I regret the length of this post.  This includes a summary of a paper I
promised several weeks ago.

This discussion about terminology needs to be put in some context.  It
seems to me there are two types of audiences we need to worry about.

        1) Students who are writing papers.
        2) Teachers who will be responding to that writing.

The knowledge of teachers about the nature of the English language
should be greater than the students they are teaching.

To figure out what students need to know we need to think about what
they already bring to the classroom and what they need to be aware of in
their writing.

Perera (1986) looks at some of the syntactic development in the writing
of children.  Most of the data she cites come from writing of American
and British children between the ages of 7 and 18.  She cites Hunt
(1965, 1970), O'Donnell, Greffin and Norris (1967), Harpin (1976), Loban
(1976).

She notes three differences between the spoken language and the written
language of children between the ages of nine and twelve.

First, there are some structures that regularly occur in speech which
are not normally used by  writers.

        1) Writing of children rarely contain mazes.  These are like false
starts in speaking.

        2) The writing rarely has instances of structures only used in
speaking.  These include words like well and you know, structures used
to complete clauses such as and back, and all, and everything, or
something.  Perera cites the following example: Justin we're going to
catch the coach and everything it started raining.

        3) The writing of children rarely has dialect forms. She cites one
study of children between the ages of 11 to 14 who rarely used dialect
forms there were quite common in their oral language.
[I find the presence of some dialect forms in some of my college student
writing.]

If we are considering scope and sequence, it seems to me that three
features in student writing we might want to see these features
disappearing in early elementary student writing.

The second part of the paper identifies "mature" structures that are
more frequent in writing than in speech.  Citing Loban (1976), O'Donnell
et al. (1967), and Yerrill (1977) Perera notes a number of structures
that are infrequent in speech but begin to become more frequent in
writing.  These include a noun modified by a prepositional phrase, noun
modified by a nonfinite clause, an increase use of subordinate clauses.
Here is an interesting sentence in Perera in her summary of O'Donnell et
al.

        A high level of main clause co-ordination was regarded as a sign of
linguistic immaturity; at the age of 8 their subjects were already using
only a third as many of these co-ordinations in their writing as they
were in their speech.


The final part of the paper deals with structures typical of writing
that don't occur in writing.  These include:

Complex subject noun phrases
Relative clauses in the subject
The use of whose and whom is found only in children writing (Perera
cites a study of Hanscombe (1967) in Yorkshire which has two 12 year
olds using whose and whom).
Fronting the preposition before the relative pronoun in a relative
clause
Preposing of structures that are not in their canonical position. An
example,

Aberhaben beach is very long.  There are only very few pebbles, but many
shells.  Behind the beach is a curved sea wall. (9 year old)
        The preposed structure is "behind the beach."

Certain nonfinite and verbless adverbial clauses
        Having done that I was soon able to iron out my fault (12 year old)
        They folded up during the daytime when not in use (12 year old)

There are some implications for teaching grammar to students, but this
post is already too long.

Perera, K (1986).  The acquisition in writing.  In P. Fletcher and M.
Garman (ed.) Language acquisition (pp 494-4518).  New York: Cambridge
University Press.


Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University