Developmental relationships in the acquisition of English syntax: writing vs. speech

The acquisition of English morpho-syntactic elements was studied in five adult L2 learners, all native speakers of Spanish, while they were enrolled in a pre-university intensive English program. Data were elicited through a variety of paired oral and written tasks over a three and a half month semester. Samples were analyzed to determine whether speech or writing served as the primary source of morpho-syntactic innovation. The five subjects demonstrated notable differences in their patterns of language development across both modalities. In general, however, writing appeared to be the preferred medium for the emergence of new morpho-syntactic forms and for the development of grammatical accuracy.