Hi Susan, I teach basic writing at a community college. One of the reasons basic writers have difficulty writing, and reading, complicated sentence structures is because they don't know how sentences work. The strategy I use is to first present the basic sentence (what I call the core sentence), consisting of a subject and predicate. Then, students learn how to add additions to that core sentence structure: relative clauses, "definition additions," "-ing additions," "-ed additions." Students recognize through the examples gleaned from literature and through a series of exercises, including sentence combining, that these groups of words are additions to a core sentence. That sounds simplistic, but students understand it. As they practice these sentence patterns, they learn to use commas to set off introductory words and words interrupting the flow of thought in a sentence. In the process, students realize how commas signal meaning, and they understand how to distinguish an addition from the core sentence. The section on writing with sentence variety ends with a chapter that calls these additions "starters" and "interrupters." Through this approach, students understand how sentences work, and knowing this, they are able to both write and read all kinds of complex sentences. The strategy has worked for me and is part of Rhythms of Writing, to be published by Houghton Mifflin this August. The research that informed this approach focused on two areas: the differences between the structures of talking and writing, and how language is processed and produced. Basic writers talk and write in phrases and clauses because that is how language is processed and produced. I therefore begin with what students already know, the phrases and clauses of talking (thinking), and show them how those structures can be presented in writing. So, to answer your concluding sentence: No, I do not think we can wait for kids to mature so they develop these abilities on their own. In fact, I don't think they will develop them on their own, especially living in our oral culture. I believe students need guidance on understanding how the structures of writing work. Pam Dykstra Pam Dykstra South Suburban College 15800 South State Street South Holland, IL 60473-9978 tel: 708-596-2000 ext. 2648 email: [log in to unmask] >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]