Little attention has been devoted to date to the study of morphological knowledge in individuals with developmental dyslexia. The current study compares the ability of Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic students and gradeschool children to analyze written words into their morphological components, using a linguistic analogy task. Two sets of…

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one…

Background: Narrative may provide a useful way in which to assess the language ability of adolescents with specific language impairment and may be more ecologically valid than standardized tests. However, the language of this age group is seldom studied and, furthermore, the effect of narrative genre has not been explored in detail. Methods &…

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…

Complex working memory span tasks have been shown to predict performance on a number of measures of higher-order cognition including fluid abilities. However, exactly why performance on these tasks is related to higher-order cognition is still not known. The present study examined the patterns of errors made on two common complex span tasks. The…

This includes a contrastive study of English and Chinese noun phrases, verbal phrases, and word order and discusses common mistakes made by English speakers learning Chinese. Mistakes often made by English speakers due to differences between the two languages are divided into three categories: the first is mistakes in word order where the English…

Examines possible comparison techniques which should transcend linguistic levels and should be of practical use in the learning process. The article goes on to discuss the possibility of a contrastive study of errors. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

The criteria employed in most textbooks to differentiate "ser" and "estar" followed by an adjective are mainly semantic. Most exercises offer to second language learners too high a proportion of "estar" usages, a practice that leads to overgeneralization with regard to the use of "estar." An experiment was…

Speakers of languages without a surface case system tend, when learning German, to place predicate nominals erroneously in the accusative case when the verb is passive or the sentence governs a passive rather than an active situation. Three hypotheses are offered to explain this phenomenon: (1) the learner carries over the deep structure relations…

Based on the assumption that major sentence errors are caused by a deficit in syntactic fluency that can be aided by sentence combining instruction, student writing errors are analyzed in this paper and explanations are provided showing how these errors could have been prevented or reduced through instruction in sentence combining. Some types of…

This is a quarterly report of a project involving the analysis of the language of four Puerto Rican children living in the Boston area who are learning Spanish as a first language. The children, all male, ranged in age from 17 months to 37 months during the period of study. All had some contact with English. The data were transcriptions of…

This report consists of two major sections. The first describes the theory and methodology of the Romanian-English Contrastive Analysis Project (RECAP), and the second section presents the first aberrant corpus in RECAP. Also provided are a list of signs and abbreviations and three annexes consisting of two translation exercises and one…

This report, the fifth in a series of working papers issued by the Project on Applied Contrastive Linguistics (PAKS) at the University of Stuttgart, is dedicated to a consideration of error analysis in language learning, here seen as relevant not only for the teacher but for the text book writer and the curriculum planner as well. An introduction…

Discusses the correction system for German-French translations used in German universities. The following are proposed: (1) Differentiation of, and a grading scale for, errors; (2) Distinguishing interstructural vs. intrastructural errors, (with suggestion for grading); (3) Localizing errors in grammar or vocabulary, with consequences for grading.…