A study of the effect of lexical items within first sentences which affect reading expectations for the remainder of the passage, and of the effects of violation of reader expectation following first sentences, showed poorer performance by low achievers on the "violating" passage and a performance increase with familiar content regardless of a…

Aspects of syntax and semantics which affect sentence comprehensibility were investigated for their effects on children's understanding of the dependency relationship of subordinate to main clauses in sentences. Children in grades 2, 4, 6, and 8 were asked to select the main content from orally presented sentences by checking a picture which…

A coding scheme developed by M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan was used in a study that investigated how students in grades 4, 6, and 8 developed meaning within narrative texts. Students, after being presented with a visual stimulus, were asked to describe what was happening and say what happened before and after the picture. Next, an oral assignment…