Pluralization instruction in comprehension and production.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Special Education

Background:

• Children with intellectual disabilities often struggle with grammatical morphemes like plurals.
• Understanding and producing plurals are crucial language milestones.

Observation:

• Four children with intellectual disabilities were taught the plural '-s' morpheme.
• Two learning sequences were tested: comprehension then production, and production then comprehension.
• Learning occurred in both an experimental room and a regular classroom.

Findings:

• Children demonstrated facilitation, learning more efficiently in the second modality taught.
• The order of teaching comprehension and production did not impact the observed facilitation.
• Individual differences in learning were noted, with one child showing significant facilitation in each sequence.

Implications:

• Teaching grammatical rules in both comprehension and production modalities may benefit language development in children with disabilities.
• The findings suggest flexible pedagogical approaches can be effective.
• Further research could explore optimal teaching strategies for specific grammatical structures and populations.