The study examined the cognitive processes involved in written sentence construction in children affected by prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) when compared a control group of nonexposed typically developing children, and a contrast group of nonexposed children with various clinical diagnoses. Results indicated that children with PAE and those in…

According to the authors, five years ago their school district embraced Understanding by Design as the organizing framework for curriculum. The emphasis on enduring understandings and essential questions led the sixth grade social studies teachers to reevaluate what they were teaching in their World History Curriculum. Together the authors worked…

Sentence combining (SC) has proved to be valuable in increasing the syntactic maturity of students. However, teachers have felt uncomfortable with the arhetorical nature of SC. Little research has been done on the relation of cognitive processes and SC. SC might be more useful if account is taken of the fact that syntax is an abode for cognitive…

Author suggests that pupils will write more coherent and unified compositions if they are taught to look for the logical connection between parts, looking to see if two parts are joined by an and" relationship, an and then" relationship, a but" relationship, a more specifically" relationship or a therefore" relationship. (PD)

Points out that writing errors of journalism students can result from faulty thought patterns involving thinking in sentence fragments, personifying objects, using bureaucratic abstractions, and condensing complex ideas; examines ways of dealing with bureaucratic coding and compressed sentences. (Conclusion of a two-part article.) (GT)

Readers are "dumb" because they are not privy to the mind and intentions of the writer; and the failure of the unsuccessful writer is a failure to forecast what it is going to be like to be a dumb reader of the document. Sample sentences from students' writing illustrate the following types of writing problems, which force the reader to examine…

In a study conducted to show the importance of sentence connections as a way of looking at a writer's cognitive processes, three devices used to achieve coherence in written discourse were compared and proved to be unequally effective. The devices were cohesion (use of a textual reference in a sentence that has an antecedent in a preceding…

Points out that writing errors of journalism students can result from faulty thought patterns involving thinking in sentence fragments, personifying objects, using bureaucratic abstractions, and condensing complex ideas; examines ways of dealing with sentence fragments and personification. (First of a two-part article.) (GT)

Investigates the relative effectiveness of two adjunct questioning techniques employed to increase writers' elaboration. (HOD)

In 2 experiments involving 271 elementary and middle-school students with greater and lesser writing skills, components of the writing-translating process were examined. Skilled writers showed more fluent sentence-generation processes and were faster on lexical decision-making tasks. Fluent translating may help reduce the working-memory load…

Investigates the effects of writing ability and mode of discourse on cognitive capacity engagement across three stages of the composing process, noting that writing ability differentially affected cognitive capacity engagement across discourse modes when using the secondary-task method. (HOD)

A study investigated the effect of Frank O'Hare's "Sentencecraft" sentence combining program on the written syntactic skills, reading comprehension level, and speed of average ability ninth-grade students. The sample consisted of 75 experimental group students and 68 control group students. Following a pretest, the experimental group…

Basic writers often experience difficulties when trying to articulate ideas in writing that are more specific, systematic, and fully developed than their speech. The writers must learn how to put their thinking into the appropriate forms and expressions necessary to address an academic audience. Noting that the natural working of the human mind…

As human understanding is largely metaphorical, what metaphor is, how children use it, and how they can be taught to use it more effectively are important educational concerns. A direct or indirect comparison between two apparently unlike things, metaphor consists of a topic, a vehicle of comparison, and ground--or traits--linking the topic and…

Most of the mechanical and content errors in the sentences written by journalism students can be attributed to four faulty patterns that can be traced to errors in the thinking process: fragmented sentence parts, personification, bureaucratic coding ("officialese"), and compressed sentences. While acceptable in spoken communication where…