Search

To determine the variety of syntactic patterns that potential English teachers would normally use and the possible differences in their oral and written discourse, 1000-word oral and written language samples were collected from 21 student teachers. These samples were divided into T-units and classified according to 23 sentence patterns based on Paul Robert's kernel rules with selected transformations. Significant differences in syntax were identified between the subjects' oral and written language. For example, the subjects used four times as many "subject-verb-direct object" sentences in written than in oral language and they utilized a greater variety of sentence patterns in oral than in written language. (Tables show the frequency of individual sentence patterns used in the samples, significant differences between oral and written syntax, and the intercorrelation of 19 variables considered to be indicators of syntactic maturity.) (JB)