A study found that both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of text were important for signifying meaning of text in the reading comprehension of 102 Australian students at 3 age levels (10, 12, and 14 years). Underlying comprehension problems was a lack of prior experience of text topics. Reading preparation through developing shared meanings is…

Linguistic profiles of 7 dyslexic, 7 mildly dyslexic, 30 average, 16 good readers were examined at kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4. Groups did not differ in language comprehension but did differ in confrontation and rapid automatized naming, three syntactic measures, and verbal memory. Kindergarten ability at giving letter sounds and rapid…

The intuitions and reasoned judgments of second-language learners of English were compared on a number of semantic and syntactic phenomena in the language. Because scores on the semantic tasks were higher than on syntactic tasks, it is assumed that classroom instruction should follow the same route. (24 references) (Author/LB)

The function of word order is examined in light of interference in the learning of English discourse by Chinese speakers and vice versa. Emphasis on different devices in coding discourse functions is shown to be reflected in interference between the two languages. (13 references) (LB)

Based on the results of native and foreign language assessments of high school learners, it is inferred that students with foreign language learning difficulties have subtle but underlying native language learning difficulties, especially in the phonological and syntactic codes of language. Implications for diagnosis and teaching are discussed.…

Garman (1974), reporting on 20 Tamil children aged 3 to 5, postulated a linguistic strategy and 2 prelinguistic strategies to explain results of a question-picture choice task involving sentences with embedded and subordinate clauses. Reanalysis of this data identifies four processing strategies and argues that certain grammatical sensitivities…

Reviews the research in the area of Spanish language acquisition, with special emphasis on acquisition by Mexican-American children ages two to five. Presents a tentative course of development in phonology, morphology, and syntax. Discusses implications for early childhood education and other areas in need of further research. (Author/GLR)

Reviews current developments in second-language reading research and its implications for the classroom, particularly the English-as-a-Second-Language classroom. It is argued that the last 10 years have yielded insights that challenge previous views of first- and second-language reading and imply future avenues of research. (67 references) (VWL)

This study investigated the semantic and syntactic knowledge of a child (age 12) with severe multiple disabilities who could read, write, and comprehend 2 languages but did not initiate conversation. The study demonstrates that high levels of language comprehension and ability to read and write do not automatically transfer to conversational…

Well-trained, knowledgeable teachers are the foundation for successful instructional practices and high student achievement in the primary grades. Master teachers model and use guided practices to engage student interest; employ cueing strategies, flexible grouping, and balanced reading/spelling/writing strategies; and create a nonthreatening…

Describes principles underlying ILLICO, a generic natural-language software tool for building larger applications for performing specific linguistic tasks such as analysis, synthesis, and guided composition. Shows to what extent this approach is relevant to the development of computer-assisted language-learning systems. (Author/VWL)

Argues that cross-morpheme and cross-word syllabification in the WEAVER model of speech production point to the need to deal with flexibility of syllable membership and pose difficulty to a memory-based approach but not to WEAVER. The study reviews empirical support for the form of syllabification in WEAVER and reports an experiment on…

Examined the differential role of comprehension and production practice in second language learning. Discusses the results of a study of 82 first-year students of Spanish as a second language that indicated that relative effectiveness of production versus comprehension practice depended on the morphosyntactic complexity of the structure in…

Focuses on the errors made in lexical verb choice in speech by a small group of advanced learners of English. Findings indicate that while these learners may have a broad outline of verb meaning, their knowledge is hazy concerning contextual and collocational restrictions. Advanced learners may require detailed classroom vocabulary work on simple…

Examines knowledge of semantics-syntax correspondences in second-language acquisition (SLA) within the Principles and Parameters framework. A parameter of semantic structure is used to investigate change of state locatives and "psychological" verbs. Results indicate that for some learners, first-language influence persists until advanced stages of…