Readability systems have once more become prominent in policy and practice because of recommendations in the Common Core State Standards. This study revisited two features of current text analysis (readability) systems: their generalizability to all grade levels and to all content areas. A database that encompassed texts across the grade bands and…

The clearest writing style is one in which the grammatical structures of a sentence most redundantly support the perceived semantic structure; a textured style is one in which the syntactic complexity invests a sentence with distinctive force. (DD)

The ability to monitor learning and memory of sentences was investigated in a group of 72 undergraduate students. Some sentences included within-sentence elaborations clarifying subject-verb-object relations and some did not. Results provide insights into subjects' recall and ability to monitor item difficulty and into effects of testing. (TJH)

A study examined the relationship between students' linguistic insecurity (writing apprehension) and writing performance. College students in three remedial and two freshman composition classes were administered a test of linguistic insecurity that included pronunciation items and choices of hypercorrect, colloquial, and nonstandard versions of…

In order to study the complexity of sentence combining in college students, 32 students from five basic composition courses were asked to perform three writing tasks at three distinct times during the eight-week instructional period. Each student was asked to rewrite a passage of kernel sentences, to write a composition in the argumentative mode,…

Indicates that, in relation to oral systems, written systems are more complex in structure, reveal more adjectival but less adverbial elaboration, show more complex verbal structures, and contain fewer indices of personal reference. (RL)

A type of item used frequently in standardized testing involves the recognition of a sentence. Examples of such items are the sentence completion items, used in both the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and the sentence correction items used in the Test of Standard Written English. Tests that contain such…

The development of alternative instructional activities for use in the basic writing classroom and a description and analysis of four levels of basic writing are the results of a study of basic writing teaching techniques. The linguistic concepts of immediate and transferred utterances and nominal-verbal pairing, and the work of L. Vygotsky on…

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…

A study used compressed speech to observe aural processing strategy differences between native English-speakers and high- and medium-level learners of English as a second language. Quantitative and qualitative differences in recall among the three groups were found. (Author/MSE)