Children's auditory assembly of present progressive and past tense sentences

Auditory assembly performance of kindergarten-age children was studied using either present progressive or past tense sentences. Thirty children enrolled in kindergarten repeated six past tense sentences and six present tense sentences. Sentence length was systematically increased from six to 11 words. All responses were tape recorded and analyzed according to total errors, error types, word position, word type, and semantic information. Results indicated significantly more omission errors than substitution, nouns and verbs were best retained, and error rates increased linearly through the nine-word sentences with a greater number of errors occurring in the 10- and 11-word sentences. In addition, there was no significant difference in ability to assemble past or present progressive tense sentences. Finally, in contrast to preschool children, kindergarten-age children retained key items (noun, verb, and object) during assembly performance of all 12 sentences.