The Effect of Sentence Combining Instruction of Language Experience Stories Upon Paragraph Comprehension

The intent of this study was to determine the effect of sentence-combining instruction of language experience stories upon paragraph comprehension of forty-three fourth grade students. The students were divided into an experimental group and control group and administered the Nelson Reading Test prior to the five week intervention period. The treatment involved writing language experience stories and receiving sentence-combining instruction on them. At the end of the intervention period, the Nelson was re-administered to both groups. It was hypothesized that the reading comprehension scores for the experimental group would be significantly greater than the comprehension score for the control group. Mean grade equivalents were treated by a t-test. The null hypothesis was not rejected at the .05 level of significance. Although the difference in the mean gains of Group A and Group B was not significant at the .05 level, the t-value of 1.65 did closely approach the critical value of 1.67 and was considered to be educationally significant