This study examined the factors influencing the choice of the conjunctions "and" or "but" in joining two clauses of a compound sentence. Subjects were students at first-, fourth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade and adult levels. (Author/ED)

An effective approach to minimizing the difficulties ESL learners have with the English verb phrase is to associate a clear function with each form. Three main contexts for teaching and lines of development are discussed. (Author/ND)

This textbook aims to enable pupils to master writing good English rather than teach theory of style and criticism. The contents are divided into five parts. Part I covers construction and combination of sentence and provides a variety of practical exercises. Part II focuses on varying the structure and phraseology of sentences. Part III is an…

If college freshmen know something about syntax, have practiced combining and breaking down sentences, and have learned to think in terms of deep structures and surface structures, they may be better able to understand and relieve the discomfort caused by a garbled key sentence structure. Grammar instruction in freshman composition provides a…

A reaction-time experiment measured the time that subjects needed to read and comprehend a series of sentences, the syntactic form of which was systematically varied. The focus was on the effect of syntactic structure on processing time, reflected in reaction time in a neutral context, and the effect of prior context on time needed to process a…

Two studies were conducted to test Francis Christensen's theory of generative rhetoric, which maintains that students should be taught the types of sentences that they infrequently use, especially ones with nonrestrictive phrasal modifiers (participial phrases and appositives) as a way to approach invention. The first study examined the principles…

Constructed on the premise that the teacher with a written assignment to evaluate seeks procedures and activities for remediating the errors present in that assignment, this handbook is designed as a tool for the teaching of remedial composition in grades five through twelve. The handbook is composed of a checklist and a diagnostic grid, followed…

Predictors of relative clause production in adult second language acquisition were examined through a replication and extension of a study by Schachter (1974). The present study is different in that it was based on oral instead of written production and it was designed to examine avoidance with the consideration that avoidance presupposed choice.…

High school students in Quebec city were tested for their ability to choose Standard French as opposed to Anglicized modes of expression. Lexical, syntagmatic, and phrase Anglicisms were covered. Both direct lexical borrowings from English and translations of idiomatic English terms were included. Students were divided into categories according to…

AN INSTRUMENT FOR MEASURING LANGUAGE MATURITY SHOULD BE EASILY ADMINISTRABLE AND SCOREABLE AND SHOULD BE BASED ON VALID INDICES OF LANGUAGE MATURITY. A RECENT STUDY BY KELLOG W. HUNT SUGGESTED THAT THESE INDICES BE BASED ON A NEW SYNTACTIC UNIT, THE T-UNIT, CONSISTING OF 1 MAIN CLAUSE TOGETHER WITH ANY CLAUSES SUBORDINATED TO IT. COORDINATED MAIN…

THIS STUDY INVESTIGATED THE EFFECTS OF THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF READING MATERIALS ON THE EYE-VOICE SPAN (EVS). THE EYE-VOICE SPAN IS THE DISTANCE THE EYE IS AHEAD OF THE VOICE IN READING ALOUD. THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE STUDY WAS THAT THE EYE-VOICE SPAN IS NOT A CONSTANT OR FIXED LENGTH REGARDLESS OF THE MATERIAL BEING READ, BUT THAT, AMONG OTHER…

Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is a theory that predicts how units of information should be distributed in a sentence and how sentences should be related in a discourse. A binary topic-comment structure is assigned to each FSP sentence. For most English sentences, the topic is associated with the subject or the left-most noun phrase, and…