The purpose of this study was to determine whether processability theory (PT; Pienemann, 1998, 2005) accounts for the emergence of grammatical forms and structures in comprehension. Sixty-one learners of English participated in oral interviews that elicited a variety of structures relevant to PT. Learners were divided into two groups: those who…

The purpose of this research was to ascertain if the reading comprehension skills of English-speaking fifth grade students improve when they study a second language. The research was done in an inner-city elementary school in Rochester, New York. The researcher provided a weekly after-school workshop in foreign languages for a group of children…

The function of syntax as a factor in comprehension is described in terms of transformations of basic sentence patterns. Examples of transformations of the basic indirect object sentence are included to show emphasis, questions, negations, and coordinate or subordinate relationships. The term grammeme is defined as the minimum unit of syntactical…

Research has established that classroom verbal interaction typically involves turn taking cycles described as "teacher solicits,""pupil responds," and "teacher reacts." A study examined the question/answer cycles occurring within 36 videotaped language arts lessons conducted by six elementary school teachers and made inferences regarding what…

Outlines a study to determine similarities between language structures in English reading materials and oral language patterns familiar to Filipino children and mentions needs for readability studies of second-language materials. Bibliography. (MD)

This publication is designed to help home economics teachers reinforce basic skills in their curriculum. It contains a series of information sheets explaining basic concepts in sentence grammar, writing, mathematics, speech, and reading. Each concept is defined and illustrated with a home economics example. Step-by-step procedures are ready to…

Noting that the lack of prosodic information in printed text may be a source of difficulty for children who are learning to read, this paper explores the features of language underlying the acoustic and perceptual segmentation of sentences into meaningful units. Using evidence from studies in speech production and perception, the paper addresses…

Recent literature on individual differences in verbal ability indicates that people demonstrating high verbal comprehension are quicker and more accurate in identifying lexical items, as well as more rapid in parsing sentences. They are not, however, more sensitive to the general gist of a passage, and thus do not respond to priming from context…