Return to References: Syntax factor page.
Numerous measures exist to gain a full picture of a student's learning strengths and challenges. Following are examples of measures used to assess this Learner Factor. These measures should be administered and interpreted by experienced professionals.
Measures of syntactic complexity: (Beers & Nagy, 2007): Student writing samples are coded to identify how many words per clause and clauses per T-units (sentences) students use.
Wiig Criterion Referenced Inventory of Language: (Wiig, 1990): Students' oral language is assessed through specific probes designed to assess their syntactic complexity and other metalinguistic skills.
Abrahamsen, E. P., & Shelton, K. C. (1989). Reading comprehension in adolescents with learning disabilities: Semantic and syntactic effects. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22(9), 569–572.
Beers, S. F., & Nagy, W. E. (2007). Syntactic complexity as a predictor of adolescent writing quality: Which measures?
Beers, S. F., & Nagy, W. E. (2011). Writing development in four genres from grades three to seven: Syntactic complexity and genre differentiation. Reading and Writing, 24(2), 183-202.
Duin, A. H., & Graves, M. F. (1987). Intensive vocabulary instruction as a prewriting technique. Reading Research Quarterly, 22(3), 311-330.
Farah, M. J., Shera, D. M., Savage, J. H., Betancourt, L., Giannetta, J. M., Brodsky, N., Malmud, E.K., Hurt, H. (2006). Childhood poverty: Specific associations with neurocognitive development. Brain Research, 1110, 166-174.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). Background knowledge: The overlooked factor in reading comprehension. New York: McGraw Hill Networks.
Klauda, S. L., & Guthrie, J. T. (2008). Relationships of three components of reading fluency to reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 310-321.
Lee, C.D., & Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Loban, W., & National Council of Teachers of English, U. I. (1976). Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. NCTE Committee on Research Report No. 18.
Neville, D., & Searls, E. (1985). The effect of sentence-combining and kernel-identification training on the syntactic component of reading comprehension. Research in the Teaching of English, 19(1), 37-61.
Nippold, M. A. (1993). Developmental markers in adolescent language: Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 24(1), 21–28.
Nippold M. A. (2017). Reading comprehension deficits in adolescents: Addressing underlying language abilities. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 48(2), 125–131. doi:10.1044/2016_LSHSS-16-0048
Nippold, M. A., Vigeland, L. M., & Frantz-Kaspar, M. W. (2017). Metacognitive verb production in adolescents: The link to complex syntax. Clinical linguistics & phonetics, 31(10), 761-776.
Nippold, M.A., Hesketh, L.J., Duthie, J.K., Mansfield, T.C. (2005). Conversational versus expository discourse: A study of syntactic development in children, adolescents, and adults. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing, 48(5), 1048-1064.
Norbury, C. F. (2004). Factors supporting idiom comprehension in children with communication disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1179-1193.
Pooresmaeil, E., Mohamadi, R., Ghorbani, A., & Kamali, M. (2019). The relationship between comprehension of syntax and reading comprehension in cochlear implanted and hearing children. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 121, 114–119
Reynolds, D. W. (2005). Linguistic correlates of second language literacy development: Evidence from middle-grade learner essays. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(1), 19-45.
Santi, A., & Grodzinsky, Y. (2007). Working memory and syntax interact in Broca's area. Neuroimage, 37(1), 8-17.
Tai, H. Y. (2015). Writing development in syntactic complexity, accuracy and fluency in a content and language integrated learning class. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2(3), 149-156.
Wiig, E. H. (1990). Wiig CRIL: Wiig criterion referenced inventory of language. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corp., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.