The article describes two research programs on the syntactic abilities of hearing impaired and normal hearing individuals. The first program was concerned with describing some of the syntactic problems of deaf students in acquiring English structure; the second involved the construction of the Test of Syntactic Abilities and its application to deaf, hard of hearing, and normal hearing students in the United States, Canada, and Australia. This report has four objectives: (1) to summarize and integrate the findings of the two research programs, (2) to relate the findings to the literature on other populations, (3) to discuss strategies used by the research populations in handling English syntax, and (4) to discuss some applications of the findings to language development.