Drawing on theory and practice, the authors argue that, rather than trying to "cover" all grammatical skills, something traditionally done in many classrooms, and with limited results, teachers can more successfully teach less grammar with better results by focusing on key grammatical options and skills in the context of actual writing, throughout…

Infants' phonological acquisition during the first 18 months of life has been studied within experimental psychology for some 30 years. Current research themes include statistical learning mechanisms, early lexical development, and models of phonetic category perception. So far, linguistic theories have hardly been taken into account. These…

This study addresses the possibility that interfixes in multiconstituent nominal compounds in German and Dutch are functional as markers of immediate constituent structure. We report a lexical statistical survey of interfixation in the lexicons of German and Dutch which shows that all interfixes of German and one interfix of Dutch are…

An artificial grammar learning task was used to define two learning tasks of identical complexity at the symbolic level, but which differed in terms of stimulus format. The stimuli in one learning task were created so as to encourage participants to perceive each stimulus as a whole, with less emphasis on the stimulus constituent elements (the…

Navajo and Quechua, both languages with a highly complex morphology, provide intriguing insights into the acquisition of inflectional systems. The development of the verb in the two languages is especially interesting, since the morphology encodes diverse grammatical notions, with the complex verb often constituting the entire sentence. While the…

This study examines the acquisition of English syllable codas by two native speakers of Vietnamese. Data were collected at three intervals over 1 year. Results indicate that a developmental sequence may exist and that this sequence may not be linear, with some longer (i.e., two and three member) codas emerging before some singleton codas.…

This article presents a transcript of an interview that the author conducted with Noam Chomsky. In this interview, Chomsky talks about language acquisition and his theory of Universal Grammar. He then explains how the USA best exemplifies the individualist national culture. He also cites the challenges researchers should address in intercultural…

This study examined the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach grammar skills to individuals who communicated via augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). A single-subject, multiple probe across behaviors design was used to measure the effect of the instructional program on the acquisition and maintenance of the…

Auxiliary selection in L1 German is sensitive to the degree of transitivity of a clause. This study focuses on the most basic parameter of transitivity, number of participants, and shows that as students become more proficient in German, they are more accurate in auxiliary selection. First year students do not reflect in their writing that they…

This study examined whether language deficits persist even in children with optimal outcomes. We examined a group of children with prior diagnoses on the autism spectrum who had IQs in the normal range, were in age-appropriate mainstream classes, and had improved to such an extent that they were considered to be functioning at the level of their…

Recent psychological evidence about "implicit" learning has strong implications for the educational arena. First, it contributes to counterbalance the predominance of "explicit" educational models, based on the transmission of formal rules, by considering informal active/manipulative behavior as the foundation of learning and knowledge-building.…

This empirical study of the effects of grammar instruction was conducted at a college-prep, private school on 70 participants in grades seven through twelve. The dependent variable was the number of correct items over the forms from a pre-test, post-test, and delayed-post-test. Chi-square was used to find if there was a significant difference…

This paper reconsiders the functions of the traditional English grammar teaching and the communicative language teaching. Through analysis and practice, we think that they are not opposed to each other. In order to improve the students' ability and gain better teaching results, the two kinds of teaching approaches should not be used respectively.…

While students generally recognize that racism exists on an individual level, the instructor's challenge is to both elucidate patterns of discrimination and to expose their corollary: unearned and unrecognized systemic privilege of the dominant group. Unaware that their sense of entitlement advantages them at the expense of people of color, some…

A method of grammar-guided writing has been devised to guide graphic sign users through the construction of text messages for use in e-mail and other applications with a remote receiver. The purpose is to promote morphologically and syntactically correct sentences. The available grammatical structures in grammar-guided writing are the highest…