Recent research in syntactic complexity has described and specified structural characteristics that distinguish levels of syntactic density. A computer program, written in Programmer Language I for the IBM 370 at Pennsylvania State University, has been developed to apply a syntactic density formula to samples of natural language and provide a…

Compositions based on a picture as stimulus and written by fourth and sixth graders were studied for syntactic and lexical deviations. From the corpus of data, eight interpretations were made: (1) comma fault, sentence sense, and coordinating conjunctions were the most frequent syntactic problems encountered--all could be eliminated by oral…

A syntactic density instrument was devised to determine how children use specific syntactic structures in their oral and written language. (JH)

A computer program for measuring the complexity of syntactic structures in different levels of graded reading materials and in children's oral and written language is presented. (RW)

The author describes an approach to teaching reading and writing in which emphasis is on the child's production of language. (Author/JB)

This study attempts to answer two questions: (1) How does the written English syntax of black, white, Indian and Spanish-American children in the intermediate grades differ? and (2) How does the tested language ability of these children differ? Concludes with a brief list of differences for teacher use in the classroom. (Author/SDH)

The objectives of this study were (1) to analyze the linguistic structures and the linguistic deviations used by children in their written sentences, and (2) to compare the structures and deviations with the quality of the writing, as judged by three competent raters. Eighty fourth-grade and 80 sixth-grade children (8% black) from working-class…

Includes facsimiles of paragraphs written by students in grades 1-6. (RD)

The Syntactic Density Score (SDS) is designed to determine the syntactic density of the oral and written discourse of students in grades 1-14, as well as that of reading materials selected for students. The SDS can be hand tabulated; however, a computer program is available which can determine the score from any corpus of material typed into the…

This working paper presents a twelve-part paridigm for testing the level of concept attainment in language arts. Items were selected for three topics: words, words in sentences, and connected discourse. Within each topic concepts presented in the middle elementary grades were identified, and ten concepts were randomly selected for each topic. Each…

Three papers, based on a study done with 160 Wisconsin fourth- and sixth-graders, are presented in an attempt to contribute to the psycholinguistic information needed in developing elementary English language learning programs. The first paper, "A Linguistic Ability Test for Elementary Grades," discusses a written test made up of 15 linguistic…