Reflecting on vocabulary and sentence revision during the composing stage temporarily degraded children's use of full stops and basic connectives¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r1 · q1
Currency · newest study 2004 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Design limits · C.E. Holdich 2004: the intervention came bundled with another change · C.E. Holdich 2004 (2): the intervention came bundled with another change (read from the study by two models, 2026-10-29)

Subclaims¶

q1 i? Sophie's mean sentence length after the first stage (36.6 words) was twice her control story's (17.1), indicating much poorer full-stop use. → C.E. Holdich 2004 q1 i? James' average sentence length increased by 10 words per sentence between control and first stage, and his 'and' percentage rose to 7.1%, about 3% above control. → C.E. Holdich 2004 (2)

Evidence¶

C.E. Holdich 2004¶

C.E. Holdich, P.W.H. Chung and R.G. Holdich. (2004). Improving children's written grammar and style: revising and editing with HARRY. Computers & Education, Vol 42, pp1-23. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

q1 · i? · causal · r1

CHECK TEXT analysis of the first (composing/revising) stage of Sophie's HARRY-assisted story, compared with her control story, shows the reported doubling of mean sentence length and sentence-to-comma ratio of 7.3 versus 2.8.

"Her CHECK TEXT score after the first stage for mean sentence length (36.6 words) was twice that of the control story (17.1), indicating much poorer use of full stops"

C.E. Holdich 2004 (2)¶

C.E. Holdich, P.W.H. Chung and R.G. Holdich. (2004). Improving children's written grammar and style: revising and editing with HARRY. Computers & Education, Vol 42, pp1-23. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

q1 · i? · causal · r1

CHECK TEXT analysis of James' first-stage assisted story against his control shows the reported 10-word rise in average sentence length; his percentage of 'and's at stage one (7.1%) was a figure 3% higher than the control story.

"James' average sentence length increased by 10 words per sentence between the control story and the first stage, indicating much poorer use of full stops."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Editing suggestions restored but did not fully correct Sophie's punctuation: her final draft showed no improvement in full-stop use over control — related
• Mean sentence length indicates both insecure and secure full-stop use, with roughly 12 to 16 words per sentence the aim for mature narrative writing — related
• Syntactical noticing focuses mainly on sentence length and ways of connecting clauses — related
• HARRY's second-stage editing prompts improved James' sentence constructions, reducing 'and' overuse and improving vocabulary variety — related