E-learning systems are transforming the educational sector and making education more affordable and accessible. Recently, many e-learning systems have been equipped with advanced technologies that facilitate the roles of educators and increase the efficiency of teaching and learning. One such technology is Automatic Essay Grading (AEG) or…

The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish…

Recent research on the effects of processing instruction (PI) have incorporated online research methods in order to demonstrate that PI has effects on cognitive processing behaviors as well as on accuracy (e.g. Lee & Doherty, 2019a). The present study uses self-paced reading and a moving windows technique to examine the effects of PI on second…

The results from a large-scale study on toddlers' language acquisition in European Portuguese are presented. Toddlers' lexical and grammatical competencies were assessed using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The results, based on 3012 reports completed by parents, indicate an increase in the lexical…

Whilst historically there has been a widespread consensus that teaching grammar has no impact on students' attainment in writing, more recent research suggests that where a functionally oriented approach to grammar is meaningfully embedded within the teaching of writing, significant improvements in writing can be secured. A recent study, using a…

In his 2007 study "Effects of Textual Enhancement and Topic Familiarity on Korean EFL Students' Reading Comprehension and Learning of Passive Form," Lee demonstrated that learners were better able to correct written sentences that contained incorrect English passive forms after exposure to texts flooded with enhanced (versus…

This study investigated the relationship between syntactic comprehension at the sentence level and text-level comprehension. The study isolated the specific contribution of syntax by asking whether sentence comprehension efficiency of difficult syntactic constructions explained variance in text comprehension after controlling for sentence…

In this follow-up study, we evaluated children's communication development at the ages of 8 ("n" = 50), 18 ("n" = 46), 24 ("n" = 44) and 36 months ("n" = 36) using the Finnish version of the "MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventories" (MCDI). A sample of children ("n" = 14)…

Computer technology in general and the Internet in particular have facilitated as well as motivated the development of Web-based tutorials (MacKinnon & Williams, 2006). The current research study describes a pedagogical approach that exploits the use of self-paced, Web-based tutorials for assisting students with reviewing grammar and mechanics…

Proponents of Processing Instruction (VanPatten, 2005) claim that learners benefit most when presented with both referential and affective structured input activities. Following a classic pretest-posttest design, the present study investigates the role of these two types of activities on the learning of the Spanish subjunctive. Groups differed…

The present article provides an exploration of ultimate attainment in second language (L2) and its limitations. It is argued that the question of maturational constraints can best be investigated when the reference population is bilingual and exposed on a regular basis to varieties of their first language (L1) that show cross-linguistic influence.…

The focus of the study was an interest in discerning the relationship between grammar knowledge and its application for evaluating grammar development at different academic and professional stages. A 3-part questionnaire was completed by first and last semester Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) graduate students, and practicing…

Measures of productivity and sentence organization are useful metrics for quantifying language development and language impairments in monolingual and bilingual children. It is not yet known what measures within and across languages are most informative when evaluating the language skills of bilingual children. The purpose of this study was to…

This study presents results from sentence-completion and grammaticality-judgement tasks with seven German-speaking agrammatic aphasics and seven age-matched control subjects examining verb finiteness marking and verb-second (V2) placement. The patients were found to be selectively impaired in tense marking in the face of preserved mood and…

Supplementary to "NAEP 1996 Trends in Academic Progress," this report describes two aspects of writing for which change has been measured since 1984: writing fluency as determined by holistic scoring; and mastery of the conventions of written English as determined by mechanics scoring. The introduction discusses the layout and means of…