The difference model of reading disability was used to generate three research hypotheses for testing the relationship between language development (syntactic maturity) and reading achievement at the secondary school level. This model assumes that reading difficulties are attributable to differences or mismatches between the reader's response…

The effects of sentence combining instruction on student writing skills (punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and syntactic maturity) and reading achievement were studied in eight-, nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old children. The experimental group, which received instruction in sentence combining, consisted of 20 students from each age group.…

The descriptive contents (cognitive meanings) of the modals "can,""may,""could,""might,""must,""need,""ought,""should," compared with paraphrastic verbs and adjectives, motivate two cross-classifying dimensions: logical modality (possibility, impossibility, necessity)…

This guide provides information on the Lao language and alphabet for teachers of English to ethnic Lao refugees. Twenty-seven English pronunciation lessons dealing with the particular problems of Lao speakers learning English are included. Lao words are written in a phonetic Roman alphabet. An annotated bibliography of resources is appended. (JB)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ANALYSIS WAS TO DISCOVER CERTAIN ASPECTS OF STYLE (BOTH LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL) WHICH COULD BE COUNTED AND WHICH WOULD, WHEN COMPARED, DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE WRITTEN PROSE OF TWO AUTHORS. THE SUBJECT SELECTED FOR ANALYSIS WAS "THE O'RUDDY," BEGUN BY STEPHEN CRANE AND COMPLETED BY ROBERT BARR. SINCE THERE WAS NO…

English teachers have a responsibility to interpret for students the current linguistic insights into language and to lead them in an open-minded inquiry involving (1) careful observation of language data, (2) translation of this observation into rule-like descriptions, and (3) verification of the rules to determine if revisions must be made. In…

In order to determine the effects of writing for different audiences and in different modes of discourse on the syntactic complexity of compositions written by sixth and tenth grade students, 240 students were asked to write in three different modes (argumentive, descriptive, and narrative) to be read by a teacher and a best friend. There was a…

The four papers in this collection discuss language perception and comprehension and report on experiments in those areas. The first paper, "The Influence of Non-Linguistic Knowledge on Perceiving and Verifying Sentences," discusses the reliance of language perception and comprehension on the interaction of linguistic and world…

Comprehension is a process that occurs within the reader and is at least partially dependent on cohesion and coherence. The concept of cohesion is used to show how sentences which are structurally independent of one another may be linked together. Cohesion exists within a text and is not the same as coherence, which is something the reader…

The years after children demonstrate comprehension of particular syntactic structures have received little attention. What happens in language development after mastery is achieved? Are children then like adult speakers in judging the acceptability of grammatical structures? Questions addressed in this research were: Will older children and young…

Discursive functions are seldom expressed in an absolutely neutral way. In most cases, various colorings - expressive, affective or social - are superimposed on the utterance by which a function is conveyed. In so far as these colorings are not random shades, but can be regarded as graded nuances within given ranges, selected in order to fit the…

Two one-semester English courses, English 50.1 (English Fundamentals), concentrating on sentence construction, and English 50.2 (Basic Writing Skills), concentrating on paragraph development, were devised at Cerritos College (California) in an attempt to improve the effectiveness of the old English 50 (Grammar and Composition), which had combined…

This study investigated children's performance with the passive-transformation when both the mode of presentation and the mode of response were verbal. The study was also designed to provide a framework for the examination of theoretical issues regarding strategies in speech perception. Kindergarten and first-grade children individually heard 6…

This study questions the developmental nature of the ability to understand syntactic structures. An exploration is made of the possibility of learning more about reading comprehension and readability by examining responses made to sentences described by transformational grammarians as structurally ambiguous. A group of fifth grade students were…

Two passages were written, one on the topic of graphs and one on the topic of sonnets. Sixteen versions of each passage were constructed. Each version contained identical content but different textual manipulations. One hundred twelve community college students and 48 Cornell students participated in the experiment. Each read a single version of…