This article reports results of a corpus-based evaluation of 14 syntactic complexity measures as objective indices of college-level English as a second language (ESL) writers' language development. I analyzed large-scale ESL writing data from the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (Wen, Wang, & Liang, 2005) using a computational system…

Students with (n=45) and without (n=60) mild mental retardation were compared on nine measures of syntactic complexity in writing at three grade levels (grades six, seven, and eight). Multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant differences for group but not for grade level or group by grade level. (Author/DB)

Presents a review of cognitive psychology research dealing with the organization and functioning of oral and written language production mechanisms. Discusses works dealing with the microstructural aspects of language, primarily oral production. Describes how the research perspective has evolved from modular to connectionist models. Examines the…

To examine the relationship between writers' knowledge of expository frames--conventions accepted by both writers and readers in association with a particular type of discourse--and writing skill, 60 persuasive essays were analyzed for content organization. The essays, evaluated as either above average or average on a high school writing…

A study examined the relationship of multiple measures of reading and writing at the second and fifth grade levels. Multiple reading tests (measuring vocabulary, word recognition, sentence comprehension, and passage comprehension) and writing tests (evaluating vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity, and providing qualitative and…