“Sentence” is the third unit (sound-word-sentence-discourse)
of oral language described as a primary basis for learning to read and reading
to learn. Developmentally, the “average”
child begins to put words together to form “sentences” by age 2. They don’t know the “parts of speech” names, but they do learn that there are
certain kinds of words that go together (nouns and verbs, nouns and adjectives,
verbs and adverbs) to achieve a certain purpose. As they continue to develop, their sentences
grow longer and more complex.
I write about sentences in terms of three dimensions: structure, process(ing) and function. I began with structure because structure
(form/grammar) is often the way sentences are talked about by adults and are addressed
in school curriculum.
Sentence Processing
There is more to
sentence development than its form or structure (syntax). Equally important for
the development of literacy (reading) skills are processing of sentences and
using sentences for communication—function.
Processing complex
sentences
From a developmental perspective Loban’s research with 211
students followed from K to grade 12 shows the following about students’ skills
at processing language at the sentence level:
*Those superior in oral language in kindergarten and grade
one before they learn to read and write are the very ones who excel in
reading and writing by the time they are in grade 6.
^In sentences in oral language, the high group in the 1st
grade demonstrates a proficiency in elaboration
attained by the low group only at grades 5 or 6.
^Although all subjects knew and used all the basic
structural patterns of English sentence, the high group had a much greater flexibility and repertoire within
the pattern of a sentence: that is, they had more ways to fill slots like
the subject, the modifiers, and the objects.
^The members of the high group used more subordination, combining communication units in complex fashion
^The high group showed
*longer communication units
*greater elaboration of subject and predicate
*more embedding in transformational grammar
*greater
use of adjectival dependent clauses
Difficulties in attending to or producing long and/or
complex sentences impacts reading in a number of ways.
For example, in her text on Teaching Reading Comprehension Processes (1991), Judith Westphal
Irwin describes three kinds of comprehension skills: metaprocesses,
macroprocesses and microprocesses. Under
microprocesses, Irwin describes the importance of chunking words into
meaningful phrases, selecting what is most important from the sentence to keep
in short term memory for interpretation of upcoming sentences (that is,
microselection); and then using that information across sentence boundaries
(integrative processes).
“Integrative
processes” she defined as the processes involved in understanding and inferring
the relationships between clauses and sentences. Three main types of integrative processes are
understanding anaphora,
understanding connective relationships,
and making “slot filling” inference.”
(Irwin, page 38). In the following
pages, she offers several suggestions for teaching these skills. (pp. 38-49)
* *
*
Cheryl M. Scott, Chapter 16: Syntax in Stone, et. al.
(Eds.), Handbook of Language and Literacy:
Development and Disorders, (2005)
Scott lists three things that make sentences complex:
1)
Features of open class words (nouns, verbs); reversible
passive sentences
2)
Number and type of syntactic operations (usually reflected in sentence length)
3)
Types of syntactic operations (reversible order,
subordination, ambiguity, parsing, etc.)
So, just as is the case in Words/Vocabulary, the complexity
of sentence and the operations required to process them, (anaphora,
connectives, inferences, for example) influences how easily a child can process
sentences.
This reminds us of the quote from the work of Amanda C. Brandone, Sara J. Salkind, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, U. of
Delaware and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek:
“… Although most grammatical structures are
in place by the age of 5, children continue to acquire more complex forms and
rules of grammar in the school setting….”
Although the “average” child has mastered the basic structures
of sentences by age 5, children still need to learn the more complex structures
that will require more demanding processing.
The question we need to ask is how they will learn these sentence
structures in order to process them efficiently and effectively. This does not mean that we should focus on
directly teaching “grammar” to young children as a basis for reading. Young children (preschool through primary grades)
learn language skill through meaningful contexts. Sentences become meaningful to children when
we focus on the “functions” of sentences, part 3 of our “sentence” topic.
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