This article presents evidence that, from selected spectroscopic articles in the earliest volumes of the Physical Review to other selected spectroscopic articles from the same journal in 1980, a shift in sentence style takes place. This shift is from what M.A.K. Halliday calls the dynamic style (which reflects happenings, processes, and actions)…

Interest in the application of modern linguistic theory in composition research has faded, possibly because some of the basic principles that inform linguistic study have been misunderstood. For example, a common misconception is that linguists use the term "generate" to mean "produce." However, the purpose of a generative…

Reviews discourse analytic and text comprehension studies for their contributions to a cognitive process view of writing, then reports on a study that combines discourse analysis with online pause data to determine how semantic propositions reflect sentence-level planning patterns. (FL)

Writing research has long sought to identify the internal features of written discourse that help to explain qualitative differences among student texts. Reflecting the theories of the Prague School linguists, this study used a topical structure analysis to distinguish between the sentences and T-units of 48 college freshman essays evaluated as…

Provides a brief review of sentence combining development and research, and suggests some future directions for the technique. (RL)

Explores findings from research on the psychology of reading that may confirm and enlarge upon both the importance of planning and the perceptions of plans in writing and reading. (RL)

A review of the literature reveals that three writing skills have been of particular interest to writing researchers recently. First, work on planning the rhetorical strategy recognizes three components of the planning process: prewriting, pausing, and reviewing what has been written. Second, research on audience analysis indicates that maturity…

The second of three volumes on the relationship between writing research and instruction, this report first describes a 1982 conference on writing policies and problems sponsored by the Educational Research and Development division of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) and the California State University, Long Beach. The second section…

Discusses the collected research on free modifiers and "minor sentences," or "formal fragments." Asks English teachers for less concentration on initial placement of modifiers, less rigidity concerning fragments, and more practice with punctuating final free modifiers. (RL)

Reports of research on using different patterns for connecting sentences. Shows the importance of applying insights from text linguistics to writing instruction. (RL)

Intended for teachers at all levels involved in composition instruction, this revised edition reflects the dynamic growth occurring in the discipline of writing, and consolidates advances made in teaching methodology. The 38 articles, written by such researchers and theorists in the field as James Moffett, Maxine Hairston, Janet Emig, Donald…

Research on the relationship between syntactic complexity and quality of written composition was reviewed to test the assumption that these two concepts are positively related. The studies reviewed, which have appeared during the past 15 years, fall into two broad categories: (1) intervention studies designed to increase syntactic complexity and…