In this article, we review the skills that have been found to be related to good story comprehension in novice readers with normal hearing and describe the relative weight each plays. The relationship between effective story comprehension and lower level skills (such as syntactic awareness and vocabulary knowledge) is considered, and the casual…

This article examines the language and cognitive skills of bidialectal and bilingual children, focusing on African American English bidialectal speakers and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. It contributes to the discussion by considering two themes in the extant literature: (1) linguistic and cognitive strengths can be found in speaking two…

Research findings concerning verb-level influences on past-tense morphology carry implications for the careful selection of treatment targets. Using 6 of the broad criteria for "good verbs to choose" proposed by D. Crystal (1985) more than 25 years ago as a framework, this article summarizes some of the more recent research with a nod…

This manuscript reports on a corpus-based comparison of native and nonnative graduate students' language production in an asynchronous learning environment. Using 486 discussion board postings from a five-year period (2009-2013), we analyzed the extent to which native and nonnative university students' writing differed in 10 measures of syntactic…

Background: Structural language anomalies or impairments in autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are theoretically and practically important, although underrecognised as such. This review aims to highlight the ubiquitousness of structural language anomalies and impairments in ASD, and to stimulate investigation of their immediate causes and…

Purpose: This review introduces emergentism, which is a leading theory of language development that states that language ability is the product of interactions between the child's language environment and his or her learning capabilities. The review suggests ways in which emergentism provides a theoretical rationale for interventions that are…

Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of an intervention program aimed to improve reading and spelling ability through instruction in morphological awareness together with other forms of linguistic awareness, including knowledge of phonology, orthography, syntax, and semantics. Method: Sixteen children aged between 8;07 (years;months) and…

This article reviews the effectiveness of dose forms and the efficacy of dosage and distribution in morphosyntax intervention for children. Dose forms include the commonly used techniques, procedures, and intervention contexts that constitute teaching episodes; dosage includes the quantitative measures of dose, dose frequency, total intervention…

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the leading inherited cause of mental retardation. In this article, we review what is known about the language and related problems of individuals with FXS. In doing so, we focus on the syndrome-specific features of the language phenotype and on the organismic (i.e., genetic and individual neurocognitive and behavioral)…

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) is a measure of spoken syntax that provides a numeric variable, provides some developmental data, and serves an organizing function for asking and answering clinical questions. DSS is useful in making diagnostic judgments, selecting goals and planning treatment, and measuring intervention efficacy. Difficulties…