Taking a dynamic usage-based perspective, this longitudinal case study compares the development of sentence complexity in speaking versus writing in two beginner Taiwanese learners of English (identical twins) in an extensive corpus consisting of 100 oral and 100 written texts of approximately 200 words produced by each twin over 8 months. Three…

The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between components of aptitude and the fluency, lexical variety, syntactic complexity, and accuracy of performance in two types of written and spoken narrative tasks. We also addressed the question of how narrative performance varies in tasks of different cognitive complexity in the…

This study examines the effects of learning context and age on second language development by comparing the language gains, measured in terms of oral and written fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy, experienced by four groups of learners of English: children in a study abroad setting, children in their at-home school, adults in…

Analysis of basilang speech (in terms of word order, reference to time, and reference to space) of Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese speakers of English as a second language indicated that oriental subjects tended not to use prepositions and that Spanish-speaking subjects tended to use "in" to express most locative meanings. (Author/CB)

Examines differences in oral narrative discourse of adult second-language learners of English on narrative tasks simulating the ability to describe events in the Here-and-Now versus the There-and-Then. Results indicate that complex tasks elicit less fluent, but more accurate and complex narration than do simpler tasks. (90 references) (Author/CK)