The purposes of this study were (1) to provide a method for the quantitative study of grammatical (syntactic) structures which is coherent, systematic, and broad, yet capable of refinement to accommodate details, and (2) to search for the developmental trends in the frequency of various grammatical structures written by students of average…

The need for an objective index of language development has long been recognized, and various means of measuring language growth have been proposed. This study compares two of the indexes that have recently been devised for measuring language growth. Its specific purposes are (1) to examine the correlation between mean T-unit length and syntactic…

Writing samples representing argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were gathered from 52 fourth-grade pupils. Significant differences were found among the four modes of writing and among high, medium, and low ability groups, for T-unit length and clauses per T-unit; lesser differences also were found for clause length.…

A study was conducted to examine syntactical development in spontaneous written language of selected preschool, kindergarten and first grade children. The two major experimental questions were: (1) Will there be development towards greater complexity in the syntax of spontaneous writing and how should it be described? (2) What transformational…

Designed to provide a scale for assessing the quality of personal or imaginative writing, the Evaluation Scale for Personal Writing (ESPW) consists of a group of twenty-eight imaginative essays written by British fifteen year olds. These essays have been arranged in order of quality by an eight member sub-committee of the London Association for…

Confronted with the problem of determining the frequency of syntactical patterns in present-day written Australian English, the author employs a method of analysis which produces an output in the form of a two-dimensional line diagram showing all the syntagms comprising the sentence under analysis. For the remaining problem of sorting the diagrams…

Results of two experiments revealed a significant correlation between function-word predictability and reader enjoyment and a strong correlation between content-word unpredictability and reader enjoyment. (FL)

Presents a survey of English-as-a-Second-Language students (n=142) for their preferences of writing prompt on essay tests and for other factors relating to their choices such as perceived difficulty of a topic. Findings reveal that these students, while not alert to potentially helpful syntactic clues in prompts, are probably using appropriate…

The interaction of rules concerning verb placement and verbal conjugation in the acquisition of German as a foreign language is discussed. A study using constrained written tasks showed that accuracy in verbal conjugation varies by word-order environment and improves in tasks that focus solely on conjunction. Tests are appended. (Contains 49…

Reading and writing are both creative acts of communication that use written language as a vehicle for meaning. A strong theoretical case for teaching the two processes concurrently can be built by examining points of contact between reading and writing. One such point is context concerns. The Communication Triangle model (author/audience/…

This volume contains papers presented in connection with a symposium held in 1975 and sponsored by Abo Akademi, for the purpose of discussing ongoing research in word-order studies. Papers include: (1) a prolegomena by N.E. Enkvist; (2) "On the Ordering of Sister Constituents in Swedish," by E. Andersson; (3) "What is New…

In comparing the written and oral English syntax of Mexican-American bilingual and Anglo-American monolingual students, this study sought to learn specifically whether these two groups of students represent the same speech population in English syntactic use. A total of 70 subjects were randomly selected for the four groups (bilingual and…

This publication presents four suggested language arts curriculum units designed to be used with high school students in first- or second-year Spanish classes who are native speakers of the language. The first unit, which deals with the Spanish alphabet, is meant to be used as an introduction to the Spanish language. The second and third units,…

Compares written expression of temporal relationships by American and Mexican children fourth- and ninth-grade children (N=80) receiving long-term second language instruction to that of native speaker children of the same grade level. Nonnative speakers use the same general patterns of syntactic, lexical, and discursive devices for expressing…

Presents an analytic foundation of English-as-a-Second-Language pedagogical research and application extending beyond the traditional "superficial" categories of morphosyntactic rule violations and false cognates. The study focuses on lexical-semantics, syntax, text-analysis, and pragmatics, and synthesizes major categories of…