I can only tell you what students tell me and my fellow grammar teachers of
the course we offer at North Seattle Community College.  It teaches syntax,
does Reed-Kellogg diagramming, and sentence combining.  The students (adult
learners) consistently report that they read better after this course.
However, we have done no research.

> ----------
> From:         Susan Witt[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> Sent:         Monday, April 19, 1999 8:47 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Reading and grammar
>
> Hi, all,
>
> At 10:42 AM 4/19/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >It is so good to see people talking about the ATEG conference. A week or
> so
> >ago, I checked out the Web site,
> >www.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ATEG/nextconf.htm
>
> I noticed on this page that there is a section on reading and grammar.  I
> am interested in looking into the connections between sentence structure
> and reading comprehension.  Does anyone have any references about research
> into this area?  Specifically, I'm looking at older age ranges, after
> initial decoding skills are learned.  Especially middle school and high
> school, but possibly as early as 4th grade.  I know that people have
> identified that longer, more complicated sentence structures are harder
> for
> kids to understand.  People have also noted that vocabulary problems get
> in
> the way of comprehension.  I am aware of a number of teaching strategies
> and interventions to help kids cope with vocabulary problems, but do not
> know if the same kinds of strategies and interventions have been developed
> to help kids comprehend longer sentence structures.  Is the only known
> method of dealing with this is simply to wait for kids to mature so that
> they develop these abilities on their own?
>
> Does anyone know of any research on this issue?
>
> Susan Mari Witt
>
>
>
> 240 ERML, MC-051
> 1201 W. Gregory
> Urbana, IL  61801
>
> Phone:  (217) 333-1965
> Fax:      (217) 333-4777
>
> [log in to unmask]
>