Effects of Discourse Mode on the Syntactic Complexity of Learning Disabled Students' Written Expression

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of discourse mode on the syntactic complexity of the written expression of learning disabled students at three grade levels. A film without narration was used to elicit written language samples in each of the two discourse modes, description and argumentation. Two measures of syntactic complexity - average length of T-unit and Syntactic Density Score - were employed to determine differences between the two modes. In addition, sentence types and syntactic patterns were examined as indices of syntactic complexity. Results of the investigation and implications of these results are discussed.