Providing a comprehensive survey of cutting-edge work on second language learning, this "Handbook," written by a team of leading experts, surveys the nature of second language learning and its implications for teaching. Prominent theories and methods from linguistics, psycholinguistics, processing-based, and cognitive approaches are…

This paper reviews the literature on grammatical knowledge in language comprehension in the preschool years from the perspective of sensitivity to structural contrasts. Studies of both direct and indirect evidence of sensitivity to structural contrasts were evaluated and showed that there may be a developmental sequence of increasing sensitivity…

Strategies for gathering narratives from children are described. Two analysis approaches (narrative level and story grammar) are recommended for discriminating between the narratives of normal and handicapped students at various ages. (Author/DB)

Three experiments investigated children's acquisition of tense and aspect. Children aged 3-6 years watched and described actions of puppets. The vast majority used appropriate tense, with 3-year-olds using mainly simple past and 4-year-olds encoding most situations with the past progressive. (SKC)

This study examined the association of chronological age (CA) with syntax and vocabulary comprehension in 102 children and adolescents with mental retardation. Results indicated that intelligence scores accounted for 55% and 29% of the variability of syntax and vocabulary scores, respectively. Introduction of CA into the regression equation…

This study examined the acquisition of verb particles and prepositions in language-impaired, language-matched, and age-matched preschool children (total n=42). Results indicated that the use of verb particles constituted a particularly challenging task for the language-impaired subjects relative to both the age-matched and language-matched peers.…

Investigation of grammaticality judgments and decision times for 21 children in 2 age groups (ages 6-7 and ages 8-9) found good sensitivity to grammatical errors, with errors in word order more readily detected than errors of morphological selection. Older children processed errors somewhat more quickly. (Author/DB)

The study evaluated whether specifically language impaired (SLI) children (N=6 and ages 5-8) manifested atypical or normal but delayed development in their interpretation of PRO (an empty pronomial element which has also been termed "a missing complement subject"). Language samples were taken and analyzed twice over a 9-12 month period. Among…

This study compared spoken and written narratives of school-age children (N=20) with language learning disabilities (LLD) with chronological age (CA) and language-age (LA) peers. For the spoken summary, productivity measures and grammatical complexity were significantly lower for children with LLD than for CA children. Expository writing was…