Voice Reading Research Articles

On the Unconventional

YW ^ TELL ... a stack of very good articles . .. which just because of their high quality makes one realize more acutely, with a slightly nauseous sensation of dizziness, the lengths to which metacriticism will go ... Let us make the likeness of one who would take a photograph of somebody taking the photograph of a painting ... Or rather (since this mise en abyme is a little bland), let us stoop and think a moment of an actual case: the toilet in a New Haven restaurant is wallpapered with early twentieth-century commercial ads, one of which shows the picture of a water closet, and on the wall of that printed water closet some graffiti have been added in pencil (thus these graffiti are actually the miniaturized replica of themselves, because they are written on a cited bathroom wall contained within a large-as-life, i.e., real, bathroom) . . . and we have in front of us the typical trajectory of metacriticism. Isn't this a sloppy way to open a scholarly article? Well, what follows is not meant as a scholarly paper (not even as a scholarly paper commenting on other scholarly papers); this is meant rather as a (limited, to be sure, and still tentative) different contribution: I would like to begin to discuss for how long the genre of the scholarly paper can survive-oh, drop the scientific-sounding predictive tone, admit involvement!-of how long still the genre of the scholarly should be allowed to survive unquestioned in its present form, amidst a respectful, solemn hush. As for the possibility of quibbling between article and paper: I refer here to the dominant kind of article, the one which is the written extension of an orally presented paper. Thus I am not opposing the supposed naturalness of spoken language to the alleged rigidity of written language; the rigidity is there all the way, unfortunately-it's already present in the aseptic reading voice. A more serious warning is the one which could stop me in my tracks before I even begin: how can you seriously write an in a scholarly journal if you want to criticize scholarly articles? An archaic objection, indeed, with a remarkable history, for it is a variant of contemporary objections to the ancient Greek skeptics. What is important

Film & History Interview: Peter Watkins: Theraputic Cinema And The Repressive Mind

which seemed effective on paper were patently inadequate, leaving students confused about the film's meaning and direction. One section was potentially explosive: Rogers appeared to be cruelly laughing at the subjects of his humor-Dust Bowl victims-rather than attempting to supply them with a ray of comic relief. The sound of the film was remixed with a new voice reading narration written to accommodate student criticisms. Meanwhile, during the winter and spring of 1976, Arthur Peterson of the San Francisco School System developed materials for a workbook to accompany Will Rogers' 1920s. The finished workbook contains information, which will prepare students for the film, will test their abilities on viewing and recall, and, finally, will send them to other verbal and visual sources. The most significant test of the film and workbook will take place in classrooms and libraries around the country. Our filmmaking efforts will be justified if Vv7JlI Rogers' 1920s rewards a number of viewings and if the workbook can spark fruitful research activities. Recent experimental screenings to teacher and student audiences have convinced us that this interpretive essay in celluloid has both entertained and informed. It is an historically valid portrait of the man and his times which, unlike commercial productions, has respected the visual and aural sources employed. For these reasons, we feel that Will Rogers' 1920s has accomplished the basic objectives, which we set for the project as historian-filmmakers. Unlike most historical essays, it will reach our students—and, perhaps, give them the sense of the vitality of historical studies. FILM & HISTORY INTERVIEW PETE R WATKINS: THERAPUTIC CINEMA AND THE REPRESSIVE MIND BY JAMES M, WELSH AND STEVEN PHILIP KRAMER James M. Welsh teachesfilm at Salisbury State College and co-editor of Literature / Film Quarterly. He is co-author ofHis Majesty the: American: The Cinema ofDouglas Fairbanks, Sr. (A.S. Barnes, 1877) and ofBen Johnson: A Ouadr¡centennial Biography (Scarecrow, 1914). Steven Philip Kramer leaches history at the University ofNew Mexico. He is author ofa monograph entitled DeGaulle 's France (General Learning Press, 1913) and his work has appeared in manyjournals. During the 1960's, a very film-conscious decade, a whole generation of talented and innovative new filmmakers came into prominence. Many of these artists were politically or socially motivated. They fought against the conventions and the expectations of the movie-going public. Some managed to redefine those expectations. A few who gained a degree of critical recognition, however, were finally ostracized by some of the critics who had once admired their work. Most of the others now seem to have accommodated themselves to the demands of the Industry. One of the most dedicated of this group of filmmakers is Peter Watkins, whose first professional film, Culloden (1964), took a decidedly unconventional approach in its treatment of the Jacobite Uprising of 1745 and its bloody aftermath, the massacre of the Highland Clans, and demonstrated that genocide in the name of heroic butchery was not only a possibility but a reality in the Age of the Enlightenment. The film was a carefully researched documentary. The War Game ( 1965). made the following year for BBC (though never shown on British television), established Watkins as a major talent and earned him an Academy Award in 1966. Mr. Watkins has not fared well with the critics, though many have praised both Culloden and The War Game, both ofthem relatively "safe" films. The brutality ofCulloden. veiled in the mists of history, can be rationalized by the smug popular belief that mankind has somehow improved during the intervening years, though the film is still very powerful in its impact. The War Game, which is an intelligent speculation concerning the potential devastation of thermonuclear attack upon a "typical" community in Britain is in fact a warning to compassionate and concerned people who should be sensitive to such issues. Nonetheless, The War Game was criticized for its "lack of compassion" at the time of its making. More recently the senior critic of The New York Times has characterized Watkins as a "paranoid masochist." Such criticism is excessive and false. The director does not lack compassion simply because he has a particular talent for showing the extent to which human...

Une méthode d'approche de la compréhension en lecture silencieuse et en lecture à haute voix.

The learning of reading should aim at producing good silent readers, but didactics now in use favour voiced reading, particularly in primary schools. Therefore, our hypothesis will be that silent reading favours understanding. In order to test it, we have used two texts similar as regards difficulties of reading, lexical frequency (vocabulary), syntagmatics. They are divergent only as to the narrative set-up. Related samples could be worked out through this device, as the same child was submitted to both silent and voice reading. 120 children have been studied (60 boys and 60 girls), 40 in their 3rd year at the elementary school, 40 in their 4th year, 40 in their 5th year. The evaluation of understanding was carried out through 6 questions — 4 dealing with memorized particulars and 2 appealing to a « proper understanding of the passage ». // the reckonings were made on global scores our hypothesis proved false. On the opposite, it revealed itself true if only the « proper understanding of the passage » was taken into account. We therefore feel that the pedagogical methods now in use are greatly accountable for these results. If we want children to become good readers, we will have to devote a lot to silent reading.

Visual Discrimination of Social Stimuli with and without Auditory Cues

The preceding studies report development of the technique whereby the infant controls stimulus availability, permitting the decrement and recovery of visual fixation to be used to study discrimination of visual stimuli and discrimination of auditory stimuli. The stimuli used in the study of visual discrimination were maximally different (a checkerboard and a baby), while the stimuli used in the study of auditory discrimination were the voices of two women reading the same poem and the same voice reading the same poem but with different tone qualities. Not only did the infants make that difficult discrimination, but other research (Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, & Vigorito 1971; Moffitt 1971; Trehub & Rabinovitch 1972) indicates that young infants can discriminate among individual speech sounds. The question was raised whether young infants could make a visual discrimination analogous to the auditory discrimination reported by Boyd (Chap. VI). That is, could young infants discriminate between the pictures of two women, using the techniques developed in the Kansas laboratory. In 1968 Fitzgerald summarized the available data bearing on the question of discrimination as follows:

Undergraduate Students' Emotional Response and Characteristics of Receptiveness as a Lecture Voice to Hoarse and Normal Reading Voice

Undergraduate Students' Emotional Response and Characteristics of Receptiveness as a Lecture Voice to Hoarse and Normal Reading Voice