Six passages were used in this study to investigate the recoding behavior of eighth and ninth grade students for both increase and decrease in syntactic complexity and thus gain a more accurate picture of their grammar. Each of the two selections used was written in kernel sentences at the eighth grade level of writing and the skilled adult level of writing. The teacher was asked to distribute a packet containing the test passages without any verbal assistance. The instructions asked the student to read the paragraph and then rewrite it in a better way without leaving out any of the information. Results indicated the ninth grade subjects rewrote the passages using longer T-units and clauses than did the eighth grade subjects. Further, the students seemed to comprehend all that the input passages stated. This implied that while the students may not have produced syntactic structures at the skilled adult level, they could nevertheless comprehend writing at that level. (HOD)