This University of Nebraska study proposed to discover (1) the types of changes occurring in syntax as children mature, (2) the age at which children begin to use certain structures in their writing, (3) the differences in syntax between children's and adult's writing, (4) the relationship between syntactic patterns and intellectual ability, and (5) the differences between the syntax of children studying the Nebraska English Curriculum materials and that of children in traditional language arts programs. A multi-level instrument of syntactic analysis, similar on the first level to the Strickland instrument, was developed and used over a 3-year period to analyze the writing of over 13,000 sentences from 2,000 compositions. Results indicated that children move steadily toward the syntactic model of the adult writer as they grow older; that a statistically significant difference is evident between high, middle, and low I.Q. groups in their use of a variety of syntactic structures; and that children in programs using the Nebraska Project English curriculum progress toward the adult model more rapidly than do children in traditional programs. (This document summarizes material reported in "The Nebraska Study of the Syntax of Children's Writing," 3 vols., The Univ. of Nebraska, 1967. See ED 013 814, ED 013 815, and ED 013 816.) (JS)