A Syntactical Analysis of Some First-Grade Readers

Abstract

An important consideration in teaching children to read is the appropriate matching of the reading material to the child. In the past the appropriateness of materials has been discussed in relation to their content, their format and organization, and their difficulty level as expressed by their vocabulary load, sentence structure, and level of human interest (Chall, 1958). In the revision of primary readers, in particular, the concern has been with finding the appropriate level of difficulty as measured by the frequency of new vocabulary words and the number of repetitions of a new word (Becker, 1936; Gates, 1930; Hockett, 1938; Mehl, 1931; Spache, 1941). But recent evidence (Bormuth, 1966; Ruddell, 1964, 1965; Strickland, 1962) has indicated that there is another concept of appropriateness which must be considered: How does the sentence structure found in the readers compare with the sentence structure of the child’s speech?

This was drawn from my dissertation which is on file in the Stanford University library. The work reported here has been supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant G-18709), Office of Education Contract OEC-4-6-061493-2089 and the Ravenswood Subcontract to Standford under Office of Education Grant OEG 0041.