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Beyond Communication is a collection of essays by well-known scholars and teachers in reading comprehension theory and literary criticism, particularly reader-response approaches. These two fields have traditionally been divided by their respective appeals to elementary and secondary education people. In creating this book the editors have sought to repair this unwarranted split. The book presents a rationale for teaching reading comprehension with literary texts that integrates the two pedagogical approaches. It encourages teachers to include literature and reader-response approaches in daily sessions with students regardless of grade level. It provides teachers with alternatives for meeting new language arts curriculum requirements. And it gives an overview of this field from both Canadian and American perspectives.

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It has recently been argued that researchers should pay increased attention to the ways in which critical thinking processes are stimulated when students can determine their own types and sequences of reading and writing activities. This argument underscores the need to look more closely at the research process for the research paper, probably the best means that teachers have for fostering independent critical thinking. Remarkably, only a few studies touch on what students do as they select and narrow a topic, locate sources, sift through these sources, and develop a central research question or thesis statement. Nevertheless, much can be learned from these few studies, especially with respect to the intellectual significance of when and how a thesis or controlling idea is formulated. This article examines these studies in detail, notes the limitations of a related body of research focusing on other kinds of academic writing, and raises a number of conceptual and methodological issues for researchers to address in future research on the research process.

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Research on the writing process suggests that planning is a significant component of the writing process. According to this body of research, the planning process results in writing plans of various kinds. Often these writing plans seem to be decisions or judgments-that is, mental constructs only. However, they are not consistently mental constructs in this body of research. Sometimes writing plans are written constructs, sometimes both mental and written constructs. And when they do appear as written constructs, they are sometimes viewed favorably, sometimes unfavorably. In addition, they do not seem to be distinguishable from goals, another key concept in this body of research. Unfortunately, and without explanation, the nature of a writing plan seems to change from study to study in this body of research, with no apparent progress over the years in conceptual clarity or consistency. This conceptual ambiguity poses serious problems for writing research. It also poses problems for writing instruction, too, even though this body of research seems to have some beneficial implications for instruction as well. The question this essay addresses is why this conceptual ambiguity exists. I begin by pointing out the inconsistency and lack of clarity in the way in which planning and writing plans are defined or illustrated in this body of research. I then indicate why definitions for key concepts matter for researchand for teachers who look to research for insights or guidance on instructional questions. The essay has two major purposes. First, it shows how theoretical assumptions underlying this body of research may be responsible for the conceptual ambiguity of its key terms. It then suggests why theoretical constructs developed in other domains of inquiry may pose unresolvable problems when applied to the act of writing and serve as unintended conceptual barriers to important new research in the field.

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This essay is an extension of recent research on nonacademic writing and represents an initial effort to explore the contexts for the letters citizens send their legislators. It focuses on only one aspect of this writing—its value. Most of the information in the essay comes from interviews with the author's state and national legislators and/or their staff. This essay suggests why the letters about political issues and personal concerns that citizens send their legislators are of great value to both the writer and the reader, and why the relationship between citizens and their public officials as writers and readers may deserve more intensive exploration.

Intuitively all users of language understand whether a unit of discourse is cohesive, whether it makes sense. Markels seeks to formalize some of this innate knowledge about discourse by describing some of the textual cues that contribute to cohesion in particular types of English paragraphs. Focusing on expository paragraphs, she investigates the semantic relations among nouns necessary to create noun chains and the syntactic information necessary to invest those chains with Other researchers have investigated cohesion only as a semantic phenomenon, but by pursuing this new approach, Markels gives equal weight to syntax. She points out that while noun chains establish semantic consistency only the interaction of those chains with syntactic information that thematizes them can create Markels identifies and describes four common patterns through which paragraphs achieve cohesion or unity. In describing these cohesion patterns, she also identifies paragraph structures based on semantic and syntactic relationships that produce cohesion.

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