Relates how the Jesuits made the performance of plays integral to the curriculum of their schools. Reveals Jesuit rationales: (1) theater permitted them to accomplish their mission of propagating the faith; (2) public performances served as excellent publicity for their schools; and (3) theater could educate students who participated as no other…

Suggests a motivations framework to organize constructs for evaluating sport consumption. Researchers developed scales to measure motivations for spectating and participant markets, then surveyed 1,611 sports enthusiasts nationwide, profiling sports using motivational constructs. The proposed constructs are shown to have implications for marketing…

A study compared intelligibility and speech rate differences following speaker implementation of 3 strategies (topic, alphabet, and combined topic and alphabet supplementation) and a habitual speech control condition for 5 speakers with severe dysarthria. Combined cues and alphabet cues yielded significantly higher intelligibility scores and…

Examines how emotional content in televised messages intensifies physiological attentional responses. Explains that heart rate data indicating both shorter-term responses and longer-term arousal were collected from 10 female and 4 male advertising students. Finds that emotional content increases physiological arousal in viewers and that heart…

Argues that television, when used as a secondary activity, interferes with performance on otherwise intellectually demanding tasks. Examines performance on seven different cognitive processing tests for respondents in four television-viewing conditions and a no-TV control group. Finds significant performance decrements for measures of reading…

Describes a three-week unit, "Television Communication and Critical Thinking," designed to make junior high students more forceful writers and discriminating viewers. Argues that by analyzing television advertising, news, and programming, students learn to think more critically about communication techniques and to use those techniques…

Examines how personal versus formal writing tasks affect students' response to and comprehension of literary text. Finds that personal writing tasks enabled students to produce qualitatively more effective responses that tended to be more fluent and constructed with a wider range of response statements. (RS)

Analyzes two scientific journal articles from a reader-response perspective. Elaborates the rhetorical nature of scientific discourse and demonstrates that even within the constraints of the journal articles, scientists have considerable freedom to exercise choices. Explicates how writers use cues to direct readers into fictional roles. (MG)

Provides suggestions for using live demonstrations of online searching to promote dynamic interaction in online instruction. Equipment for live demonstrations is described, including a microcomputer, modem, communications software, and computer projection system; search demonstration techniques are discussed; audience dynamics are considered; and…

Discusses activities of emergent preschool writers and editors involved in the Writing Table Project at the Child and Family Center of the University of Nevada at Reno. (BB)

Discusses problems with formative evaluation of educational materials and examines the slope test when used in a pretest/posttest multiple group (PPMG) design to adjust posttest scores treatment interaction studies. An example is given of the utility of the slope test and analysis of covariance procedure using an educational film about AIDS. (five…

The Adolescents' Media Practice Model is proposed and discussed. The model emphasizes a dialectical process in which the media are important cultural agents with influence on audiences that is amplified and restrained by individuals who interact with the media from their own positions. The model is grounded in "room culture." (SLD)

Proposes a framework for writing and evaluating scripts for narrative educational television that is aimed at producers and screenwriters and addresses essential elements of effective educational program design. Motivational factors are discussed, the target audience is considered, educational objectives are described, and examples from the Open…

A former college teacher's eight-year experience in the business world taught him valuable lessons about audience awareness, risk taking, honoring social and political differences, teamwork, civility within an organization, preservation of standards under duress, and humane and productive use of evaluative information. (MSE)

This introductory article discusses the development of oral interpretation skills to promote literature in the classroom as part of the whole language curriculum. Benefits of listening to adults read aloud and telling stories are discussed, and the importance of listening skills and audience etiquette is described. (LRW)