Abstract
The study involving 12 learning disabled (LD) junior high school students investigated whether LD students with reading comprehension difficulties were deficient in syntactic abilities as compared to normal students. Syntactic and reading tests were administered to each student. Comparison of the scores between the two groups showed that LD Ss performed more poorly than the normal Ss on all measures. Significant differences occurred on four measures of syntactic abilities--recognition of grammaticality, receptive vocabulary, silent reading comprehension, and silent reading vocabulary. The major hypothesis was confirmed that LD Ss with reading comprehension difficulties were significantly deficient in oral syntax when compared to normal students. (SB)