The effects of sentence-combining practice on reading and listening comprehension for fourth and eighth grade subjects

The study focused upon the effects of sentence combining (SC) practice, which required the transformational processing of surface (syntax) and deep (semantic) structure, on reading and listening comprehension, measured by standardized and cloze tests. As measures of emergent syntactic maturity, cloze tests with content and structure word deletions were constructed from three paragraphs with controlled transformations and contents. Questions addressed were: (1) Do fourth and eight grade subjects benefit differently or at all from SC practice on measures of reading comprehension? (2) Do fourth and eighth grade subjects benefit differently or at all from SC practice on measures of listening comprehension? (3) If differences were found, what would be the significant interactions.;Subjects consisted of 165 fourth and eighth grade students of average ability and achievement. Intact classes were divided randomly into experimental and control groups. Treatment consisted of cued and uncued sentence combining exercises developed by the investigator and conducted over a two-month period. The "placebo" for the control group consisted of crossword puzzles complete after reading narratives constructed by the experimental group in sentence combining exercises. Immediate posttests (standardized tests) and two-week delayed posttests (cloze tests) were administered.;Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to examine differences. The level of confidence, set at.05, was adjusted for multiple comparisons, p ;Major findings were: (1) fourth and eighth grade groups combined did not exhibit significant treatment effects; (2) eighth grade experimental groups did not outperform control groups, except on the cloze test with structure word deletions; (3) eighth grade females scored higher on the SAT "reading" subtest than males; (4) fourth grade experimental groups demonstrated positive treatment effects on standardized measures of reading and listening and on cloze tests with structure word deletions at three levels; (5) fourth grade experimental groups scored higher on cloze tests requiring structure word deletions rather than tests with content word deletions; (6) fourth grade students' cloze test scores were only slightly lower than eighth grade students.;Recommendations were for SC practice to be incorporated into the reading/writing curriculum. Follow up studies could be planned; continued studies of learners at various grade levels were recommended to compare and to interpret results, adding to theoretical models of the reading/writing process.