TESL Canada Journal
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Phonological Processes in ESL Five-Year-Olds
No full textThis paper reports the results of a study investigating the acquisition of the sound system by fifteen ESL five-year-olds. Segmental consonant errors drawn from speech data collected over ten months were categorized according to eight phonological processes in three categories, assimilation. substitution, and syllable structure changes. Eighty-six percent of the errors corresponded to those identified by Ingram (1979) and others as universal in first language acquisition. The author advises caution in the interpretation of this result, however, since there were certain differences in the particular errors made by the ESL learners within each category as well as processes considered universal among first language learners which were not found among the ESL learners
The Influence Mode on the Syntactic Complexity of EFL Students at Three Grade Levels
No full textThis study extends the findings of syntactic research to students studying English as a foreign language. First, it corroborates earlier research findings on the relationships between syntactic complexity and grade level by examining a type of population not previously studied. Second, it extends earlier findings on the relation of mode and syntax to an English as a foreign language writing sample and examines the influence of the syntax in each mode of writing on the content of the compositions. In the expository mode, the upper-grade students used more non-clausal embeddings than the lower-grade students did, structures which are interpreted as providing the opportunity to express more complex relationships. In the narrative mode, on the other hand, the upper-grade students used significantly more clausal embeddings than their junior counterparts which resulted in greater detail in the narrations of the former. The older students appeared to be more able to adjust their syntax to the demands of the rhetorical task than the younger students were
