| This cross-sectional study of language acquisition compares two tests of English grammatical morphemes with regard to their order and rate of development in 26 Spanish-speaking ESOL students. The two tests are the Bilingual Syntax Measure developed by Dulay and Burt (1973) and the English Morpheme Development Measure developed by the researcher. The former test elicits speech by asking questions based on pictures; the latter models utterances which are repeated by the subject, a technique called elicited imitation. A significant correlation is found between the two tests with regard to morpheme order. Moreover, the two tests indicate that the rate of development of grammatical morphemes is slow; after two years of study, primary grade subjects have acquired no more than the first two of the eight grammatical morphemes studied. |
