A sharp increase in the proportion of informational text with the corresponding expansion of cognitive demands and conceptual structures is a widely held explanation for the decline in reading achievement at the fourth-grade level. In this study, differences in the proportion of informational text across the second, third, and fourth grades were…

Suggests five principles that characterize written language development: the establishment of equivalences; exploration and orchestration of the system; reliance on shifting relationships of form and function; differentiation and integration of symbolic functions; and participation in social dialogue. Discusses implications of this viewpoint for…

Concludes, from a study of 60 sixth, eighth, and tenth graders, that a closer correspondence between orthography and phonology seems to develop with age and exposure to written language. (DD)

Study reveals that a large percentage of students appear to suffer from severe reading and writing handicaps. (Author/ML)

No relation between composition "dialect" and judged quality of the writing was found. (DD)

Significant correlations, especially between the black and white groups, and black and Hispanic groups, indicate that all groups show similar types of non-standard English usage and generally with the same frequency. (Author)

Students have been taught to recall specific details, but often are unable to read critically or to grasp the main ideas. (JH)

Investigated the written syntactic maturity of students from grade ten through sixth year university. (DD)

Investigates the relationship between the oral and written language of one college-level basic writing student who is a speaker of vernacular Black English (VBE). Reports that neither VBE patterns in the student's oral language nor other features of orality that previous research has identified account for his writing problems. (HOD)

Proposes a comprehensive model for communications research focusing upon printed messages published for juvenile audiences, and applies the model to futuristic images in children's fiction. (DD)

Examines kindergarten children's use of talk during writing to draw inferences regarding how children use speech to make sense of written language. (HOD)

Good writers, as compared to a randomly-chosen comparison group, spent more time in both prewriting and writing, revised more, re-read more often during writing, and were more concerned with the purpose of their writing. (JH)