Narrative Passages Research Articles

The Effects of Oral and Silent Reading on Reading Comprehension

This study examined the effects of reading mode (oral and silent) and text genre (narrative and expository) on fourth graders’ reading comprehension. While controlling for prior reading ability of 48 participants, we measured comprehension. Using a repeated measured design, data were analyzed using analysis of covariance, paired t-tests, and correlational statistics. Results revealed that silent reading was stronger for narrative passages in retell measures, but there was no difference for comprehension questions. The expository passages revealed no difference between the reading modes. Comprehension of narrative texts was consistently stronger than expository texts in both silent and oral reading.

Waterloo and British Romanticism

Waterloo and British Romanticism INTRODUCTION I N THE FALL OF 1989 ROBERT M. MANIQUIS EDITED A SPECIAL ISSUE OF Studies in Romanticism on the subject of “English Romanticism and the French Revolution.” Published in the wake of that year’s bicentenary events, the issue was headed by Marilyn Butler’s article “Telling it Like a Story: The French Revolution as Narrative,” in which she observed the disparity between “the media’s zest for anniversaries” and “the compulsion of the modern academic historian to de-narrativize history.”1 A veteran of numerous anniversary events in the 1980s—from the quincentenary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada to the 400th birthday of Cambridge Univer­ sity Press—Butler noted wryly, “Being an academic at these parties is being the bad fairy at the christening. We want to replace historical folklore, which is at the heart oftheir celebration, with a more complex, fragmented impression of the past.” Butler’s endorsement of academic skepticism to­ wards “the explanatory power” of “the simple memorable narrative” did not go unqualified, however. As she went on to note, if “our refusal of narrative is meant to defend knowledge from the non-professional, we use it at quite a high cost . . . academics at the present time badly need a lan­ guage with which to intervene in the public sphere.”2 While a quarter of a century separates the bicentennial events of 1989 and 2015, Butler’s comment that media interest in the French Revolution had “got out ofhand” could be applied no less forcefully to the media hype informing the commemoration of Waterloo. Buoyed along by a flood of commemorative books, concerts, exhibitions, and celebratory events, the governing attitude to Waterloo, at least outside of France, seemed un­ equivocally supportive; aside from the usual suspects at academic confer­ ences muttering mordantly on the human costs ofvictory, as well as its re­ actionary aftermath, critical commentary in the public sphere was, at best, I. Butler, “Telling it Like a Story: The French Revolution as Narrative,” SiR 28, no. 3 (Fall 1989): 343-642 . Butler, “Telling it Like a Story,” 346. SiR, 56 (Fall 2017) 309 310 INTRODUCTION framed as glibly provocative.3 Thus in 2015, as in 1815, for every Hazlitt, Hunt, or Byron expressing dismay at the decisive termination of the revo­ lution, several hundreds more, echoing the establishment attitudes of Scott, Southey, and Wordsworth, could be found declaring their support. For many of these commentators, the run-up to the British referendum on membership in the European Union provided a context in which to draw parallels between the Holy Alliance and the European Union, with both institutions proclaiming “the right to intervene in the internal affairs of subject nations, in the name of humanitarian principles: ‘Justice, Christian Charity and Peace,’ ” albeit this time, as the sociologist Marco D’Eramo observed, with “fraternal bankers” rather than “fraternal armies.”4 While the Battle of Waterloo, in the wake of Brexit, will no doubt be shaped in reactionary political discourse as a preemptive strike against the perni­ cious effects of the European experiment, in a manner intended to quell the force ofleft-wing analyses of the relations between the defeat ofNapo­ leon and the drive towards economic and monetary union, the unsettled significance of the battle, both as a military event and as an object of commemoration, will continue to expose contradictions in conservative narratives. As example, we may consider the narrative tensions encoded in an early history of the battle, Lieutenant General W. A. Scott’s Battle of Waterloo; or, Correct Narrative of the Late Sanguinary Conflict on the Plains of Waterloo. Written and published within a few weeks of the Allied victory, the ex­ tended title of Scott’s history signals a fascination with the intense violence of the battle, while proclaiming a sustained concern with “correct,” “au­ thentic,” and “minute detail.”5 Framed by a description of the rise and fall, and rise again, ofthat “extraordinary person” Napoleon Buonaparte, “from the beginning, to the end, of his political career,” Scott’s narrative remains curiously episodic, with short passages of self-authored narrative forming the connective tissue for an assemblage of extracts from previously pub­ lished, multi-authored...

Administrative Narratives, Human Rights, and Public Ethics: The Detroit Water-Shutoff Case

This inquiry focuses specifically on administrative (local official) narratives that speak to contentious issue contexts of social conflict. Specifically, it draws upon a theoretical connection between hermeneutics and the sociology of knowledge to interpret narrative passages of local officials and others related to a contentious public action—the Detroit Water and Sewerage District’s stepped-up water-discontinuation efforts (2014 and 2015) that left thousands of inner-city residents with “delinquent” accounts and no access to water service. Selected narratives from this case are interpreted on the basis of their literary and social functions. The interpretations support a subsequent determination of whether and how the power and influence of administrative narrative assume significance as a matter of public ethics.

Reading Fluency and College Readiness

AbstractThe Common Core State Standards suggest that an appropriate goal for secondary education is college and career readiness. Previous research has identified reading fluency as a critical component for proficient reading. One component of fluency is word recognition accuracy and automaticity. The present study attempted to determine the word recognition accuracy and automaticity indicators for incoming college students and to examine the relationship between oral reading rate and ACT scores. Knowledge of such performance may provide secondary literacy educators with another tool for assessing reading proficiency and college readiness. Eighty‐one students were asked to read a college‐level narrative passage. Mean student accuracy and automacity scores were determined, as well as correlations between accuracy, automacity, and students’ ACT scores. Results suggest a moderate and significant relationship between measures of automaticity and both the ACT reading subtest and ACT composite scores.

Philosophy in the Mahābhārata and the History of Indian Philosophy

The study of philosophical terms and doctrines in the Mahābhārata touches not only on important aspects of the contents, composition and the historical contexts of the epic, but also on the historiography of Indian philosophy. General ideas about the textual history of the epic and the distinction between “didactic” and “narrative” parts have influenced the study of epic philosophy no less than academic discussions about what is philosophy in India and how it developed. This results in different evaluations of the place of philosophical texts in the epic and their relationship to the history of Indian philosophy. While some scholars have suggested that there is a “philosophy of the epic” its composers wished to propagate, others have argued that “philosophy” is included in the epic either in a “proto” form or in a variety of doctrines (often presented is “mixed” or “unsystematic” ways) they deemed relevant. The article discusses these views and some of the heuristic assumptions on which they are based. It proposes to widen the scope of analysis by paying more attention to the interplay of narrative and didactic passages, the various ways in which philosophy is presented in the epic, and its connection to a larger spectrum of the reception of philosophy in textual genres and by audiences outside the expert circles of the philosophical schools.

The Functions of Narrative Passages in Three Written Online Health Contexts

Abstract This paper investigates and compares the functions of narrative passages in three computermediated health practices centering on advice-giving: (1) email counseling at a UK university, (2) online forums providing peer support for quitters of smoking, and (3) anti-smoking websites by UK governmental, commercial and charitable institutions. We found that the functions of the narrative passages are manifold and often overlapping. They range from seeking advice, giving advice, indicating/seeking agreement, supporting a claim, showing compliance with advice given to reporting on progress and success. In a second step, these insights were linked to how the narrative passages were used for identity construction and relational work. The results show that narratives are employed to create various identities, such as authentic advice-seekers, active self-helpers, successful quitters and advice-givers. Our comparison reveals that narrative functions utilized in all three practices exhibit nuanced differences due to medium factors and interactional goals of the practices. Finally, in these contexts of self-improvement, narratives document stability or transformation in the sense of clients’ improved health and smokers’ change to becoming non-smokers respectively.

Training and Generalization Effects of a Reading Comprehension Learning Strategy on Computer and Paper–Pencil Assessments

Many schools use computer-based testing to measure students’ progress for end-of-the-year and statewide assessments. There is little research to support whether computer-based testing accurately reflects student progress, particularly among students with learning, performance, and generalization difficulties. This article summarizes an investigation of a reading strategy on comprehension of expository and narrative text; comprehension was assessed using both paper- and computer-based tasks. Results showed that students increased their learning strategy use and reading comprehension accuracy when using the strategy on computer-based assessments with expository text. Also students generalized their strategy use to paper–pencil assessments with narrative text. Reading comprehension of narrative passages also increased. The results suggest the value of teaching a reading strategy to students who struggle with both paper–pencil and computer-based assessments of comprehension.

Literariness and Racial Consciousness in Paule Marshall’s Memoir Triangular Road and Gloria Naylor’s Fictionalized Memoir 1996

Abstract Black American women writers were side-lined by the literary canon as recently as the 1980s. Today, as a result of their agency, a distinct literary tradition that bears witness to black women’s particular expressiveness is recognized. Bernard Bell observes that the defining features common to most literary works by black American women are a focus on racist oppression, black female protagonists, the pursuit of demarginalization, women’s bonding, women’s relationship with the community, the power of emotions, and black female language. Although these elements refer predominantly to novels, they are also present in Paule Marshall’s memoir Triangular Road (2009) and Gloria Naylor’s fictionalized memoir 1996 (2005). Moreover, the two works are fitting examples of racial art, the point of departure of which, according to Black Arts Movement advocates, should be the black experience. Actually, since through memoirs the authors offer significant insights into themselves, the genre seems closer to this objective of racial art than novels. At the same time, taking into consideration the intricate plot structures, vivid images, and emotional intensity, their memoirs evidence the quality of literariness i.e., in formalist terms, the set of features that distinguish texts from non-literary ones, for instance, reports, articles, text books, and encyclopaedic biographical entries. Moreover, Marshall and Naylor utilize creative imagination incorporating fabulation, stories within stories, and people or events they have never personally encountered, which dramatizes and intensifies the experiences they relate. In Marshall’s memoir, the fictitious elements are discernable when she imagines the historical past. Naylor demarks imagined narrative passages with separate sections that intertwine with those based upon her actual life experience.

A comparative account of the interpretation of temporal relations in narrative in Vietnamese and English

This paper provides a comparative account of the interpretation of temporal relations in Vietnamese and English narrative, using a bi-directional corpus of 3,082 clauses of narrative passages originally written in Vietnamese and their English translations and 3,124 clauses of narrative passages originally written in English and their Vietnamese translations. It is shown that the principles for the interpretation of temporal relations between situations in narrative are similar for both English and Vietnamese despite the fact that English has a well-developed tense system, while Vietnamese is a widely-known tenseless language. The principles are based on the temporal properties of situation aspect and the discourse relations between the clauses, which are elicited from pragmatic inferences.

From the Editors

Dear Colleagues, The investigations in this issue of Reading Research Quarterly span early childhood through high school and include research examining a wide range of cognitive processes and teacher practices that potentially influence literacy acquisition and proficiency. Existing theory is expanded, new constructs are developed, and promising models are tested, as topics as broad as comprehension and as specific as syllable awareness are considered in innovative ways. Among the authors contributing to this issue is Meghan D. Liebfreund, the recipient of the ILA Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2015. We are pleased to include a summary of her dissertation, “Success With Informational Text Comprehension: An Examination of Underlying Factors.” With the increased (and justified) emphasis on informational text across grades, understanding the factors that contribute to the comprehension of such text is essential. Using hierarchical linear regressions, Liebreund investigates the impact and predictive value of vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, decoding efficiency, and motivation on the informational text comprehension of students in grades 3–5. Comprehension ability is also a key variable in the next article. Framing the nuances of comprehension in terms of a battery of mental exercises, Carolyn A. Denton and colleagues examine the cognitive processes that adequate and poor comprehenders use when reading accessible and challenging passages of both narrative and informational text. The authors employ a think-aloud protocol to investigate the conscious engagement of inference generation, paraphrasing, text repetition, and text monitoring of seventh-, ninth-, and 11th-grade students during reading tasks. A nonparametric canonical discriminant analysis was performed to shed light on the differences among groups based on reader ability and passage genre. New insights are gained, including challenges to some generally held notions. Cognitive considerations also figure in Lindsay Clare Matsumura, Richard Correnti, and Eaine Wang's study of writing task quality and fifth-grade students’ analytic text-based writing. The authors, conceptualizing writing task quality in terms of the cognitive demand of the task and the grist of the text, examine the quality of writing assignments given to students and the impact that task quality has on analytic text-based writing. The results of this study suggest that the way in which tasks are structured has greater impact on students’ writing development than the quality of a text in and of itself. Findings regarding teachers’ perceptions of what constitutes high-quality writing highlight a potential need for professional development specific to the increasing expectations for writing and higher order thinking. The next three articles turn our focus to the emergent and early literacy skills of young children. Molly Welsh Chilton and Linnea C. Ehri report on an experiment in which vocabulary instruction using random exemplar sentences is compared with instruction using cohesively themed exemplar sentences. Third-grade students were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions and taught six novel verbs. Findings from the study illuminate a variety of predictive factors for vocabulary learning and support the hypothesis that vocabulary learning is facilitated for students who receive instruction that includes the target vocabulary imbedded in related sentences depicting a familiar scenario. In a study of 5- and 6-year-old Korean children, Young-Suk Grace Kim explores text-reading fluency by examining the complexities of its relation to other literacy constructs, how those relationships evolve over time, and the ways in which text-reading fluency is different from word-reading fluency and reading comprehension. Data collected at two points eight months apart were primarily analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. In addition to addressing a gap in the research regarding reading comprehension's relation to text-reading fluency while accounting for listening comprehension, and vice versa, Kim's research provides an interesting opportunity for comparison of emergent literacy in a transparent orthography (Korean) versus that in an opaque orthography (English). Heidi Anne E. Mesmer and Thomas O. Williams assert that “the early literacy instruction of letters, phonemes, names, and sight words makes little sense to the child”—that is, when children lack knowledge of how words are organized and represented in print. Pressing this notion, the authors provide a sound theoretical framework for justifying concept of word as a research construct worthy of empirical attention and offer a model of concept of word that integrates syllable awareness, beginning sound awareness, and knowledge of letters. Structural equation modeling was implemented to test the model, and multiple indexes were used to assess goodness of fit. The research presented in this issue offer critically relevant studies exploring cognitive factors related to literacy. They span age/grade designations, as well as particular skills that are critical for success in reading and writing proficiency. We are sure that you will find something that captures your attention in these informative studies.

Eye Movements Reveal the Influence of Event Structure on Reading Behavior.

When we read narrative texts such as novels and newspaper articles, we segment information presented in such texts into discrete events, with distinct boundaries between those events. But do our eyes reflect this event structure while reading? This study examines whether eye movements during the reading of discourse reveal how readers respond online to event structure. Participants read narrative passages as we monitored their eye movements. Several measures revealed that event structure predicted eye movements. In two experiments, we found that both early and overall reading times were longer for event boundaries. We also found that regressive saccades were more likely to land on event boundaries, but that readers were less likely to regress out of an event boundary. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that tracking event structure carries a working memory load. Eye movements provide a rich set of online data to test the cognitive reality of event segmentation during reading.

‘Look who’s talking now’: A taxonomy of speakers in single-turn political discourse

The aim of this article is to propose a taxonomy of speakers from a socio-pragmatic perspective by taking an original approach to the study of single-turn political discourse, that is, political speeches, rather than debates, interviews or press conferences. This limitation on the scope of the study stems from the fact that the categorisation advanced is not concerned with turn-taking, but concentrates on the speaker’s use of other voices in his/her representation of reality. Thus, a clear distinction is made between the speaker and the sayer, namely the original speaker whose words are reported, or rather creatively reconstructed, by the current speaker ‘here and now’. The taxomony comprises a number of categories employed strategically by the current speaker in the service of different objectives. The speaker categories are inherently limited due to a single principle of categorisation: the form of the report. The singular speaker is the default type which enables the speaker to present himself/herself as an individual as well as his/her attitudes, values and beliefs, while the collective speaker enhances the speaker’s belonging to a group and allows him/her to speak on behalf of its members. The sayer categories, by contrast, are more varied due to three independent principles of categorisation: the form of the report, the genuineness of the sayer’s utterance and the number of accounts embedded in the narrating event. The approach taken to the analysis of the narrative passages that involve the proposed speaker types owes much to Chilton’s Discourse Space Theory and is concerned with conceptualisation of the speaker’s representation of events from chosen perspective(s). The corpus of speeches selected to investigate and illustrate individual categories consists of over 80 political speeches delivered by three Democratic American Presidents: John Kennedy, William Clinton and Barack Obama.

Reading Passages and Skills in Jordanian High School and University EFL Textbooks: A Comparative Analytical Study

The study aimed to examine the appropriateness of the reading content in Action Pack 11 (AP11) which is taught for grade 11, Action Pack 12 (AP12) that is taught for grade 12 at the schools of The Jordanian Ministry of Education and New Headway Plus Pre-intermediate (NHWP) that is taught for Communication Skills (LC 099) at Yarmouk University. The researcher analyzed the types of reading passages and the reading skills taught by the reading exercises in the three textbooks, The content analysis of the reading passages showed no significant differences between the three textbooks and that three textbooks exposed the students more to the descriptive and expository types of passages than to the narrative passages and that the persuasive passages were almost excluded. Furthermore, the analysis of the reading skills showed that “pre-reading activities, skimming, and activities of locating details” were the dominant reading tasks in the secondary stage textbooks whereas “following-up activities that lead to writing, scanning, locating details, and identifying main ideas” were the dominant reading tasks in the university- level textbook (NHWP). The study recommended that a better communication between universities and schools should be established to bridge the reading gap.

Does language learning disability in school-age children affect semantic word learning when reading?

Purpose: The study was undertaken to determine how position of informative context, rate of word presentation and part of speech impacted novel word learning during reading in children with language learning disability.Method: Children with language learning disability (LLD; n = 13), age-matched peers (n = 13) and vocabulary-matched peers (n = 13) read four narrative passages containing 10 nouns and 10 verbs. Informative context provided clues to word meanings and was either adjacent or non-adjacent to the target words. Target words occurred either twice (low rate) or 5-times (high rate). Following reading, word learning was assessed using dynamic assessment, including oral definitions, contextual clues and forced choices.Result: Overall, age-matched peers performed better than children with LLD and vocabulary-matched peers, who performed similarly. No effect was found for position of informative context; however, word learning improved with high rate of presentation for children with LLD. Nouns were easier to learn than verbs for all groups.Conclusion: Results indicated that children with LLD show limitations gaining semantic knowledge of novel words during reading, which could negatively impact their overall rate of vocabulary acquisition.

The effect of a sentence comprehension treatment on discourse comprehension in aphasia

Background: While it is well understood that individuals with aphasia have difficulty with discourse comprehension, very few studies have examined the nature of discourse comprehension deficits in aphasia and the potential for improvement in discourse comprehension after rehabilitation. To address the first goal, we previously developed the Test of Syntactic Effects on Discourse Comprehension (TSEDC), which provides a measure of the extent to which a participant’s sentence comprehension ability aids in comprehending passages.Aims: The goal of this study was to examine the effect of a sentence comprehension treatment on the TSEDC to assess whether training participants to understand sentences of different syntactic complexity would improve their ability to understand passages that vary by their level of syntactic complexity.Methods & Procedures: Forty participants with aphasia received sentence comprehension treatment using one of two syntactic comprehension tasks: object manipulation (OM) or sentence to picture matching (SPM). The dependent measure was improved sentence comprehension of one sentence type in one task-related protocol, with the order of task and structure counterbalanced across participants. Before and after treatment, participants also completed a self-paced auditory story comprehension task that involved nine passages that contained either semantically reversible canonical sentences (simple passages) or semantically reversible non-canonical sentences (complex passages). At the end of each passage, participants were asked explicit or implicit questions about the story. Accuracy and reaction times were measured for each patient for each story before and after treatment.Outcomes & Results: Analysis of the treatment data revealed that participants improved in their ability to understand trained sentences (both in terms of effect size and per cent change on trained structure), irrespective of whether the trained task was SPM or OM. There was no significant relationship between treatment improvements on the SPM/OM treatment (even when the task targeted in treatment was controlled for) and changes in performance on the TSEDC. Also, there was no significant improvement in TSEDC accuracy after treatment, even when various aspects of the narrative passages, including passage complexity (simple/complex), the nature of sentence type (semantically constrained/semantically reversible) and the nature of questions asked (explicit or implicit), were accounted for.Conclusions: Inherent differences between the sentence comprehension treatment and the TSEDC may have precluded generalisation.

Adapting the Rose for New Manuscript Contexts: the Case of Poitiers, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 215

This essay examines the different approaches to the adaptation of the Roman de la rose in a selection of late medieval manuscripts, both single item and multi-text codices. Analysing first methods ranging from the collection of a series of extracts to the abridgement of the whole work, we then focus on a fifteenth-century compilatory manuscript from Poitiers which contains 1931 lines of the Rose copied as short gnomic sententiae and longer passages of narrative, thus displaying the techniques of both extraction and abbreviation. The following questions are addressed in this essay: what type of material is retained or omitted; how does the Poitiers compiler deal with the questions of authority and voice; what effect might the use of rubrication have had on a contemporary reader; and how does the adaptation of the Rose sit with the other texts and extracts in this compilation?

From French Verse to English: Behn's Version of Tallemant's Le Voyage De L'isle D'amour (1663)

Although Behn's versatility as a writer is widely recognized, relatively little attention has been paid to her work as a translator. This is a mistake, not only because of the high quality of her translations and imitations, but also because translation was not regarded as a second-order activity at the period when she was writing, and should not be so regarded now. The article begins with a reminder of Dryden's distinctions between metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation, pointing out that Behn always preferred the greater creative freedom of the third. Then, after identifying briefly the key differences between early-modern English and French prosody, it analyses several short examples that show how Behn met the challenge of rendering Abbé Paul Tallemant's Le Voyage de l'isle d'amour (1663), which is a composite of prose and verse, into a long poem interspersing narrative passages mainly in iambic pentameter couplets with lyrical passages of greater intricacy. The essay ends by suggesting that comparison between the original French and Behn's imitation is not only of interest in its own right, but also throws into relief a fundamental difference in aesthetic and cultural practice.

Illusory Transparency in Bilinguals: Does Language of Text Affect Bilingual Readers’ Perspective Taking in Reading?

Readers of narrative texts tend to incorrectly assess the knowledge of story characters, particularly as authors sometimes provide readers privileged information that is unknown to the story characters. This error, labeled the illusory transparency of intention Keysar (Cognitive Psychology 26:165-208, 1994) shows how readers assume that privileged information is also known by story characters; this error is assumed to indicate a general difficulty individuals have in taking the perspective of others. The study investigates whether bilingual readers also demonstrate the illusory transparency effect when reading in their two languages, and tests the hypothesis that the languages activate different cultural mindsets that may or may not enhance the error. In two studies, 175 Filipino-English bilinguals were presented narrative passages in English and Filipino containing positive or negative privileged information that was either spoken or written by one of the characters. Participants assessed how a character would respond to an ambiguous remark by another character. In both studies, privileged information influenced readers’ ratings in both languages, demonstrating the illusory transparency effect in bilinguals. Study 1 did not show a moderating effect of language, but Study 2 (which had higher observed statistical power) revealed a significant moderating effect of language, where the illusory transparency effect was stronger in English texts. The results support the hypothesis that the English language primed the individualist mindset that was not supportive of cognitive processes that consider perspectives of others. The results are discussed in terms of how language plays an indirect role in shaping thought processes involved in perspective taking.

The Financial Stewardship Bible (Contemporary English Version) (New York: American Bible Society, 2011)

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of The Financial Stewardship Bible(FSB), which was published by American Bible Society in collaboration with a non-profit organization, Compass-Finances God’s Way. FSB uses The Contemporary English Version(CEV) translation and highlights in green color over 2,000 verses, which offer perspectives on money and principles of how to handle it. This Bible includes “The Core”, which consists of a 40-day Bible Study, a small group discussion guide, and other resources such as a topical index, in the middle of the book. Accordingly, this review discusses: 1) the adaptation of CEV; 2) the selection of the verses that relate to stewardship; and 3) the texts and themes included in “The Core.” Since financial matters are a widespread concern for most people today, the use of CEV seems to be a wise decision, considering its accessibility and readability. While highlighting verses related to money and possessions may help people easily find biblical texts dealing with financial issues such as earning, spending, debt, and retirement, the selection itself has limitations in that it lacks consistency. FSB also selects a majority of verses from texts in the form of discourse rather than from narrative passages. Thus it appears that Proverbs has the highest percentage of pertinent verses. Moreover, the Bible Study material also approaches the topics of stewardship as a personal matter, excluding biblical texts and themes that address communal and social concerns about money, possessions, and economic justice. Readers would benefit from reading and using FSB since it affirms that God cares for their lives no matter how serious their financial straits and encourages them to trust in God’s provision. Yet a theologically holistic perspective on stewardship, which takes care of all resources God has given us, could overcome an individualist and consumerist tendency in dealing with this important topic of handling finances in faith.

A comparison of speaking rate consistency in native and non-native speakers of English

Non-native speech differs from native speech in many ways, including overall longer durations and slower speech rates (Guion et al., 2000). Speaking rate also influences how listeners perceive speech, including perceived fluency of non-native speakers (Munro & Derwing, 1998). However, it is unclear what aspects of non-native speech and speaking rate might influence perceived fluency. It is possible that in addition to differences in mean speaking rate, there may be differences in the consistency of speaking rate within and across utterances. In the current study, we use production data to examine speaking rate in native and non-native speakers of English, and ask whether native and non-native speakers differ in the consistency of their speaking rate across and within utterances. We examined a corpus of read speech, including isolated sentences and longer narrative passages. Specifically, we test whether the overall slower speech rate of non-native speakers is coupled with an inconsistent speech rate that may result in less predictability in the produced speech signal.