The purpose of this investigation was to examine syntax comprehension by poor and average prereaders in first grade and poor and average readers in second grade, to determine whether a relationship exists between reading ability or reading readiness and comprehension of syntax. Subjects were 55 first-grade children and 56 second-grade children of…

Performance of 36 second graders in judging grammaticality was not associated with reading ability or metaphonological skill, while performance in correcting violations of grammaticality was strongly associated. Short-term memory had minimal effects on judgment performance, but greatly affected correction performance. Both judgment and correction…

Finds significantly more errors and a higher percentage of detrimental errors on passages composed of later appearing structures. Supports Goodman's view of the reading process (that reading is a "psycholinguistic guessing game"), and indicates a need for more sophisticated readability formulas. (RL)

No evidence was found to indicate that grammatical reading interference is an important factor in the poor reading achievement of Black youngsters. (JH)

A free response cloze test was administered to 31 third graders to test the hypothesis that qualitative as well as quantitative differences in syntactic abilities or skills exist between good and poor readers. The subjects were divided into two reading level groups (good readers and poor readers) according to their scores on the SRA Assessment…

Linguistic profiles of 7 dyslexic, 7 mildly dyslexic, 30 average, 16 good readers were examined at kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4. Groups did not differ in language comprehension but did differ in confrontation and rapid automatized naming, three syntactic measures, and verbal memory. Kindergarten ability at giving letter sounds and rapid…

Review of the contribution of various oral language abilities to early reading performances found that, although phonemic awareness was the best predictor of early reading skills, metasyntactic ability also often accounted for significant variance. Once children acquire initial decoding skills, narrative discourse and other metalinguistic skills…

To determine if there are qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the syntactic errors committed by good and poor readers, two studies were conducted. In the first, 31 third graders, grouped as either good or poor readers according to reading grade equivalent scores, completed a 300 word cloze passage. The results suggested that poor…

This study examined oral-reading characteristics associated with language development in second-grade children, working on the suppositions that oral syntactic proficiency influences a child's use of syntax while reading and that this influence can be seen in oral reading, particularly in the contextual appropriateness of errors. It was also…

A study originally involving 56 children from four schools was undertaken to observe the development of children's oral language and concepts of print during the kindergarten year using the Record of Oral Language (ROL) and the Concepts about Print (Sand) tests. In addition, the Sand test was administered early in the first grade to the available…

This study was designed to explore the role of the syntax of beginning readers' spoken language in their reading performance. In order to be able to isolate and manipulate the syntactic variable, two alternative forms of English, Standard English and Black English, were used. Sixty second-grade children participated in the study. Each child was…

This study compared (1) performance on language skills and phonological process measures by 41 kindergarten children with speech/language impairments, and (2) their reading ability in first grade. Children with semantic-syntactic language deficits exhibited more difficulties in reading than did children with articulation impairments. Phonological…