Sentence-Combining and the Reading of Sentences

Marilyn Sternglass

doi:10.2307/356492

College Composition and Communication Oct 1980

Sentence-Combining and the Reading of Sentences

Marilyn Sternglass

Abstract

Although there has not yet been established a definitive relationship between syntactic manipulation (sentence combining) and reading improvement, researchers have for a long time been raising questions about the possible interrelationships of these two language-processing activities. In this paper, I suggest a conceptual basis for asserting a relationship at the sentence level between sentence combining and reading. Before exploring this relationship explicitly, it may be helpful to review some of the concepts in the psycholinguistic model of reading on which this assertion can be based. Current research in the reading process has led to the conclusion that the world knowledge and personal knowledge that the reader brings to the printed page make an important contribution to that person's ability to extract meaning from the printed page. That prior knowledge can come from experience or it may include familiarity with the three elements of the reading process identified in current psycholinguistic research: recognizing graphic-phonic (letter-sound) similarities, syntactic processing, and semantic processing. Examining these latter two elements of the reading process in particular helps to explain the contribution of sentence combining activities to improvement in reading comprehension. In an earlier article,' I pointed out that there appears to be considerable evidence that complex syntactic structures are more difficult for readers to process than simpler ones. Inexperienced readers have difficulty holding syntactic patterns and meanings in their memories long enough to be able to link them up correctly within the sentences that they are working with. This difficulty is explained by a principle from psychology and from the psycholinguistic model of reading. That principle is the concept of the chunk. chunk has best been explicated by George Miller in his seminal article, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.2 Miller explains that short-term memory can hold from five to seven items of information at any one time. key to understanding the processing of information is understanding what it is that constitutes an item in short-term memory. Each item may be a single

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 1980-10-01
DOI: 10.2307/356492
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: voice and style
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Sentence-Combining and the Reading of Sentences

Abstract

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