Three studies of phonological knowledge and generalization were conducted with six functionally misarticulating children, aged 3-4. Results indicated that productive phonological knowledge of the sound system influenced the amount of generalization learning. The extent of generalization learning was associated with the point on the knowledge…

Examines the various roles which grammatical consciousness can assume in the planning stages of a language teaching syllabus. Gives examples of learning activities that can engender unconscious awareness of crucial aspects of language organization. (EKN)

This study of 40 hearing-impaired college students found that highly intelligible speakers were uniformly consistent in their speech production patterns, whereas speakers who exhibited low overall speech intelligibility were either extremely consistent in their aberrant production patterns or extremely inconsistent in their error patterns.…

Ten language-impaired children, aged 4-6, were found to exhibit more pronounced syntactic deficits than 10 normal children matched by mean length of utterance. Language samples were analyzed with respect to: grammatical marker need index; grammatical marker error index; and grammatical marker errors for nouns, verbs, bound, and unbound forms.…

Seventeen dyslexic college students rapidly repeated a series of phonologically complex and simple phrases. Compared to controls, subjects repeated the phrases at a significantly slower rate and, in the complex condition, made significantly more errors. Analysis of errors suggested that dyslexics may have difficulties in the planning stage of…

In a study of the application natural language processing to second-language instruction, two versions of the Nihongo-CALI (computer-assisted language instruction) system were developed. Empirical data support the possibility/effectiveness of intelligent CALI to facilitate second-language acquisition. (19 references) (LB)

It is shown that many students' errors in second-language learning are based on conclusions that they are drawing from faulty and incomplete information in textbooks, whereas other "errors" are the result of normal language learning strategies and occur in systematic patterns. (LB)

A common error in children's attempts to solve verbal analogies is to respond with a word strongly associated with the third term in the analogy. This is known as associative response. A study was conducted to investigate the cognitive processes underlying this response. Subjects, 112 fifth grade students, were administered a battery of tests…

Describes an experiment designed to determine which language errors interfere to the greatest degree with comprehension by native speakers of the language. For this purpose, an instructor prepared a list of most serious Spanish language errors which was submitted to native speakers for evaluation in terms of comprehension and acceptability. (MES)

Spontaneous speech samples were collected from four three-year olds with surgically repaired cleft palates. Analyses showed that subjects were similar to one another with respect to their phonetic inventories but differed considerably in the frequency and types of phonological processes used. (Author/JDD)

Analysis of spelling errors of 45 primary-school children needing reading and writing improvement found that a considerable proportion of errors involved both syllabic reduction and feature changes similar to those seen in normal speech development. A model is presented to account for the phonological simplifications seen in both speech and…

A study examined the issue of language correctness in Alberta's English 30 diploma examination papers written in January and June 1993 which received a score of "satisfactory" on matters of convention. A total of 160 papers (which received either a score of "satisfactory" on all scoring categories, scores of "limited"…

Single-word and conversation samples were analyzed for 10 phonologically disordered children (ages 3-5), before and after treatment and 3 months later. Results suggest that, for most of the children, there were system changes in both single words and in conversational speech. (Author/JDD)

This study examined the criterion-related validity of oral reading fluency (ORF), number of words read correctly per minute, with 64 regular, remedial, and special education elementary-level students. Comparison with two miscue-based assessment measures did not support modification of traditional ORF but did suggest practical value of selected…

Two fourth grade boys with learning disabilities learned to use the Bank Street Writer III word processing and spelling checker program to edit spelling errors. Both boys learned to manage the spell-checking process and increased the spelling accuracy of their edited texts. Differences in their learning processes and the tool's limitations are…