It can be daunting when one of your students can't even put a simple sentence together. Then, with modeling and visuals, you finally get that student to produce 5-7 word sentences.
But what's next? How do you get that student to produce more complex sentences?
What if your student can't even comprehend complex sentences?
First, let's talk about why it is so important to teach complex sentences to our students.
1. Students with language impairments demonstrate decreased use of complex sentences (Balthazar & Scott, 2018).
Our students with language impairments struggle significantly with formulating complex sentences. This inhibits their communication significantly when they are trying to express related ideas, such as explaining why or how something happened. They are in need of extra support and explicit instruction in this area.
2. Students with language impairments benefit from explicit metalinguistic instruction (Balthazar & Scott, 2018).
Research shows that our students with language disorders benefit significantly when we explicitly teach them how to form complex sentences and engage them in thinking about their language structures. This means that we can't just let them "pick up" on the complex structures we are modeling. We have to show them step by step how to do it. Don't be afraid to literally explain terms like subordinating and coordinating conjunctions to them! It helps them a lot!!
3. Understanding of complex sentences significantly affects reading comprehension (Catts et al., 2012).
When students cannot understand complex sentences, they are at increased risk for impaired reading comprehension. Grade level texts and reading passages contain a lot of complex sentences. If they cannot understand them, they will not understand what is happening in the story or text and they will not be able to respond to comprehension questions. It's a vicious cycle.
Okay, you get it. It's important!! But how?!
We know that explicitly teaching your students HOW to formulate more complex sentences is SO important. Teaching them what different subordinating and coordinating conjunctions mean is an important step to helping them understand complex (and compound) sentences when reading or listening.
Let me teach you how to teach them.
Let's look at a study by Balthazar and Scott (2018) which tested an intervention model targeting complex sentences and found significant gains in the use of complex sentences in oral language implementation.
Simply put, here are the steps they took:
1. Present an example of the target sentence structure.
For example, "I ate dinner because I was hungry." In this example, my target might be to discuss the dependent clause "because I was hungry."
2. Define the target clause (i.e., a dependent clause). Talk about how to use it, and differentiate it from other clauses (i.e., an independent clause).
For example, "because I was hungry," is a dependent clause. We use this type of clause to add meaning to the sentence. It tells us why something happened. It is different from an independent clause because a dependent clause is not a complete sentence, while an independent clause is a complete sentence.
3. Provide several examples of the sentence structure used in context (i.e., read a short story with those sentence structure targets).
Any picture book, chapter book or listening activity loaded with the target sentence structure would suffice depending on the students' baseline comprehension skills.
4. Provide opportunities for ample sentence repetition. Provide examples of the target sentence structure for a child to repeat.
For example, choose some of the targets in the story for the child to repeat back to you for practice.
5. Provide metalinguistic instruction.
For example, have the student deconstruct sentences, combine sentences, and generate new sentences. Students can deconstruct sentences by identifying the independent clauses, the dependent clauses and the subordinating conjunctions.
6. Discuss the meaning of the complex sentence.
For example, ask "How does the clause add meaning to the sentence?" A dependent clause with the subordinating conjunction "because" adds meaning by telling us why something happened!
"I ate dinner. I was hungry." Those two sentences can be combined like this: "I ate dinner because I was hungry." Ask the students to combine the sentences with you and slowly fade support until they can do it independently.
These are evidence based steps that work!!
Do me a favor and give them a try with your students! If this terminology is totally new to you and you want step-by-step instruction and support, especially with teaching your students about conjunctions, take a look at this resource right here!
I did it all for you.
Here's a whole curriculum you can use in your speech room for teaching simple, compound and complex sentences depending on your students' current needs.
If you're not sold, click here to try this FREE 3-week lesson plan:
I promise that teaching complex sentences will significantly improve your students' reading comprehension skills as well as their narrative skills!
They'll probably be even more proud of themselves than you are!
Written By: Rosie Sepulveda, Language Encounters
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