This paper suggests that a change in mode of expression --narrative, descriptive, or expository--can influence the syntactic complexity of children's writing. The implications of the research studies reviewed here may offer direction for education in general. Instructional strategies which make use of variation in writing mode to encourage gains…

To explore student facility with argumentative writing, 40 persuasive essays of 5th, 7th, and 11th grade students were analyzed for their relative percentage of reporting (narrating), interpreting, generalizing, and speculative sentences. Fifth and seventh graders were found to use significantly more narrative and fewer generalizations than older…