By Sophia McLoughlin
As a middle school teacher, I am always looking to find ways to help support my students improve their reading and writing skills. I find that a lot of my students who fall behind in reading comprehension often fall behind in other subjects too because reading is so deeply ingrained with how we test all kinds of knowledge in our schools.
Additionally, from talking with friends and colleagues, I’ve heard that learning to read is often the most challenging part of school for elementary students. For my middle school students, I find that the challenge is mostly learning to read more advanced complex material. For students in high school, I gather that the challenge is learning how to write in a more complex, but still coherent manner.
So regardless of the grade of your students, it’s clear that reading and writing are always important, but unfortunately advancing in reading and writing is often a huge struggle for many students!
If reading and writing are the cornerstones of our education system, and often what students find themselves challenged the most by, then surely there has to be plenty of research on how reading comprehension is developed, how it’s measured, and how writing correlates with reading level right?
Yes! There certainly is! I feel like as educators, myself included, there is so much we can and should learn about reading, writing, and how students learn, but sometimes it’s really hard to find the time to take a break from creating lesson plans and grading to really sit down and read about the science behind learning and teaching.
In this blog post, I am going to break down one conversation that I got to listen in on between writing studies scholars William Smith, Stephen Witte, and Ron Evans and his colleagues. I hope this post can act as a kind of elevator ride length glimpse into just a few experts’ conversation about reading comprehension and writing complexity.
So if you’re like me and find yourself feeling thirsty for a new perspective on teaching reading and writing to your students, no matter what grade level they may be, I think these expert perspectives can help give you new insight and inspiration, so definitely keep reading!
Let’s get into it: What are we talking about?
So how did the three authors in this conversation all end up together in our metaphorical elevator? They are all connected because they have each contributed research that helps to answer part of the question: Are complex sentences a key component of advanced writing, how can advanced writing and comprehension of advanced writing be facilitated, and how can both reading level and writing complexity be best measured?
William Smith began the discussion with the publication of his study “The Effect of Transformed Syntactic Structures on Reading” in 1970. He was seeking to find whether more complex sentences increase reading difficulty or whether students across all grade levels possess similar enough reading skills that they can read texts written at different “syntactic maturities” equally (1). Before diving into his own findings, he starts the conversation by telling all of us that past research has established that one key component of complex sentence structure is the incorporation of “more material into each T-unit” (1).
Wait hold up: What’s a T-unit?
I know, if you’re anything like me, you would interrupt Smith to ask, “what the heck is a t-unit!?”. Not to worry, because I can in fact interrupt him to explain so that you can actually understand what he is talking about.
Simply put, a T-unit is the main clause in a sentence along with its dependent clauses or phrases, like prepositional phrases or other modifiers. Longer T-units (so longer main clauses with more modifiers) make a sentence more complex, according to Smith.
Smith nods his head as he acknowledges that past research has already established that syntactic complexity characterized by longer T-units is a common trait of more advanced writing, and agrees with this conclusion. He then presents a finding from his own study: high school students actually found more complex writings easier to read and comprehend than the simpler, less complex texts written at 4th grade level. Additionally, he explains that “students in grades 6 through 12 found eighth-grade writing easier to read than either the fourth-grade writing or the more difficult passages” (1).
Wait that seems counterintuitive doesn’t it? Shouldn’t a less syntactically complex text always be easier to read than a more complex one?
I know one time when I was trying to help out a 6th grader with her reading skills I assigned her some additional reading assignments to help her get more practice, but ones that were at a lower reading level than what we were reading in class. I was thinking that maybe giving her 4th and 5th grade level reading practice could help her catch up with the rest of her 6th grade peers. Turns out, I made a mistake, and maybe you have done this before too…
Smith explains that actually, because students are typically more used to reading texts written at a similar levels of complexity to their own writing level, simpler lower level texts aren’t always easier to read.
Okay so why should you care what Smith said?
The key point: students are most comfortable reading texts written at or near the complexity attributed to their grade level.
So next time a student is struggling with reading comprehension and you’re tempted to give them reading assignments below their grade level because you think that will be easier… remember that going too far above or below may actually be more challenging for them!
Have your students consistently practice reading texts at their grade level so they can gain more skills while working with material at a level of complexity that is comfortable and familiar to them.
Next up: Smith…again?
The next voice in the conversation is actually once again Smith, but this time four years later with the publication of his “Syntactic Recording of Passages Written at 3 Levels of Complexity”. Basically we are now taking a time machine 4 years into the future, so even though it’s the same guy talking, we can think of him like a whole different character in the conversation, with new ideas and new points to make.
In this new study, students were given passages and instructed to rewrite them in their own words, at their current writing level, producing writings from students at different grade levels that varied in their complexity.
Through analyzing these student’s writings, Smith discovered and identified several important characteristics of “complex writing” at advancing grade and writing levels:
- “Middle grade students used proportionally more full relative clauses than either younger or older” students (71).
- Students actually “increase[d] the complexity of a passage written at a syntactic level below their own” (71).
- Students didn’t significantly change the syntax of passages they read that were already written at their targeted grade level (71).
- And students decreased the complexity of passages written at levels above their own (71).
Okay so now, thanks to Smith, we know that mid-level writing students, typically junior high students like mine, tend to incorporate more full relative clauses in their writing than less advanced or more advanced writers. This makes the amount of relative clauses used a key characteristic of one stage of writing development.
Smith’s second conclusion tells us that when students read a passage written at any level of complexity, they understand it by translating it to their own writing level. Here he pats himself on the back as he agrees with the point he made four years prior: that less complex doesn’t mean easier to read. He builds on his previous conclusion by pointing out that students who read passages at complexity levels below their own actually tended to increase the complexity of the text when rewriting it.
Finally Smith adds a new key point to the discussion when he tells us about his discovery that, while mid-level writers, primarily junior high aged students, don’t produce complex syntactic structures in their own writing, they actually can comprehend complex writing at the “Skilled Adult Level” (71).
So why did we take the time to listen to Smith…again?
What you should remember: you shouldn’t underestimate your students’ reading comprehension abilities when it comes to challenging them with more complex texts!!! Smith tells us that students can often comprehend text that is written at levels more advanced than their own writing level and skills may suggest!
Next up to speak: Ron Evans
The next voice to jump into the conversation is Ron Evans who, along with his co-authors, published “The Effects of Sentence-Combining Instructions on Writing and on Standardized Test Scores”.
Evans was interested in finding out whether teaching students by leading them through a lesson that instructs them to practice combining shorter simpler sentences into fewer more complex ones would be an effective method to facilitate the growth of reading and writing skills. Beyond just trying to help answer the question of how to help students increase their reading and writing skills, Evans also contributed to the discussion about how to measure reading and writing skills. His study measured how students’ scores on standardized tests correlated with the type of sentence combining or other writing instruction they were given.
Based on the data collected, Evans concluded that older subjects “respond to sentence-combining instruction with gains in specific syntactic constructions” (56).
What does this mean?? Evans is telling us that learning through sentence combining was in fact beneficial for more advanced writing students because it helped them develop a better understanding of more complex sentence structures.
Evans also found that sentence combining instruction appeared to have the most significant impact on the reading and writing skills of students who started out with the lowest writing skills (56).
What does this mean for us as educators??
You know when that dreaded time of the school year rolls around that has you stressed about how your students will score on the state mandated standardized tests? Well Evans is actually giving us a great tip that can help us improve our students scores! (at least in the english and reading comprehension sections of standardized tests)
Evans tells us that to help students whose reading and writing skills seem to be falling behind, or are scoring the lowest on standardized tests, you can lead them through sentence combining lessons and instruction to help them gain a better understanding of sentence complexity. This can in turn increase their scores on standardized writing and reading comprehension tests.
Wow doesn’t that sound great!
As Evans was speaking to me and the other experts, he wasn’t just summarizing his own findings, Evans was actually staring right at Smith as he added to the points Smith made earlier. Evans provides a concrete method that he argues is an effective way for students to increase their writing level. According to Smith, this increased understanding of and ability to write complex sentences should impact and potentially correlate with an increase in their reading comprehension, making them better equipped to read advanced complex texts when they encounter them.
Evans also engages with Smith’s previous point about the significance of T-unit length (the main clause plus its dependent clauses or phrases) in sentence complexity. Smith concludes from his study that “younger students or still-developing students will register the greatest gains in T-unit growth by understanding and using direct statements, placing modifiers and inferring meanings, and, finally, by using subordination and understanding main ideas” (54).
Wait what was Evan’s point?…but in more lay people’s terms please
I know, I too got tripped up on all of the complex academic language while reading Evan’s work.
While Smith acknowledges that the length of T-units in a piece of writing is a key factor in identifying how complex the writing is, Evans goes further to specify how and why students learn to write longer T-units that have more parts to them. He says this is a key part of increasing their writing level. In short, Evans agrees with Smith and helps to explain why he thinks Smith’s point is true.
So now that we have heard both Smith and Evans speak on the topic, we know a little more about what characterizes complex writing, how reading comprehension of text written at different levels of complexity relates to grade level, and how educators can effectively assist students in increasing their writing skills as well as scores on standardized tests as they relate to reading and writing complexity. Let’s see what the last voice in this conversation has to say…
Witte and Faigley:
In their “Coherence, Cohesion, and Writing Quality”, Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley were on a mission to discover how the use of cohesive ties in sentence structure informs whether a piece of writing is “rated high or low in quality”, or more simply put, good or bad (190). Witte and Faigley utilize an already established system for “analyzing and classifying cohesive ties” and apply it to examples of student writing. They begin to talk to us about cohesive ties and explain how each type of cohesion is used in student writing, and how that informs an essay’s overall quality and complexity (190).
Ohhh okay…they’re talking about analyzing student writing – we are all pretty familiar with that!
Witte and Faigley jump into this conversation about cohesive ties and sentence complexity by identifying the practical applications of previously developed theories about different cohesive ties. They tell us about how the prevalence of cohesive ties in writing can make students’ essays stronger or weaker. They talk directly to Smith and Evans about what factors are significant when looking at sentence complexity and writing level. They first agree with the factors that the others have brought up so far, but add that there is something they are missing. They point out that in addition to long T-units and prevalence of relative clauses, cohesive ties should also be considered.
Witte and Faigley go on to tell younger Smith, older Smith, and Evans that, based on the data analyzed from the student essays, the higher rated essays were “much more dense in cohesion than the low-rated”ones (195). In short, the better, higher scoring writers used more cohesive ties in their essays than the lower scoring ones.
Witte and Faigley also agree with the conclusion Smith and Evans made back in the beginning of the conversation, that longer T-units are a key component of more complex writing. They say specifically that the high-rated essays in their study contained “larger T-units and clauses, more nonrestrictive modifiers, and fewer errors” (195).
So what? Well, it seems like all of the experts here agree that complex sentences are, at least partially, defined by the length of the T-unit in the sentence!
(Okay, don’t worry, if you’re like me, you need one more reminder of what a T-unit is before you can fully understand what you should take away from “listening” to this whole conversation. A T-unit is just the main clause in a sentence and its dependent clauses or phrases.)
So putting together the information we’ve heard during this quick but very informative elevator ride, we now know that higher level complex writing can be characterized by longer T-units and a greater number of cohesive ties, and that mid-level writing tends to contain more full relative clauses.
Wow okay – so from “listening in” on a discussion between just three writing experts you can learn so much about sentence complexity, reading comprehension, and writing level. Hopefully you’ve learned a few ideas for ways that we as educators can help your students become more advanced readers and the best writers possible!
Here are some closing ideas and suggestions!
- Lead your students through a few sentence-combining lessons!
- Encourage the use of cohesive ties in more advanced student writing!
- Have your students practice reading material that is consistent with their grade level!
- And most importantly: Keep reading about the most recent writing studies and education topics so you can be the most effective educator you can be!
Here are the links to the articles if you want to read more about what each of them have to say!
William Smith 1970: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED044247.pdf
William Smith 1974: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20151013
Ron Evans: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27540337.
Witte & Faigley: https://doi.org/10.2307/356693.
