INCREASING THE SYNTACTIC FLUENCY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDENTS IN READING THROUGH SENTENCE-COMBINING

The present study had the following objectives: (1) to assess the value of sentence-combining/sentence-reduction as a practice device at the elementary stages of second-language learning and (2) to determine whether practice in sentence-combining/sentence-reduction promotes increased comprehension of periodical literature. In the spring of 1982, four classes of second semester beginning Spanish at Purdue University participated in an investigation designed to evaluate the difference in achievement of students based on method of instruction (sentence-combining versus non-sentence-combining). All four classes contained students with varying degrees of previous experience with Spanish. The final sample consisted of fifty-five experimental and forty-two control students. Two graduate assistants participated in the study as classroom teachers. Each taught one experimental and one control section. Regardless of treatment condition, all classes met four times each week, for fifty minutes a session, three days in the classroom and once in a supervised language laboratory. The major component of the experimental treatment consisted of selected sight readings taken from Noticiario (Primer Nivel). Students spent a portion of ten class sessions (1) reading the particular sight reading for that day, (2) writing out the T-units in the sight reading sequentially, (3) repeating the T-units orally, (4) answering questions based on the reading, (5) reducing T-units that contained subordinate clauses into simpler sentences, and (6) recombining the T-units into their original whole. The control treatment consisted of exactly the same assignments as the experimental treatment save the four week period in which the sentence-combining/sentence-reduction exercises were administered. Criterion measures in the present study included several achievement tests, all in multiple-choice format: the sight reading sections of one course exam, and the final, the reading section of the MLP-Coop and a thirty-item sight reading examination. The data were submitted to a one-way analysis of variance to examine the main effects of method of instruction. The one-way analysis of variance of the main effect (method of instruction) revealed significant differences on both the MLA-Coop and the Sight Reading examination in favor of the experimental students. The one-way analysis of variance on the sight reading section of Exam II and the sight reading section of the final failed to show significant differences between the experimental and control groups