The main objective of this research was to analyze the impact of transcription skills of Spanish writers when writing an independently composed sentence within a writing-level design. The free-writing sentence task from the "Early Grade Writing Assessment" (Jiménez, in press) was used to examine the production, accuracy, speed, syntactic…

Arithmetic word problem (AWP) solving is a highly demanding task for children with learning disabilities (LD) since verbal and mathematical information have to be integrated. This study examines specifically how syntactic awareness (SA), the ability to manage the grammatical structures of language, affects AWP solving. Three groups of children in…

Poor comprehenders have intact word-reading skills but struggle specifically with understanding what they read. We investigated whether two metalinguistic skills, morphological and syntactic awareness, are specifically related to poor reading comprehension by including separate and combined measures of each. We identified poor comprehenders…

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 (N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior…

The overall objective of this article is to examine how oral language abilities relate to reading profiles in English language learners (ELLs) and English as a first language (EL1) learners, and the extent of similarities and differences between ELLs and EL1s in three reading subgroups: normal readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders. The…

This study examined syntactic comprehension in French children with dyslexia in both listening and reading. In the first syntactic comprehension task, a partial version of the Epreuve de Comprehension syntaxico-semantique (ECOSSE test; French adaptation of Bishop's test for receptive grammar test) children with dyslexia performed at a lower level…

This article focuses on some of the linguistic components that underlie letter-sound decoding skills and reading comprehension: specifically phonology, morphology, and syntax. Many children who have reading difficulties had language deficits that were detectable before they began reading. Early identification of language difficulties will…

Syntax in the written expression of five normal and five learning disabled (LD) fourth graders was assessed. The syntax of the LD group was found to be significantly deficient when compared to that of the normal group. (Author)

Fourth graders who were good readers (N=95) and poor readers (N=27) were given tests of syntactic competence, vocabulary, and auditory and reading comprehension. Scores on the auditory and reading comprehension tests were significantly correlated. Poor readers performed significantly poorer on the syntactic test, but results did not support the…

Language performance at syntactic, semantic, orthographic, and discourse levels was measured for 12 learning disabled third graders, 15 normally achieving third graders, and 11 normally achieving first graders. Results indicated significant overall differences between learning disabled and normally achieving Ss, but not between the learning…

Fifty-five poor readers and 58 normal readers in grade six were presented a modified version of B. Hamill's tone pattern-phrase matching procedure. Consistent with Hamill's adults, Ss tended to choose phrases which matched long tone durations to content words and short durations to function words. (Author/CL)

The author supports the theory that for some disabled readers the nature of the form-schema (syntatic expectations) they make use of in processing text does not result in stable comprehension because their recognition strategies are linked to their past experience in constructing meaning from speech. Implications for instruction are discussed.…

The article examines the available means of determining the readability of written materials and reviews the empirical evidence that indicates consideration of syntactic complexity in determining readability. Problems with readability formulas are pointed out. Guidelines for using readability formulas that take syntactic complexity into account…

The study examined whether college students (35 normally achieving writers, 35 writers with learning disabilities, and 35 underprepared writers) differed in their ability to utilize the semantic roles and syntactic rules needed to apply cohesive referencing in written text. Among findings were that all groups made effective use of pronoun…

The article describes the Diagnostic Evaluation of Writing Skills (DEWS), a diagnostic teaching tool containing criteria of assessment to determine a student's deficiencies in reading and writing. (DLS)