Sentence combining--a technique of putting strings of sentence kernels together in a variety of ways so that completed sentences possess greater syntactic maturity--is a method offering much promise in the teaching of writing and composition. The purpose of this document is to provide a literature review of this procedure. After defining the term…

A study examined the effect of a whole-language-type program for learning sentence structure with high school students in a dropout prevention program. Subjects, 60 students in a Chicago, Illinois public school dropout prevention program, were randomly assigned to a control or experimental group and were administered a diagnostic pre- and posttest…

A study is reported that investigated American children's use of subjects in early speech and compared this cross-sectional data to longitudinal data on Italian children's production of subjects. Twenty-one American children aged 1.10 to 2.8 years were recorded in mother-child interactions and grouped by mean length of utterance (MLU) produced.…

A Francis Christensen-oriented, "generative rhetoric" 12-step approach to sentence skills was used in two English-as-a-second-language composition courses at Wichita (Kansas) State University in 1980. The classes consisted of approximately 50% Middle Eastern students, 35% Southeast Asian students, and 15% African and South American students. Two…

A curriculum for intermediate composition for students of English as a second language is presented based on the use of levels of specificity as an organizing principle. The course objective is for students to write well-planned, coherent paragraphs acceptable to the American academic audience, within limited formats. Two additional fundamentals…

An instructional manual for reference use in college and university teaching is presented, based on a 2-year study of the specific difficulties that students have in receptive communication (listening and reading) in introductory courses. Although the investigation focused primarily on the disciplines of psychology, physics, and philosophy, many…

Certain word-order patterns are more basic and less marked than others. The more strongly marked a pattern seems to be in isolation, the stronger must be the contextual forces motivating its use, if it is to seem natural in a text. Various topicalizations (of adverbials, objects, and parts of verb phrases, for example) need various degrees of…

A fundamental problem in the study of spontaneous speech is how to segment it for analysis. The segments should be relevant for the study of linguistic structures, speech planning, speech production, or communication strategies. Operational rules for segmentation should consider a wide variety of criteria and be hierarchically ordered. This is…

Formulaic speech, expressions learned as unanalyzed wholes and used on particular occasions by native speakers, is contrasted to "grammatical" sentences using novel combinations of words in the second language classroom. The speech produced by three limited English-speaking children in an English program suggests that formulaic speech…

A series of studies was conducted to explore three trends that have emerged from sentence combining research: (1) students with lower abilities in sentence combining and reading comprehension tend to register higher gains in both areas as a result of sentence combining instruction; (2) the broader the range of any student's sentence combining…

A study examined the differences and similarities in the relationship between the organization of written English produced by native Chinese, English, and Spanish speaking adult college students when they wrote in the narrative and expository modes. Specifically, the study explored the kinds of cohesive devices that operated in the English text…

To determine whether reading and writing are as closely related as commonly supposed, a study estimated the amount of overlap that exists between several components of reading and writing knowledge. Data were obtained from 256 second graders and 251 fifth graders. Reading measures included tests of phonics (word knowledge), vocabulary (lexical…

To study the effects of writers' attending to the informational needs of their readers (episodic perspective taking), each of 65 college freshmen was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (1) no attention to audience, (2) attention to audience during prewriting, and (3) attention to audience during revising. All three groups…

A cross-linguistic comparison of syntax acquisition patterns examined preferential subject omission in the naturally-occurring speech of three Japanese toddlers from the Tokyo area and compared the findings to data on English acquisition. Results indicate that acquisition patterns of Japanese do not mirror those of English with regard to this…

A handbook to the grammar of Mauritanian Arabic (Hassaniya) is intended for Peace Corps volunteers, and is designed to focus attention on proper grammatical forms. Lesson topics include the article, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, negation of the implied verb "to be," noun gender, adjective gender, number, "there is/are and…