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Early instruction of object complements to hearing-impaired college students

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

John A. Albertini*
Affiliation:
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology
Vincent J. Samar
Affiliation:
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology
*
John A. Albertini, Department of Communication Research, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, One Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623

Abstract

Child language acquisition studies have suggested that some object complement constructions are acquired relatively early compared to other complex constructions. Traditionally, instruction of hearing-impaired students in object complement structures is reserved for intermediate and advanced levels due to their relative syntactic complexity. However, data from 82 basic-level, hearing-impaired college students indicated marked learning of these structures after 10 hours of instruction. Upon investigation of the relative difficulty of four grammatical components of object complements (complement markers, personal pronouns, tense inflection, and word order), tense marking in the complement was found to be the most difficult. We suggest that, in addition to traditional transformational descriptions of syntactic complexity, data on first and second language acquisition be considered when deciding on a sequence of instruction for hearing-impaired students.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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