Analyzes writing samples of 22 first graders and 13 second graders to determine how children learn the rules of punctuation. Finds they develop necessary hypotheses which are alternative to the standard end-sentence period placement rule. Suggests young "language scientists" need opportunities to practice this innate trade: rule formation. (NH)

Describes two studies designed to determine how community college students in remedial freshman English sections defined a written "sentence." Concludes that subjects associated a complete written sentence with a verb-noun sequence of a certain requisite length and with a word string containing a prepositional phrase. (ET)

Investigates the relative effectiveness of two adjunct questioning techniques employed to increase writers' elaboration. (HOD)

To determine the effects of oral sentence-structure exercises upon student writing, a 1-year experiment was conducted with two randomly matched fourth-grade classes of approximately equal size, one control class and one experimental class. The experimental group regularly completed exercises designed to teach students to produce sentences…

Investigates the effects of writing ability and mode of discourse on cognitive capacity engagement across three stages of the composing process, noting that writing ability differentially affected cognitive capacity engagement across discourse modes when using the secondary-task method. (HOD)

Investigates the relationship between topic-specific background knowledge and measures of overall quality, coherence, syntactic complexity, audience, and function in the expository writing of tenth grade students. (HOD)