Reviews the literature on sentence combining effectiveness; reports on research suggesting that much still needs to be learned about (1) the effects of sentence combining on writing ability, (2) the interaction of sentence combining with other activities, and (3) the efficacy of using sentence combining exercises beyond the eighth grade. (AEA)

Investigates whether students at different ages write "beyond" their normal syntactic maturity. The authors also discuss whether students at different levels write at a level which is syntactically less mature than their own level and, if so, to what extent they adjust their syntax when told to write for a less mature audience. (Author/RK)

This book contends that systematic oral and written exercises enable students to overcome many difficulties encountered in writing English. The first chapter is a general discussion of the teaching of composition today. The second section describes an experiment in oral composition drills in a seventh-grade class. The third section describes the…

Level 2 of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Composition Skills Program is designed to help children achieve writing fluency and elementary punctuation skills. This report describes the results of the 1971-1972 developmental tryouts of the program in a wide range of school locations. Data obtained from the tryout corroborated data obtained…

A total of 113 seventh grade students participated in a study to test the effectiveness of sentence combining practice as a means to significantly improve syntactic and semantic fluency in student writing. Methods included pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest t-unit analyses of syntactic fluency, and four pretest and posttest analyses of…

Compares evaluative assumptions built into published sets of guidelines for microcomputer software evaluation with those derived from three small United Kingdom case studies of microcomputer usage in reading/language classes. The case studies provide data on teacher and student reaction to five computer programs used by 9- to 13-year-olds. (MBR)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 24 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the composing process and modes of invention; (2) methods of teaching composition in various integrated programs; (3) writing in peer groups; (4) holistic invention; (5) computer…