The primary purpose of this study was to ascertain if sentence combining (SC) activities had an effect on the reading and listening comprehension of seventh grade students. Further purposes were to investigate correlations among reading, listening, and mean T-unit length and to determine what attitudes toward various SC activities would develop among the experimental subjects. / This twelve-week study involved eighty-seven students in four seventh grade classrooms at Belle Vue Middle School in Tallahassee, Florida. The experimental and control groups were each divided into regular and advanced language arts classes by reading ability. Each of the two teachers taught an experimental and control class. The treatment consisted of one and a half hours per week of open and closed, written and oral SC exercises as well as SC-cloze activities. / The data for reading comprehension were gathered from a pre- and posttest administration of the comprehension subtest of Science Research Associates Achievement Series, Level E, Forms 1 and 2. Listening comprehension scores were taken from a pre- and posttest administration of the listening comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test, Intermediate Level II, Forms A and B. Syntactic fluency data were calculated from pre- and posttest free writing samples in the narrative mode. A two-way analysis of variance of gain scores yielded results indicating no significant differences between the experimental and control groups, ability groups, or sexes for reading or listening comprehension. There were no significant changes among reading, listening, and mean T-unit length correlations from pre- to posttest. The analysis of the SC attitude inventory showed enjoyment of both SC activities and reading with the open and oral SC exercises achieving highest popularity. / Conclusions from this study were that a-contextual SC instruction was not found to be an effective means of increasing reading or listening comprehension among seventh grade students. The SC treatment, however, was evaluated as enjoyable by the majority of the experimental students, particularly in its oral and open aspects. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2545. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74494 |
| Contributors | SIMMONS, SUSAN SAUNDERS., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 113 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
Page generated in 0.0025 seconds