Author Description

On the premise that children make grammatical mistakes when acquiring their first language, the research reported in this book adopts a novel approach to re-investigating child-directed corrective speech, which has previously been assumed an important role for children's recovery from their grammatical mistakes. The major findings from the research are that child-directed corrections are of two major types, instead of a single type as claimed in previous literature of acquisition, and that their effectiveness and availability is different according to children's developmental stages. On the basis of these findings, the research goes on to discuss the importance of corrections to children's recovery from their grammatical mistakes, and challenges relevant claims in the previous literature of the role of corrections for grammar acquisition.