Four grammar checkers, all of French Canadian origin, were evaluated: "Le Correcteur 101,""GramR,""Hugo Plus," and "French Proofing Tools." Results indicate that "Le Correcteur 101" is the best French grammar checker on the market and worth its premium cost. (two references) (CK)

Investigation of the accuracy of novice learners of British Sign Language (BSL) and sign-naive subjects in recognizing possible and impossible BSL signs and in naming signs suggests that rated iconicity and the ability to process potentially meaningful gestures, determined recognition and naming accuracy. (19 references) (Author/CB)

In a study on L2 proficiency in writing, conducted among 84 Dutch university students of Italian and 75 students of French, manipulation of task complexity led in the complex task to a significant decrease of errors, while at the same time a trend for a lexically more varied text was observed (Kuiken and Vedder 2005, 2007, in press). Based on this…

Use of contextual information in reading was examined by subjecting pupils to a cloze task (inserting missing words in texts) and an error-detection task (recognizing graphemic, syntactic, or semantic errors in texts). Children in higher grades and good readers (versus poor readers) demonstrated greater use of graphemic, syntactic, and semantic…

An explicit, analytical procedure was used to single out the phonological inventory of a Danish schoolboy's spelling errors. His perceptions of his speech sounds were analyzed by letter-to-sound rules. When wrong letters resulting from hypercorrection were peeled off the discrimination rules, the phonetic errors remained. (Contains 36 references.)…

Examines whether dual-route models of spelling account for the misspellings of Spanish children of different educational levels. Finds that second graders relied heavily on phonological mediation, whereas eighth graders seemed to use a lexical strategy, and fourth-grade children showed an intermediate pattern. Finds support for dual-route spelling…

Written and spoken language samples for 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classes in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 normal hearing students were analyzed for grammatical deviations. HI students exhibited significantly more deviations in written than spoken language samples, especially failure to supply morphological markers,…

Studied children with word finding difficulties who were identified through a wider survey of educational provision for those with language and communication difficulties. (Author/VWL)

This study compares pauses, repetitions and recasts in matched task interactions under face-to-face and computer-mediated conditions. Six first-year English undergraduates at a Turkish University took part in Skype-based voice chat with a native speaker and face-to-face with their instructor. Preliminary quantitative analysis of transcripts showed…

Presents study conducted in France to determine which errors typically made by French-speaking Americans (errors in pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar) are most objectionable to the French ear. Concludes grammatical errors were rated least tolerable. (Author/BK)

Describes a think-aloud, oral feedback procedure that English-as-a-Second-Language teachers may use to respond to student writing as interested native-language readers intent on comprehending the written message, and not as editors or proofreaders. (Author/CB)

This paper adopts the activation spreading theory to explore how lexical items are accessed. Approximately 3300 errors from both public sources and ordinary conversation in Japanese are analyzed. Analyses suggest that there are two types of environment in which contextual lexical errors occur, and that these two types of environment correspond to…

Spontaneous speech samples from 10 Swedish children were analyzed grammatically. The five subjects (age five) with specific language impairment (SLI) differed from controls in their more restricted usage of word order patterns and number of grammatical errors. Their speech also showed frequent omissions of grammatical morphemes. Results suggest…

The assessment of foreign students' writing by native speaker English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers was examined using an analytical scoring technique based on the "ESL Composition Profile." Results showed that vocabulary accounted for the largest among of variance in total scores, followed by content, language use, organization, and…

This study attempted to quantify diagnostic characteristics related to consonant production of developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD) in 11 Dutch children (ages 6 and 7). The study was able to quantify diagnostic characteristics but found very few qualitative differences in error patterns between children with DVD and 11 age-matched children with…