This study assessed the effect of adjectives and noun premodifiers on L2 noun phrase comprehension and error types among English Language Learners. We also examined the correlation between L2 noun phrase comprehension and L2 reading comprehension, as well as the contribution of L2 noun phrase comprehension to L2 reading comprehension. One hundred…

Recent research that explored how input exposure and learner characteristics influence novel L2 morphosyntactic pattern learning has exposed participants to either text or static images rather than dynamic visual events. Furthermore, it is not known whether incorporating eye gaze cues into dynamic visual events enhances dual pattern learning.…

This study investigated the relationship between syntactic comprehension at the sentence level and text-level comprehension. The study isolated the specific contribution of syntax by asking whether sentence comprehension efficiency of difficult syntactic constructions explained variance in text comprehension after controlling for sentence…

This article explores aspects of early language and literacy that may predict later literacy development. It explores a range of assessment procedures used for oral language, vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and early reading and writing. The article then describes a small-scale study which highlights the disconnections between the…

A COMPANION TO THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE STUDY OF HAUSA SYNTAX, THIS THIRD PART USES NINETEEN SPECIFIC TEXTS TO ACQUAINT THE READER WITH THREE TYPES OF WRITTEN HAUSA--PRINTED NARRATIVE, EXTEMPORE NARRATIVE, AND NEWSPAPER TEXTS. (THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES DEAL WITH STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION WORDS, RESPECTIVELY.) THE ENTIRE CORPUS IS APPROXIMATELY…

Reviews "The Transition from Infancy to Language: Acquiring the Power of Expression" (L. Bloom). Underscores that Bloom's account of word learning represents an ethnographic, theoretic, and research approach that explores development by starting with the child, and looks at the many behaviors of the child and views these in relation to…

This article discusses preliminary research that found that more than 90 percent of sentences written by children or for children contain verbs from 1 of 13 verb semantic-syntactic subsets. A strategy for assessing a child's knowledge of verbs from each subset is described, along with an assessment protocol. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

To determine the effects of two facets of the adult's input in a child's acquisition of syntactic structures and vocabulary, fifteen classrooms of kindergarten, first, and second grade children from four middle socioeconomic class schools were assigned to either a literature group (which provided exposure to reading rich in varied syntactic…

This article deals with teaching vocabulary to advanced students of English through collocation, i.e., teaching a word in meaningful contexts. Ten collocation exercises are provided. (AM)

A checklist for teachers of English as a Second Language who are teaching the expression of comparisons is presented. It is intended to assist in the systematic classroom presentation of features of comparison, with adaptation for any proficiency level. Broadly, it addresses how both the units being compared and the points of comparison need to be…

To determine whether reading and writing are as closely related as commonly supposed, a study estimated the amount of overlap that exists between several components of reading and writing knowledge. Data were obtained from 256 second graders and 251 fifth graders. Reading measures included tests of phonics (word knowledge), vocabulary (lexical…

This paper discusses Lee and Canter's procedure for assessing child language development as an example of how psycholinguistics is beginning to enter the language clinic. The procedure includes recording and transcribing examples of children's sentences, then scoring them to yield a Developmental Sentence Score (DDS). This procedure was compared…

Argues that a better understanding of the workings of one's first language--English, for most Australians--can facilitate the acquisition and appreciation of another language. The article exploits the morphology and syntax of English in the following areas: liaison, emphasis, stress, separable and inseparable verbs, dental suffixes, weak and…