Among other things, learning to write entails learning how to use complex sentences effectively in discourse. Some research has therefore focused on relating measures of syntactic complexity to text quality. Apart from the fact that the existing research on this topic appears inconclusive, most of it has been conducted in English L1 contexts. This is potentially problematic, since relevant syntactic indices may not be the same across languages. The current study is the first to explore which syntactic features predict text quality in Dutch secondary school students’ argumentative writing. In order to do so, the quality of 125 argumentative essays written by students was rated and the syntactic features of the texts were analyzed. A multilevel regression analysis was then used to investigate which features contribute to text quality. The resulting model (explaining 14.5% of the variance in text quality) shows that the relative number of finite clauses and the ratio between the number of relative clauses and the number of finite clauses positively predict text quality. Discrepancies between our findings and those of previous studies indicate that the relations between syntactic features and text quality may vary based on factors such as language and genre. Additional (cross-linguistic) research is needed to gain a more complete understanding of the relationships between syntactic constructions and text quality and the potential moderating role of language and genre.
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Untrained listeners demonstrate implicit knowledge of syntactic patternsand principles. Untrained generative music ability, for example singing,humming, and whistling, is a largely unconscious or intuitive applicationof these patterns and principles. From the viewpoint of embodied cognition,listening to music should evoke an internal representation or motorimage which, together with the perception of organized music, shouldform the basis of musical cognition. Indeed, that is what listeners demonstratewhen they sing, hum, or whistle familiar and unfamiliar tunes orwhen they vocally or orally improvise continuations to interruptedphrases. Research on vocal improvisation using continuations sung to aninterrupted musical phrase, has shown that one’s cultural backgroundinfluences the music generated. That should be the case for instrumentalistsas well: when they play familiar or unfamiliar tunes by ear in differentkeys (transposition) or when they improvise variations,accompaniments, or continuations to interrupted phrases, the music theygenerate should reflect the same cognitive structures as their oral improvisations.This study is attempting to validate a test of (non) scoredependencythat will enable assessment of the music student’s implicitknowledge of these structures during performance on the principal instrument.
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Under the premise that language learning is bidirectional in nature, this study aimed to investigate syntactic coordination within teacher-student interactions by using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Seven teachers’ and a group of their students’ interactions were repeatedly measured in the course of an intervention in early science education. Results showed changes in the proportion of recurrent points; in case of simple sentences teachers and students became less coordinated over time, whereas in case of complex sentences teachers and students showed increasing coordination. Results also revealed less rigid (more flexible) syntactic coordination, although there were no changes in the relative contribution of teacher and students to this. In the light of the intervention under investigation this is an important result. This means that teachers and students learn to use more complex language and coordinate their language complexity better in order to co-construct science discourse. The application of CRQA provides new insights and contributes to better understanding of the dynamics of syntactic coordination.
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