Child writers’ construction and reconstruction of single sentences and construction of multi-sentence texts: contributions of syntax and transcription to translation

Abstract

Children in grades one to four completed two sentence construction tasks: (a) Write one complete sentence about a topic prompt (sentence integrity, Study 1); and (b) Integrate two sentences into one complete sentence without changing meaning (sentence combining, Study 2). Most, but not all, children in first through fourth grade could write just one sentence. The sentence integrity task was not correlated with sentence combining until fourth grade, when in multiple regression, sentence integrity explained unique variance in sentence combining, along with spelling. Wordlevel skills (morphology in first and spelling in second through fourth grade) consistently explained unique variance in sentence combining. Thus, many beginning writers have syntactic knowledge of what constitutes a complete sentence, but not until fourth grade do both syntax and transcription contribute uniquely to flexible translation of ideas into the syntax of a written sentence. In Study 3, eleven syntactic categories were identified in single-and multi-sentence composing from second to fifth grade. Complex clauses (independent plus subordinate) occurred more often on single-sentence composing, but single independent clauses occurred more often on multi-sentence composing. For multi-sentence text, more single, independent clauses were produced by pen than keyboard in grades 3 to 7. The most frequent category of complex clauses in multi-sentence texts varied with genre (relative for essays and subordinate for narratives). Thus, in addition to syntax-level sentence construction and word-level transcription, amount of translation (number of sentences), mode of transcription, and genre for multiple sentence text also influence translation of ideas into written language of child writers. Results of these studies employing descriptive linguistic analyses are discussed in reference to cognitive theory of writing development. KeywordsSentence construction; Single-sentence composing; Multi-sentence composing; Syntactic level of language; Written syntax © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 vwb@u.washington.edu . NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptRead Writ. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 February 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptA sentence is more easily identified in writing than in speech; yet most speakers of a language appear to know what a sentence is, even though grammarians and linguists continue to grapple with its definition. (Harris & Hodges, 1995, p. 231).Teachers encourage children to write in complete sentences. Yet little is known about developing writers' conceptions of a complete sentence. A sentence is traditionally defined as a group of words that expresses a complete thought, but what is a complete thought? Do beginning writers in first grade and thereafter understand what a complete sentence is? When instructed to write just one sentence, will they write one and only one sentence? When they are asked to combine two sentences into one good sentence without altering ...

Examining the transcription-writing link: Effects of handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy on writing performance via planning and translating in middle grades

“…In the opinion essay task, students generated ideas before writing and put them freely into sentences during text production. In the sentence-combining task, students were given a pre-determined set of sentences and had a narrow range of options to correctly combine them (Berninger et al, 2011;Strong, 1986). Spelling accuracy was assessed in the context of writing, in the opinion essays with and without planning Limpo & Alves, 2013a;Mackie & Dockrell, 2004;Nelson & van Meter, 2007;Wagner et al, 2011).…”

“…On the other hand, using structural equation modeling, Kim, Al Otaiba, Folsom, Gruelich, and Puranik (2014) found that spelling accuracy, but not handwriting fluency, was associated with syntactic complexity (see also Berninger et al, 2011). Greater spelling accuracy may allow writers to shift their linguistic concerns from single words to the organization of those words into larger units.…”

“…Many linguistic constructions appear to increase in length or complexity with age and ability (Berman & Verhoeven, 2002;Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2004). In addition, sentence-level translating skills seem to influence the quality of written texts (Beers & Nagy, 2009;Berninger, Nagy, & Beers, 2011). Intervention studies also support the relationship between sentence-level translating skills and writing performance.…”

“…Moreover, it was recently reported that the syntactic complexity of sentences produced by a group of third graders with poor transcription skills was significantly lower than those produced by an aged-matched group but equivalent to transcription matched group of first graders (García, Crespo, & Bermúdez, 2016). Correlational evidence also suggested that, at least in school-aged writers, higher TRANSCRIPTION-WRITING LINK 9 transcription skills are associated with higher syntactic skills (Berninger et al, 2011;Kim, Al Otaiba, Wanzek, & Gatlin, 2014;Puranik, Lombardino, & Altmann, 2008;Wagner et al, 2011).…”

“…Particularly in regards to planning and translating, the indicators used are common in writing research and have been consistently linked to writing performance (Berninger et al, 2011;Kim, Al Otaiba, Wanzek, et al, 2014;Limpo & Alves, 2013a;Olinghouse & Graham, 2009). However, planning and translating are complex writing processes that undoubtedly involve many other aspects than those assessed here (for reviews on planning and translating measures, see Nash, 1996, andNagy, 2009, respectively).…”