Oral narrative retells are rich sources of information for language development. Investigators collected English-language oral narrative retells during the fall and spring from 65 Spanish-English-speaking dual language learners (DLL) in kindergarten and first grade. Investigators examined transcripts of oral narratives for (a) inclusion and…

Numerous studies have shown that spelling presents unique challenges for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (d/hh), and most do not develop age appropriate spelling skills. Spelling errors from 29 middle school d/hh students were analyzed from writing samples that were gathered at the beginning, middle, and end of a year-long writing…

This study examined and compared patterns of errors in the oral definitions of newly learned words. Fifteen 9- to 11-year-old children with language learning disability (LLD) and 15 typically developing age-matched peers inferred the meanings of 20 nonsense words from four novel reading passages. After reading, children provided oral definitions…

A study examined the ability of 10 two-year-olds to produce minimal pairs of novel trisyllabic words with primary stress on the first or second syllables. The syllables contained dissimilar or similar vowel contrasts to determine if segments affected omission. Omission was more frequent for the first syllable of weak-strong-weak word pairs.…

Spontaneous speech samples of a bilingual Spanish-English speaking child were collected during a period of 17 months (ages 6-8). Data revealed percentages and rank ordering of syntactic elements switched in the longitudinal language samples obtained. Specific recommendations for using code mixing in therapy for speech-language pathologists are…

In this study, Spanish language samples were collected for a young bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English speaking child during a 2-year period (ages 4-6). Results suggest a progressive reduction of morphological and syntactical complexity in Spanish. The observed errors tended to affect mainly Spanish inflectional morphology. Implications for…

A study involving 102 toddlers with exposure to Spanish and English found children whose parents said they used only one language with the child did not differ from children whose parents said they used both languages in reported use of word combinations and use of mixed utterances. (Author/CR)