The purpose of this study was to investigate morphological knowledge in spoken language and its relationship to written representation of morphemes by normally achieving second graders, language-learning disabled children, and adults with literacy problems. Research dealing with the written expression of populations with language-learning difficulties has consistently indicated that these populations tend to make morphemic errors when spelling words. If a deficit in morphological knowledge is an underlying factor, then these individuals might also be expected to perform poorly on tasks that require them to apply morphological rules in spoken language (an implicit level of morphological knowledge) or to analyze the morphemic structure of spoken words (an explicit level of morphological knowledge). Analyses found both these levels of morphological knowledge to be highly related to morpheme use in written language samples, and suggest that morphological knowledge does not develop solely as a function of maturation or exposure to language. Implications of these findings for assessment and intervention are addressed.
Experiments examined grammatical judgement, revision, and erroridentification deficits in relation to expressive language skills and to morphemic errors in writing. Language-disabled subjects did not differ from language-matched controls on judgement, revision, or error identification. Age-matched controls represented more morphemes in elicited writing than either of the other groups, which were equivalent. However, in spontaneous writing, language-disabled subjects made more frequent morphemic errors than age-matched controls, but languagematched subjects did not differ from cither group. Proficiency relative to academic experience and oral language status and to remedial implications are discussed. KESUME Nos experiences cxaminaient les deficits dans le jugement grammatical, la revision et I'identification d'erreurs en relation avee les habiletes de langagc cxprcssif et les erreurs morphemiques dans I'ccriturc. Les sujets avec des problcmcs dc langagc ne differaient pas des sujets contrdlcs paires pour le langage quant au jugement, a la revision ou a Videntification d'errcurs. Les controles paires pour I'age montraicnt plus dc morphemes lors de I'ecriture provoquee que les autres groupes qui eux, ctaicnt equivalents. Cependant lors dc I'ecriture spontanee, les sujets handicaps du langagc faisaicnt plus d'erreurs morphemiques que les controles paires pour l'agc alors que les sujets paires pour Ic language ne differaient pas des autres groupes. La competence relative a 1'cxperience acad&nique et au statut du langage oral ainsi que les implications de traitement sont discutees.Research has consistently found that individuals with written language difficulties make significantly more syntactic errors in writing than do their non-learning-disabled peers (
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