The morphological structure of the word has a central function in the organization of the mental lexicon and word recognition. Polymorphemic words in Arabic are composed of two non-concatenated morphemes: root and word-pattern. This study is the first to address the issue of nominal-pattern priming among young developing Arabic speakers. I…

Drawing on structural sensitivity theory, the current study investigated monolingual and bilingual children's ability to learn how phonemes combine to form acceptable syllables in a new language. A total of 186 monolingual and bilingual kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders in Taiwan participated in the study. Bilingual children,…

Purpose: A mixed-methods approach, evaluating triple word-form theory, was used to describe linguistic patterns of misspellings. Method: Spelling errors were taken from narrative and expository writing samples provided by 888 typically developing students in Grades 1-9. Errors were coded by category (phonological, orthographic, and morphological)…

To determine whether or not students in grades 2 and 4 comprehended materials written with patterns that appear frequently in their speech better than materials written with patterns that appear infrequently, two reading comprehension tests were devised by the investigator. Subjects were all second- and fourth-grade classrooms from two similar…

Using second grade children, this study was designed to investigate the differences (or lack of differences) among the Interview, the Picture Stimulus Interview, and the Free Play Situation techniques in the categories of productivity, thought groups, compound structures, complex structures, and words per thought group as a means of gaining a…

Reports on a study investigating the contributions of visual factors dependent upon the use of symbols as intermediary units and concludes that perceptual factors may play an important role in the use of Chinese characters as intermediaries in introducing reading. (JM)

Emphasizes the importance of using children's language patterns to guarantee maximum comprehension for beginning readers and lists other implications of the research. Tables and bibliography. (RW)

Demonstrates frequent occurrence of self-initiated repairs in speech of kindergarten and second grade children. Speech during "Show and Tell" sessions was scored for spontaneous occurrence of repetitions; corrections of word choice reference and syntax; postponements; and abandonments. Findings indicate most frequent communicative…

FIRST AND SECOND GRADERS, GIVEN "CVC" SINGULAR NONSENSE WORDS (E.G., NAR) ORALLY AND ASKED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO PLURALS (NARF-NARK), PREFERRED FINAL SOUNDS SHARING WITH /Z/ (THE MOST COMMON SHAPE OF THE PLURAL MORPHEME IN ENGLISH) THE STRIDENCY OR CONTINUANCE FEATURES. THIS SUGGESTS THAT THEIR PLURALIZATION RULES ARE FORMULATED IN TERMS OF…

This four-part study, which focused on the relationship between the incidence of Black English and the child's perception that Black English is not preferred speech, identified the phonological characteristics in the dialect speech of black second grade children of low socioeconomic background in New York City public schools. Specifically, the…

An evaluation of children's ability to conceptualize auditory pattern contrasts was made. At the end of the 1968-69 school year, 56 kindergarteners, 31 first graders, 24 second graders, and four fourth graders were tested on their ability to conceptualize the sequential relationships of phonemes in both nonsyllabic and syllabic patterns. An…

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effect of four different reading programs on the decoding and comprehension skills of second and third graders. One reading program used a basal reading series which exercised little control over the grapheme-phoneme correspondences presented in the vocabulary. The second program used a basal…