Presents evidence revealing the complexity of young children's language understandings with regard to spelling patterns, parts of speech, and vocabulary; points out that teachers must build upon the language knowledge that children bring to school. (GT)

The project described in this report examines the development of Swedish-speaking children's syntax from the appearance of the first two-work sentences until all the basic syntactical rules are mastered. The procedures and techniques for the experiment are described and preliminary findings are discussed. Children practice language by repeating an…