Since introducing a grammar unit can be daunting and frustrating for both teachers and students, a collaborative unit for a 10th-grade class was planned that would satisfy an administrative requirement but also maintain the integrity of the writing program. The unit was planned by developing an approach of non-intrusive grammar instruction at the…

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…

Students at first, fourth, seventh, and tenth grade levels and at graduate levels chose conjunctions "and" and "but" in two-clause sentences with varying degrees of logical relationship, with similar or contrasting clauses. Grade, type of relationship, and similarity were variables in a 5 x 3 x 2 repeated measures analysis of response to logical…

The compositions of sixth, tenth, and twelfth grade students were used to determine whether narrations or arguments of high syntactic complexity were rated higher than narrations or arguments of low syntactic complexity. Selection of the compositions was made in pairs--one of high syntactic complexity and one of low syntactic complexity--each…