Examines the hypothesis that certain errors occurring in oral foreign language tests are due to the recurrence of phonological features both in the questions and in the answer. (AM)

A brief summary of this conference, focussing on foreign and second language testing, is given. Topics covered include: publishers' tests, semantic aspects of error analysis, factor analysis and language proficiency, learning style identification, the foreign language placement test of the U.S.A.F. Academy, assessment of language dominance, and…

This paper presents and illustrates a technique for analyzing the communicative effect of errors produced in spoken and written communication samples by students of English as a second language (ESL). First, a method is demonstrated for eliciting a representative communication sample of a student's speech or writing, using pictorial stimuli.…

An experiment was carried out to investigate errors in translation exercises done by French students studying English as a second language. A code was devised to rate errors as being: (1) lexical or grammatical, and (2) related to the signifier or the signified, with further subdivisions within these groups. While this method has the advantage…

Distractors, the incorrect responses to an item on a multiple-choice test, should be designed to create confusion in the minds of some students and to permit a competent student to be able to see that they are wrong. It is possible, by close scrutiny, to isolate the sources of this confusion and, by looking at a statistical analysis, to find out…

This paper presents arguments in favor of using partial dictation as a test of foreign language proficiency. In this kind of test, subjects listen to recordings of material in the foreign language and are required to fill in missing words in a written version of the recordings. Partial dictation is preferable to ordinary dictation in that: (1) it…

The paper reports some of the results of a preliminary survey of the language proficiency of matriculation students of French in Britain and Australia. The technique used (especially the use of Chief Examiners' reports) is justified and the deficiencies that exist in current matriculation examinations are noted. In particular, the examinations are…

This book of readings includes: "Language Didactics and Applied Linguistics" (William Mackey); "Psycholinguistics and Second Language Teaching" (H. H. Stern); "Linguistic Theory" (Noam Chomsky); "Some Psycholinguistic Controversies" (John Oller, Jr.); "The Cognitive Strategies of Language Learning" (John Macnamara); "Conditions for Language…

This is a report of the results of an investigation of a test of plurality and past tense in standard English (SE). This research replicated Gleason's 1957-58 study in Boston. The subjects were 27 speakers of Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) in a kindergarten class in Honolulu. The results showed that the children produced very few SE plural and past…

The forty papers that make up the second part of the proceedings of the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages cover a wide range of topics relating to foreign language teaching and linguistic theory: the interdisciplinary approach to second language instruction, individualized instruction, foreign…

This is the eighteenth in a series of catalogues of documents in the ERIC system that are of interest to teachers and researchers in foreign languages and linguistics. The documents cited in the present list appeared in the monthly ERIC abstract journal "Resources in Education" (RIE) from July through December 1976. The list is compiled from all…