This document reviews some of the indices of language development which have been constructed since the Anderson study of 1937. In addition to the findings of Anderson, the T-unit proposed by Hunt (1965), the measure of T-unit length and mean number of sentence-combining transformations per T-unit developed by O'Donnell, Griffin, and Norris…

A paper presented at annual convention of National Council of Teachers of English (59th, Washington, D.C., November 28, 1969). (RD)

A study by Brown and Fraser (1963) shows that children tend to use telegraphic speech, employing content and omitting function words. This limitation involves the grammatical or semantic complexity of the sentences. Braine (1963) attempted to formulate productive rules for the initial stages in the acquisition of syntax by identifying two classes…

A profile of the articles that appeared in the first ten volumes of "Research in the Teaching of English" indicates that throughout the decade of the 1970s more research effort was directed toward language and composition than was directed toward literature and more toward reading than toward nonprint media. Research for the 1980s should focus on…

This report analyzes the articles published in "Research in the Teaching of English" during the first ten years of publication, a period that represents the influence of two editors. Among the findings were that studies related to composition have been most numerous, followed by studies related to language. Studies related to literature have been…

Urges classroom teachers to examine the current language research and dialect discoveries in order to teach effectively.

This study reflects the author's efforts to synthesize ideas drawn from various linguistic theorists, especially Schlesinger, Chomsky, and Fillmore. The first section gives the theoretical background for the study. The second section discusses roles, relations, and constructs. The final section discusses the applications of the study to teaching…

This study attempted to explore the possibility of increasing sensitivity to syntactic structure by exposing subjects representing a range of ability to a programed sentence structure module. Students in three ninth grade classes who had completed four weeks of supplementary work with "English Sentence Structure: Programed Exercises" and scored 70…

Sensitivity to syntactic structure can be increased by direct instruction. (JH)

The attempt to teach deep structure recovery skills to poor readers was unsuccessful, perhaps because of student attitudes. (JH)

A systematic review of the nine volumes of "Research in the Teaching of English" published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) since 1967 reflects trends of relative importance in various areas of investigation. It is probably true that more research effort is directed toward the secondary level than the college level,…

The need for an objective index of language development has long been recognized, and various means of measuring language growth have been proposed. This study compares two of the indexes that have recently been devised for measuring language growth. Its specific purposes are (1) to examine the correlation between mean T-unit length and syntactic…

This investigation sought to learn about the oral and written language behavior of students from kindergarten age through grade 7, and to determine the validity of different analytic techniques for measuring children's development in control of syntax. Language samples were collected from 180 children (grades K-3, 5, and 7) by having the children…