The study was designed to investigate whether internal punctuation had any effect on reading comprehension of seventh- and eighth-grade students in the Developmental Research School of Florida State University. The study subjects were 94 male and female students who took the PUNC Test devised by Carr. The test consisted of a written passage, directions, and 40 multiple-choice questions. The passage was constructed so that selected sentences required the reader to interpret internal punctuation in order to understand the meaning of the sentence. The test also consisted of 20 sets of paired sentences: 20 punctuation-dependent and 20 non-punctuation-dependent items. / The results showed that the students scored lower in the punctuation-dependent items than on the non-punctuation-dependent items. Analysis showed that internal punctuation had a statistically significant and very considerable main effect on reading comprehension of the seventh and eighth grade subjects. / The results also indicated that punctuation is neither sufficiently taught nor viewed as a syntactic cue system when it is taught. It constitutes a relatively minor part of most school curricula today. Accordingly, certain instructional procedures for teaching punctuation to young students were suggested. / Of secondary interest, there was an attempt to determine whether students' gender as well as CTBS reading scores interacted with punctuation to affect reading comprehension. Gender was found to be statistically insignificant. CTBS reading ability was found to be statistically significant yet of little practical importance. Finally, suggestions for teaching punctuation were offered. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-10, Section: A, page: 3195. / Major Professor: Ernest Frechette. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78074 |
| Contributors | Al-Mutib, Saleh M., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 87 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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