In the UK there is much concern about the educational progress of children from areas of significant social disadvantage entering primary school with impoverished language skills. These children are not routinely referred to speech and language therapy services and therefore education practitioners in schools deliver intervention to facilitate…

Two developments in 20th-century grammar are discussed, focusing on aspects that may be useful in training teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL). The two developments are (1) the large descriptive grammars based on usage surveys, which give a systematic and detailed presentation of facts of usage, and (2) procedures for analyzing a…

Due to differences in the grammars of English and French, "pendant" and "depuis" are as difficult to master for English speakers as their equivalents "for" and "since" are for French speakers. To the former, three facts are crucial: (1) "depuis" corresponds to both "for" and "since," which creates ambiguities; (2) "depuis" applies to an…

Twenty language-disordered and 20 nonimpaired children, aged 9-11, performed story generation and story retelling tasks. For both groups, retold narratives were longer and contained more story grammar components and complete episode structures. Clause length differentiated story generation from story retelling for the language-disordered children…

A correspondence is shown between grammatical categories and grammatical functions in Chinese. Some syntactic properties distinguish finite verbs from nonfinite verbs, nominals from other categories, and verbs from other categories. (Contains seven references.) (LB)

Comparison of the written stories of 96 learning-disabled and 96 non-learning-disabled students found significant differences at grades 3, 4, and 5 in students' inclusion of a complete story grammar. No differences were found at grade 6. (Author/DB)

An exploratory study of six undergraduates under laboratory conditions aimed to clarify the role of explicit teaching of different kinds of second-language grammar rules. In this look at methodology, one hypothesis was supported: that explicit and deductive learning is better than implicit for simple categorical rules. (Contains 24 references.)…

This study of the story composition abilities of 46 students (aged 11-14) with learning disabilities found that subjects had a rudimentary knowledge of story form, but this knowledge was less developed than that of their nondisabled peers. Subjects also had greater coherence problems in their writing and were less fluent writers. (Author/JDD)

Six autistic children, age 3-6, and 6 children with Down syndrome were followed over a period of 12-26 months. Autistic children followed the same general developmental path as the Down syndrome children in the acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspects of language. (Author/JDD)

Twenty-three normal adults and four closed head-injured (CHI) adults with a high level of language recovery retold and generated stories. The two tasks differentially influenced the performance of both groups. The two groups differed in measures of cohesiveness and story grammar only in the story generation task. (Author/JDD)

Theoretical assumptions and consequences of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) are compared with the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, and empirical evidence favoring the former is reviewed. Pedagogical implications of the MDH, a strategy for interlanguage-intervention, and several problems revealed in the literature are discussed. (MSE)

A study investigated the effectiveness of teaching French cleft constructions (e.g., "qui est-ce qui...) by three methods: in a contextual presentation; traditionally; and in a presentation influenced by syntactic theory and explaining the internal structure of the phrases. Results suggest formal grammar instruction should focus on familiar…

In an effort to learn at which level of language proficiency English for Special Purposes can be taught effectively to nonnative speakers, 50 students at an electronics institute in Algeria were administered eight tests after a 16-week intensive English course. Four of the tests were of skills in English as a second language (ESL): the grammar…

This study of 40 junior high school students with learning disabilities and 20 control students found that significant intergroup differences in the quality of narrative compositions were not evident when students were allocated time for planning and were given "Create a Story" cues. (Author/JDD)

A study examined the occurrence of specific grammatical structures (double object pronouns, nominalization with "lo," demonstrative adjectives/pronouns, and possessive adjectives/pronouns) in oral samples of native speaker Spanish and compared the results with the treatment of the structures in six beginning-level college Spanish textbooks.…