children, pointing to and highlighting the text was observed to increase the amount of time and number of fixations on the printed text than when there was no intervention. Furthermore, with difficult text, an increased amount of time and number of fixations was observed when the text was pointed to than when it was highlighted. For preschoolers, even with the increased attention on the text from pointing to and highlighting the words, the fixations did not match the narration. First and second graders, with the difficult book, made more matching fixations both when the printed text was pointed to and highlighted than when no intervention was done. Additionally, more matching fixations were made when the printed text was highlighted than when pointed to. Future research is required to examine the effects of attention-orienting strategies on reading related outcomes.

Building BRIDGES

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. history content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from second- to fourth-grade levels. Half of the students received special education services, and half of the students were English language learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn meanings of academic words, and identify cause-and-effect relationships. They used easy levels of history text and then bridged into more difficult text accounts of the same events. Results showed gains in performance across each cycle in each reading component. Comparisons between students in the intervention and their typically developing peers showed stronger gains for intervention students in vocabulary and comprehension strategies. Students with disabilities who received instruction in causes and effects of historical events scored similarly to typical readers in their general education history classes.

What Research Says About Text Complexity and Learning to Read

AbstractThe CCSS framework indicates more difficult texts are to be used with students. However, the rationale for increasing text difficulty, decreasing text difficulty, is unsupported by the research that shows texts have been increasing in difficulty for at least 50 years. Oral reading accuracy is a traditional method of estimating text difficulty. For 70 years oral reading accuracy of at least 95% accuracy has been the accepted standard. The research available suggest that this traditional level of accuracy is supported by the evidence as optimal for developing reading proficiency.

Effects of Feedforward Video Self-Modelling on Reading Fluency and Comprehension

Being able to read at a fluent rate confers many advantages on an individual in both educational and wider social contexts throughout life. To be a fluent reader means that the individual can sustain high accuracy while reading at a rate appropriate to the material and the setting, and implies the development of automaticity in the cognitive processes involved in reading. Fluency has not, however, been the focus of much research. In this study, an observational learning technique — feedforward video self-modelling (FFVSM) — was used to improve children's reading fluency. Eleven primary (elementary) school children aged between 72 and 108 months, four girls and seven boys, viewed edited video footage of themselves seemingly reading a difficult text at a fluent rate six times over a 2-week period. Reading performance (accuracy, comprehension and rate) was measured at pre- and post-test using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, and fluency and comprehension scores were measured across the intervention period using the Science Research Associates Reading Laboratory (SRA) graded reading texts. The results showed that the majority of the children improved their reading fluency, comprehension and accuracy as well as reader self-perception (a proxy measure of self-efficacy). These positive results suggest that FFVSM could be a rapid, cost-effective intervention to be used within educational settings to promote fluent reading.

‘What he did for me’: David's Warning about Joab in 1 Kings 2.5

This article argues that David orders Solomon in 1 Kgs 2.5–6 to kill Joab because of Joab's pattern of assassinating rivals in order to benefit his master. David's point in 2.5 is that Joab killed Abner and Amasa, two potential enemies of David, without warning, and since Joab supported Solomon's brother's claim to the throne, Solomon might be his next victim. The Septuagint and the Lucianic recension have altered the more difficult text that appears in the Masoretic text in order to make it seem as if Joab and harmed David, and so provide a legal and religious basis for David and Solomon's conspiracy to kill Joab not present in the original text.

Didactique du français langue étrangère par la pratique théâtrale éd. par Christophe Alix, et al

origins of the rules, to language teachers in search of more effective and palatable ways of presenting these rules to students, and to advanced students themselves. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis A. Kate Miller Methods and Materials edited by Frédérique Grim Alix, Christophe, Dominique Lagorgette, et Ève-Marie Rollinat-Levasseur, éd. Didactique du français langue étrangère par la pratique théâtrale. Chambéry: PU de Savoie, 2013. ISBN 978-2-919732-03-6. Pp. 310. 20 a. This volume explores the role of ‘theatrical’ and dramatic activities and their relationship to foreign language pedagogy from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. Activities such as plays, skits, role plays, dramatic readings and scripted dialogues have long been part of communicative language teaching to some degree, as a means of promoting language development and creative expression by learners in a variety of contexts. However, as the editors note in the introduction, the focus is placed on the learner and the creative process itself rather than on the many genres potentially represented by the term ‘theater.’ The twenty-four articles thus address a wide range of topics, grouped into four sections: Exploration didactique des pratiques théâtrales, Méthodes et mise en action, Pratiques théâtrales/pratiques langagières, and De nouvelles pistes à explorer: écritures et pratiques théâtrales contemporaines. The first section addresses theoretical questions related to the use of theater as a pedagogical tool: historical usage, the effects of mimesis on learning, and the dynamic and evolving nature of the relationship between the actor’s body/voice and the text in the dramatic process. The articles of the second section offer a series of case studies focusing on the procedures and effects of the use of theater. The authors discuss the development of learner autonomy,self-confidence,cultural understanding,and the difficulties inherent in working with groups of learners of different language abilities or cultural backgrounds , in using difficult texts and in working in experimental contexts. In Pratiques théâtrales/pratiques langagières, the focus is on the role of the theatrical in language development. The six articles of this section consider diverse topics such as the use of phonetics, the role of first-language interference, the use of transcriptions of texts and comic sketches to teach pronunciation, and the role of language variation. The final section (De nouvelles pistes à explorer) discusses experimental approaches involving the use of contemporary texts and the innovative pedagogical practices necessitated by their use. Overall, specialists in pedagogy and those involved in pedagogical research may find this volume useful as a reference and as a source of new ideas for scholarly inquiry. Classroom teachers, for their part, may find some of the articles rather 244 FRENCH REVIEW 88.4 Reviews 245 theoretical and difficult to apply in practical terms. However, there is enough of the practical to provide educators with new ideas for the use of the theatrical in their teaching, or the inspiration to begin to do so. The diversity of approaches and topics represented in this volume demonstrates that the role and use of theater in second language teaching is a complex, varied topic, one of great potential usefulness to teachers and learners, and one that clearly merits greater scholarly and practical attention. Texas Tech University Joseph Edward Price Fandel, Nicole. La maison d’Oncle Max.Yarmouth, ME: Wayside, 2012. ISBN 978-1877 -653-32-2. Pp. 97. $22.50. Workbook: $18.50. This text is designed for beginning French students who want to have a successful experience reading a complete story in French. The story of Max and his five friends during summer vacation takes them to the South of France to visit Max’s uncle. Once they arrive, however, they find that Oncle Max is missing and that they must follow his clues to determine where he is and why. The text has three primary goals: to facilitate reading, to relate cultural information, and to entertain. Stories like this should be in great demand because many current textbooks do not provide the kind of coherent, interesting stories that would encourage language learners to interact with the target language for fun.However,writing entertaining,accessible texts can also...

Difficult texts

The notion of the fear of God – as found in Exodus 20.18–21 for example – is often misunderstood as either a visceral response to God's overwhelming presence or an emotional reaction to God's anger. But fear of God is better understood as obedience to God, involving a person in the good and the right. One who fears God is not fearful in a conventional sense, but opened to act boldly before another, obeying the commandments which God has given.

Teaching Difficult Text: Using Close Reading for Text Success

Teaching Difficult Text: Using Close Reading for Text Success

Difficult Texts: Matthew 5.43 ‘Love your enemies’: A theological reflection on the possibility of peace

This article is a personal reflection on the author’s journey from personal Christian pacifism to the conviction – as a political scientist – that the abolition of war is both necessary and politically possible. This is the only way for humanity to survive. Loving enemies is not only Christian discipleship but also political realism.

Language, Body, Dystopia: The Passion for the Real in Orly Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City

Orly Castel-Bloom's well-known novel Dolly City, first published in 1993, is a story of an abusive mother named Dolly. Told in first person and set in a future dystopian Israel, the novel concentrates on Dolly's violent anxiety regarding the health of her adopted son. She worries that he might be suffering from various medical conditions ranging from cancer to missing an internal organ. Her response is repeatedly to open him and needlessly operate on him. (1) A typical passage describes her actions thus: I succumbed to the chronic doubt from which I suffer. I wanted to check and see with my own eyes that everything was really in order, and then to check up on my checkup, and then to make sure that there hadn't been any slipups in the re-examinations, and so on and so forth. I gave the child anesthetic, I put him to sleep, and I did it. I slipped my hands into white gloves and began slicing into his thorax. His internal organs were revealed to my searching gaze, his heart, his lungs. Once I'd opened him up, I poked around in there too. Then I opened up his stomach, I held an organ roll call, I demanded to know if they were all present and correct. (31) (2) Such passages repeat themselves incessantly, marking the basic emotional tone of the novel. Dolly is more than just an excessively anxious and abusive mother. She is prone not only to fits of violent anxiety regarding her son, but often suffers from murderous rage and a flat affect coupled with extreme promiscuity. It is to Dolly as a character and as a narrator that most readers responded when reading the novel, often couching basic emotional reactions in intellectual or ideological terms. The initial reception of the book was varied; some saw it as expressing the linguistic and even moral deterioration of Israeli literature, while others prized the book as a breakthrough in Hebrew fiction. (3) Two leading Hebrew literary critiques by Dan Miron and Gershon Shaked claimed Castel-Bloom as the most original of a new generation of writers, urban and non-i deological; her writing resists and scorns social norms and public taste (see Miron; and Shaked 76). Following the strongly evaluative response that the book stirred up in reviews, the academic critical reception which followed has chosen to interpret it through the conceptual lenses of Post-modernism and Post-Zionism. Post-Modernist interpretations concentrate on the free play of language (signifier) used in the novel, on the lack of coherent reality, the mixture of high and low linguistic styles, and on the lack of depth or real affect. (4) Post-Zionist interpretations have either characterized the novel as disengaging from the national meta-narrative or as an explicit critique of Zionist claims. (5) Some interpretations saw the novel as a parody, a grotesque exaggeration of Jewish/Zionist mothering, an impossible endeavor composed of anxious sheltering, and preparing the child to be a soldier (Shiffman; Mendelson-Maoz). While there is some truth to these interpretations, they evade and assimilate this emotionally difficult text into a familiar grand narrative and try to assuage the reader with the comforting schemes of Modernism, Zionism and their respective posts The novel's main impact on readers, I argue, did not follow directly from its role in reconfiguring national narrative but from the shock and attraction of the narrator Dolly, a figure who combines a unique style and a grotesque violence. The main claim of this article will be that far from hovering in an unengaged postmodern way above reality in the realms of linguistic play and psychosis, CastelBloom's novel shows what recent theory calls the passion for the The concept of the Real was first articulated by Lacan and then elaborated by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. While there are differences in their emphases, an ideal type (Weber 90) (6) of the concept of the Real can be readily sketched. …