The present study investigated the effects of intensive recasting on second language learners' use of the Japanese aspectual form -te i-(ru) using a time-series design. Four college classroom learners participated in 8 conversational sessions, with the researcher providing recasts during the middle 4 sessions, and 2 of the learners also…

This article examines discourses of cultural knowledge and ideology in Chinese language textbooks currently used for primary school students nationwide in China. Within the framework of critical curriculum theory and using critical discourse analysis, this article critically investigates how discourses of cultural knowledge are constructed and…

Grammaticality judgments and processing times associated with violation detection were examined in typically developing children, children with focal brain lesions (FL) acquired early in life, and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical sensitivity in the FL group, while below typically developing children, was above levels…

This paper considers evidence from an intervention designed to raise standards in spelling and independent writing. "The Complete Spelling Programme" (McMurray and Fleming, 1998) is designed to ensure that all processes involved in learning to spell are activated and that the interaction between them is facilitated. In addition, a number…

This study examined how school-aged children process different grammatical categories. Event-related brain potentials elicited by words in visually presented sentences were analyzed according to seven grammatical categories with naturally varying characteristics of linguistic functions, semantic features, and quantitative attributes of length and…

Studies using the English and Spanish MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories demonstrated that the grammatical abilities of 20--30-month-old bilingual children were related more strongly to same-language vocabulary development than to broader lexical-conceptual development or maturation. First, proportions of different word types in each…

This paper reports on a study that was carried out to determine learners' attitudes to learning grammar through the use of two types of consciousness-raising tasks. A deductive task provided explicit explanations of a grammar structure, while an inductive task required learners to discover the grammar rules for themselves. The study investigated…

Research on second/foreign language teacher impressions, reflections, and beliefs continues to illuminate various facets of language teacher knowledge and practice, but it has only recently begun to question the relationship between these teacher characteristics and actual classroom discourse. This collaborative case study undertaken by a…

The study examines the development of the registers of academic writing by African American college-level students through style and grammar: indirection inherent in the oral culture of the African American community and the paratactic functions of "because." Discourse analysis of 74 samples of academic writing by 20 African American undergraduate…

In "The English Patient: English Grammar and teaching in the Twentieth Century", Hudson and Walmsley (2005) contend that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar decline in English universities, where no serious research or teaching on English grammar took place. This article argues that such a decline was due not only…

Many authors note that the history of teaching Latin would be a fruitful topic for a comprehensive treatise. Although intense debates about the quality and necessity of teaching Latin date back as early as in the eighteenth century, Latin courses have persisted into the present and, notably, with few changes in content. The author supports the…

This study investigates the presence and latency of the P600 component in response to subject-verb agreement violations in spoken language in people with and without developmental dyslexia. The two groups performed at-ceiling level on judging the sentences on their grammaticality, but the ERP data revealed subtle differences between them. The P600…

The advantages and disadvantages of wider or narrower definitions of "pidginization" and "pidgin" are reviewed to determine the differences between pidgins and naturalistically learned second languages (L2s). It is argued that a wider definition is preferred because it avoids problematic counterexamples and captures…

It is a matter of debate whether the two differentiated grammatical systems in a bilingual child develop autonomously, or whether there is interdependence and in what areas (Genesee, 2001; Meisel, 2001). Extensive research is being carried out in the emergence of the two grammars, but not much attention has been given to the development of…

The goal of this research is to determine the relevant factors that aid in the acquisition of the perfective aspect in Russian. Results confirm the findings of previous research, which say that aspect is not learned as a uniform category, but rather interrelates with the acquisition of Aktionsarten. This study focuses on the factors responsible…