Analysis of Syntactic Maturity By Grade Level and Sex of Children's Writing Samples Submitted to the 1983 Young Authors Conference

Date of Graduation

Summer 1983

Degree

Master of Science in Education in Elementary Education

Department

Childhood Education and Family Studies

Committee Chair

Andree Bayliss

Abstract

The investigator studied the syntactic maturity of writing samples provided by children at different grade levels and by sex of the author. The sample of the study consisted of two hundred forty-four prose manuscripts submitted to the 1983 Young Authors Conference at Southwest Missouri State University. The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess the differences in the number of T-units written by authors at different grade levels and those written by male and females authors. Two research hypotheses were tested. The conclusions drawn from this study are as follows: 1. There is a significant difference in the number of T-units written by children at different grade levels. 2. There is no significant difference in the number of T-units written by authors of different sex. The findings of this study support the conclusion that a relationship existed between the number of T-units written and the maturity of the writer. Within the sample, sixth grade authors wrote significantly more T-units than did writers in second through fifth grades. The findings did not support the conclusion that a relationship existed between the number of T-units written and the sex of the author.

Subject Categories

Elementary Education and Teaching

Copyright

© Magda L Williams

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Dissertation/Thesis

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