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Learners were provided with personalized and adaptive articles in a dynamic real-time manner. This study aims to improve learners’ interest in learning English and motivate them through an appropriate e-book assistance mechanism, thus increasing their English reading–comprehension skills.

In addition to their general auxiliary functions, e-books were designed to provide other relevant auxiliary functions to meet the English reading–learning requirements. The e-book was also equipped with a personalized reading guidance and assistance mechanism for conducting systematic assessments and calculations on the basis of the learner’s reading comprehension skills, article difficulty and difficulty stratification and connections between articles.

The personalized reading guidance and assistance strategy, which provided articles in line with the learners’ personal abilities and presented the articles in a correlated method, facilitated learners’ progressive learning and improved their reading–comprehension abilities. Learners’ confidence and satisfaction toward English reading can be improved effectively through adaptive guidance.

A real-time and dynamic reading guidance strategy was established in this study by considering the learner’s reading–comprehension skills, article difficulty and difficulty stratification and the connections between articles.

In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers probes the American malaise through the longings of a young adolescent girl. Twelve‐year‐old Frankie no longer sees the world as round and inviting as a school globe. No, the world is huge and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour. Indeed, the world seems separate from herself. In the midst of chaos, Frankie sees her brother's upcoming wedding as a chance to feel connected, to feel that she matters. The story focuses on Frankie's efforts to be a “member of the wedding,” as she recognizes, “they are the we of me.”

The present study focused on examining the effects of a multimedia-based Internet extensive reading program on promoting the receptive skills of Iranian university students.

In the quantitative section of this explanatory sequential mixed-method study, a pretest-posttest design was used to compare the performance of three groups of Iranian university students in terms of their degrees of improvement in receptive proficiency. Besides, the differences in the levels of motivation among the learners were sought. The three classes under study included linear text extensive reading for the first experimental group, a multimedia-based Internet extensive reading group for the other and a control group. The qualitative phase of this study included a semi-structured interview and an open-ended questionnaire.

Analysis of the results revealed that the multimedia-based Internet extensive reading group outperformed the two other groups in terms of proficiency in receptive skills. They also had a higher level of motivation for reading. The findings of the qualitative phase showed that the participants preferred working with multimedia material rather than working with linear texts, or, in other words, printed books. University EFL instructors may be the most beneficiaries of the present study, as they can gain insights into applying Internet-based extensive reading programs into their courses.

Although some studies have been carried out in this area, the paper provides its readers with a new procedure and methodology.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) invite students to engage in close reading of primary source texts from American history, but an overly rigid definition of close reading that excludes providing background knowledge threatens to undermine these efforts. This approach flies in the face of decades of research on successful reading comprehension strategies. It also rejects the extensive literature on discipline-based learning in history, which has routinely affirmed the importance of context for understanding primary source texts. Primary sources are typically drawn from a world different from that of the students in time or place, or both. Teachers should provide historical context to their students by giving them information about the time, location, and purpose for the creation of the source. They should also situate the source in a specific location—whether local, national, or international—and examine the source in relation to other events of the time. Context is not the enemy of close reading of primary sources; context is the very thing that makes close reading possible and meaningful.

Moral exemplarity is a desirable but complex achievement. The chapter discusses the meaning of moral exemplarity and examines how the self, as a psychological and spiritual centre within a Jungian perspective, contributes to fostering moral commitment.

A narrative study was conducted amongst ten spiritual healers in New Zealand and France. Stories were collected and analysed interpretively to uncover meaningful patterns about spiritual healers’ moral stance and apprehension of the self.

Spiritual healers demonstrated a deep commitment to the self which clearly sustained a commitment to serve or help others. Commitment to the self was articulated around five core values: self-work, self-reflection, humility, self-integrity and love.

The chapter highlights the moral value of inner work. The self, in its archetypal sense, carries as potential an ‘innate morality’ that resonates in the heart and nurtures integrity and authenticity. To commit to the self requires undertaking a long and painful exploration of the psyche and integrating unconscious material into ego-consciousness. The participating spiritual healers, who had committed to their self and were well advanced on their psychological exploration journey, displayed moral qualities akin to exemplarity.

This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of a resource for use by practitioners to self‐evaluate their policy and practice in relation to the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007.

The self‐evaluation resource was developed in the context of multi‐agency adult protection policy and legislation to reflect key quality indicators relevant to stakeholders, the community, practitioners and their agencies.

The quality indicators were selectively piloted by 15 of the 28 multiagency partners in Scotland. The utility of the resource was demonstrated and in some cases the outcomes led to changes in policy and practice. The effect of resource restrictions was reported to have a bearing on the utility of the resource in some partnerships.

The quality indicators were not equally piloted with participants focusing on evaluation of case outcomes rather than wider structural and agency‐wide aspects of adult protection.

The adult protection, self‐evaluation resource has been identified as a potential means of enabling multi‐agency partnerships to establish the effectiveness of their own policy and practice and offers the potential for cross‐Scotland comparisons and bench marking.

The resource provides the basis for self‐evaluation and improvement in adult support and protection that will make the lives of adults at risk of harm safer.

An innovative approach is described to enable self‐evaluation by adult protection practitioners and policy makers to judge the effectiveness of their own performance and ensure improved performance.

The purpose of the present study was to predict reading comprehension, reading interest, and reading efficacy from teaching styles. Participants were 109 students with learning disabilities from seven elementary schools in Germany. By use of observational protocols and multilevel random coefficient modeling to account for the multilevel structure of the data, results indicated that: (a) reading comprehension was positively predicted from students’ attitudes and a structured classroom discourse, and negatively by a flexible teaching style, (b) reading interest was positively predicted by a structured and positive climate, and negatively by a discourse that was too guided, and (c) reading efficacy was predicted positively from students’ attitudes and teachers’ fostering, and negatively from teachers’ flexibility, guidance, and structure. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of creating adaptive classroom climates for learners who have difficulties in learning.

This study aims to examine the differences in second grade students’ reading fluency and comprehension scores when using varying levels of teacher-guided iPad^® app instruction to determine effective reading practices.

This study reports the results of the quasi-experimental pre–post study by providing differences in fluency and comprehension scores between the experimental and control groups.

This study provides new ways for teachers to use teacher-guided iPad^® app instruction.

Differences between the two groups and pre-test scores could have skewed or accounted for variance in the results reported in the research study.

It is possible for other teachers and researchers to use teacher-guided iPad^® app instruction in new ways to improve reading fluency and comprehension scores.

This study provides new research to demonstrate the relationship between the use of a specific app and teacher-guided instruction with second grade students’ reading fluency and comprehension scores.

“WE come now to another aspect of the question, and it must be admitted that the resource and ingenuity of the opposition have left nothing unnoticed. This is the common and constantly repeated assertion that novels are so cheap that every working man in the country can buy all he needs for less than the annual library rate. This statement was first made some years ago when publishers commenced to issue cheap reprints of non‐copyright novels at 1s. and 6d. each. Previous to this the halfpenny evening paper had been relied upon as affording sufficient literary entertainment for the working man, but when it was found to work out at 13s. per annum, as against a library rate of 1od. or 1s. 4d., the cheap newspaper argument was dropped like a hot cinder. We doubt if the cheap paper‐covered novel is any better. Suppose a workman pays £20 per annum for his house, and is rated at £16, he will pay 1s. 4d. as library rate, or not much more than 1¼d. per month for an unlimited choice of books, newspapers and magazines. But suppose he has to depend on cheap literature. The lowest price at which he can purchase a complete novel of high quality by any author of repute is 3d., but more likely 4½d. or 6d. However, we will take 3d. as an average rate, and assume that our man has leisure to read one book every fortnight. Well, at the end of one year he will have paid 6s. 6d. for a small library by a restricted number of authors, and it will cost him an additional 4s. or 5s. if he contemplates binding his tattered array of books for future preservation. Besides this, he will be practically shut off from all the current literature on topics of the day, as his 3d. a fortnight will hardly enable him to get copyright books by the best living authors. With a Public Library at his command he can get all these, and still afford to buy an occasional poet or essayist, or novel, or technical book, well bound and printed on good paper, such as his friend who would protect him against an iniquitous library rate would not blush to see on his own shelves. It seems hard that the working men of the country should be condemned to the mental entertainment afforded by an accumulation of pamphlets. Literature clothed in such a dress as gaudy paper covers is not very inspiring or elevating, and even the most contented mind would revolt against the possession of mere reading matter in its cheapest and least durable form. The amount of variety and interest existing among cheap reprints of novels is not enough, even if the form of such books were better. It is well known to readers of wide scope that something more than mere pastime can be had out of novels. Take, for example, the splendid array of historical novels which have been written during the present century. No one can read a few of these books without consciously or unconsciously acquiring historical and political knowledge of much value. The amount of pains taken by the authors in the preparation of historical novels is enormous, and their researches extend not only to the political movements of the period, but to the geography, social state, costume, language and contemporary biography of the time. Thus it is utterly impossible for even a careless reader to escape noticing facts when presented in an environment which fixes them in the memory. For example, the average school history gives a digest of the Peninsular War, but in such brief and matter of fact terms as to scarcely leave any impression. On the other hand, certain novels by Lever and Grant, slipshod and inaccurate as they may be in many respects, give the dates and sequence of events and battles in the Peninsula in such a picturesque and detailed manner, that a better general idea is given of the history of the period than could possibly be acquired without hard study of a heavy work like Napier's History. It is hardly necessary to do more than name Scott, James, Cooper, Kingsley, Hugo, Lytton, Dumas, Ainsworth, Reade, G. Eliot, Short‐house, Blackmore, Doyle, Crockett and Weyman in support of this claim. Again, no stranger can gain an inkling of the many‐sided characteristics of the Scot, without reading the works of Scott, Ferrier, Galt, Moir, Macdonald, Black, Oliphant, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Annie Swan and Ian Maclaren. And how many works by these authors can be had for 3d. each? The only way in which a stay‐at‐home Briton can hope to acquire a knowledge of the people and scenery of India is by reading the works of Kipling, Mrs. Steel, Cunningham, Meadows Taylor, and others. Probably a more vivid and memory‐haunting picture of Indian life and Indian scenery can be obtained by reading these authors than by reading laboriously through Hunter's huge gazetteer. In short, novels are to the teaching of general knowledge what illustrations are to books, or diagrams to engineers, they show things as they are and give information about all things which are beyond the reach of ordinary experience or means. It is just the same with juvenile literature, which is usually classed with fiction, and gives to that much‐maligned class a very large percentage of its turnover. The adventure stories of Ballantyne, Fenn, Mayne Reid, Henty, Kingston, Verne and others of the same class are positive mines of topographical and scientific information. Such works represent more than paste and scissors industry in connection with gazetteers, books of travel and historical works; they represent actual observation on the part of the authors. A better idea of Northern Canada can be derived from some of Ballantyne's works than from formal topographical works; while the same may be said of Mexico and South America as portrayed by Captain Mayne Reid, and the West Indies by Michael Scott. The volume of Personal Reminiscences written by R. M. Ballantyne before he died will give some idea of the labour spent in the preparation of books for the young. The life of the navy at various periods can only be learned from the books of Smollett, Marryat and James Hannay, as that of the modern army is only to be got in the works of Lever, Grant, Kipling, Jephson, “John Strange Winter” and Robert Blatchford.

Bathroom, bus stop, dental office and exercise reading fascinate many of us who long for the old days of the reader advisor. Trying to find the right type of book for passing time requires skill and practice. In the old days the librarian might help. That's rarely true today. Let me explain with suggestions for a booklist, and a few words about odd moment reading habits.