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] >