The development of english plural expressions in Malaysian autistic children

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological disorder characterised by deficits in social, communicative and cognitive skills. Recently, the awareness of autism has increased globally as well as nationally, as evidenced by the reported increasing numbers of parents seeking advice on raising their autistic children. Previous research have reported numerous findings related to autistic learners’ language development. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on this gap by investigating how three autistic children acquire English in the English as a second language (ESL) context, specifically the English plural structures from the Developmentally Moderated Focus-on-Form (DMFonF) instruction. The three autistic children were selected from a special learning centre and their age ranges between nine and 12 years. They were taught the English plurals using lessons designed from DMFonF for 16 weeks and their grammatical development was analysed using a psycholinguistics theory called the Processability Theory (PT). Data were collected through audio and video recordings at 4 points: T1 (week 4), T2 (week 8), T3 (week 12), and T4 (week 16). The findings of the study showed that DMFonF instruction is highly effective in assisting the participants to acquire English plurals. Each of the participants was found to have acquired the English plurals throughout the duration of the study. Lastly, the results also showed that all the participants’ developmental trajectory of the plural acquisition follows the developmental stages predicted by PT. Thus, the study concluded that the DMFonF instruction is very helpful in facilitating the ASD learners’ acquisition as it is developmentally moderated and follows their cognitive development.