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Child writers’ construction and reconstruction of single sentences and construction of multi-sentence texts: contributions of syntax and transcription to translation

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Abstract

Children in grades one to four completed two sentence construction tasks: (a) Write one complete sentence about a topic prompt (sentence integrity, Study 1); and (b) Integrate two sentences into one complete sentence without changing meaning (sentence combining, Study 2). Most, but not all, children in first through fourth grade could write just one sentence. The sentence integrity task was not correlated with sentence combining until fourth grade, when in multiple regression, sentence integrity explained unique variance in sentence combining, along with spelling. Word-level skills (morphology in first and spelling in second through fourth grade) consistently explained unique variance in sentence combining. Thus, many beginning writers have syntactic knowledge of what constitutes a complete sentence, but not until fourth grade do both syntax and transcription contribute uniquely to flexible translation of ideas into the syntax of a written sentence. In Study 3, eleven syntactic categories were identified in single- and multi- sentence composing from second to fifth grade. Complex clauses (independent plus subordinate) occurred more often on single-sentence composing, but single independent clauses occurred more often on multi-sentence composing. For multi-sentence text, more single, independent clauses were produced by pen than keyboard in grades 3 to 7. The most frequent category of complex clauses in multi-sentence texts varied with genre (relative for essays and subordinate for narratives). Thus, in addition to syntax-level sentence construction and word-level transcription, amount of translation (number of sentences), mode of transcription, and genre for multiple sentence text also influence translation of ideas into written language of child writers. Results of these studies employing descriptive linguistic analyses are discussed in reference to cognitive theory of writing development.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was supported by Grant No. HD25858 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The authors acknowledge the contribution of the research staff in administering and scoring the measures, coding the sentences, and entering data into the computer data base, especially Patricia Stock and Amy Augsburger. They also thank Robert Abbott for creating a data base structure to facilitate ease of data analyses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, 322 Miller, Box 353600, Seattle, WA, 98195-3600, USA

    Virginia W. Berninger

  2. Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA

    William Nagy & Scott Beers

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  1. Virginia W. Berninger
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  2. William Nagy
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Correspondence to Virginia W. Berninger.

Appendix

Appendix

Types of T-units (independent clauses with or without subordinate clauses) with examples

  1. I.

    Single Independent Main Clause

    • I like math class.

    • Reading is fun.

  2. II.

    More than One Independent Clause

  3. A.

    Noncoordinate Main Clause beginning with a coordinating conjunction

    • And then we went to the playground.

  4. B.

    Coordinate Clause     2 independent clauses with coordinating conjunction

    • For my birthday, I got a new toy airplane and I got to go to the zoo.

  5. C.

    Correlative Clause     2 independent clauses with correlative conjunction

    • Either we will have a party orwe will go to the fair.

  6. III.

    T-Units with Dependent Clause in T-Unit Coded

  7. A.

    Relative Clause

The person who lives in that house is nice.

  1. B.

    Complement Clause

    • I think that you are nice.

  2. C.

    Subordinate Clause (also known as “dependent clause”)

    • She helped me because she is nice.

    • Even though I’m only in second grade, I know how to write.

  3. D.

    Adverbial Clause

    • Sarah ran as fast as she could.

    • Annie practiced more than Sarah had.

    • The boys were so sick that they threw up.

  4. IV.

    Other

  5. A.

    Quotation

    • Sarah said, “I hope I win the race.”

    • “Go to your room!” said my mom.

  6. B.

    Non-Clausal Independent Units

    • The end.

  7. C.

    Fragment

    • Missing or Illegible were not coded.

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Berninger, V.W., Nagy, W. & Beers, S. Child writers’ construction and reconstruction of single sentences and construction of multi-sentence texts: contributions of syntax and transcription to translation. Read Writ 24, 151–182 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9262-y

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