Grammatical awareness in the spoken and written language of language-disabled children

Experiments examined grammatical judgement, and error-identification 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 language-matched subjects did not differ from either group. Proficiency relative to academic experience and oral language status and to remedial implications are discussed.