How and when children acquire the basic and essential rules of English morphology and syntax are questions that have been explored for decades. While there are no final conclusions about precisely how and when this happens, many researchers have worked to describe the process in terms that apply to most children most of the time. This paper examines the acquisition of morphological rules for English nouns, verbs, and adjectives, focusing on native speakers of English who are exposed to English during what is known as the critical period of language acquisition. This paper will create a...

Existing literature indicated several influences of L1 Arabic on L2 English: Overuse of and Run-on sentences Omission or misuse of articles, prepositions, and relative clauses Omission or confusion of vowels Preference for root word groups Omission of punctuation Overuse of exaggeration Based on analysis of the writing samples, this study focused most on errors in punctuation, conjunctions, capitalization, and articles. Other aspects of English writing, such as word order, prepositions, and exaggeration did not appear as major examples of cross-linguistic transfer in this study.

Dr. Karen Braxley, the Coordinator for Writing Tutoring at the University of Georgia, in Athens, made the very sensible suggestion: "Rather than guess how much ESL students should sound like native speakers, we should ask them." I decided to do exactly that. I asked three questions as I looked at how ESL clients are being served in the Writing Center, and how we can improve the service they receive. I asked writing consultants how they view the needs of their ESL clients. I asked the clients how they view their own needs in the Writing Center. I then asked how the Writing Center can use their...

Children's speech develops over the first several years of their lives, and the specific language abilities are different from one year of age to another. Children in an elicited response experiment were found to have successively higher levels of language facility at successively higher ages, with specific exceptions for children who displayed language acquisition above the expected levels for their ages. The speech production abilities of children in this study roughly paralleled the speech perception of the same children. This study examined and compares the language production and the...

Examining Arabic and English Stops and Vowels: The Influence of Arabic on Voice Onset Times of /t, d/ and Vowel Formant Values in Arabic and English This is a final research project conducted for an Introduction to Phonetics course at Oakland University. The aim of the final project was to give the student an opportunity to use the techniques she had learned to analyze a foreign language of interest to her, and to analyze the English of a native speaker of that language. The author, a student in the class, conducted a contrastive analysis to see whether there were some areas of influence from...

Originally published in 1744, and republished in 1813, this book contains familiar nursery rhymes with unfamiliar variations, as well as nursery rhymes that are nearly forgotten. Parents Note: 18th Century nursery rhymes were not as pretty and delicate as are modern rhymes. Some language and images may be disturbing for some readers. Please read these rhymes with your child, and explain historic changes. The original text begins: Dear Nurse, YOUR diligence and tenderness in bringing up my children, will always command my utmost endeavours to serve you. And as I cannot but approve, so I...