This brochure contains a summary of an English language testing project being developed by the University of Southern California under the aegis of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Previous attempts (Stanford Achievement Test, California Achievement Test) have failed to test American Indian children's performance in reading, vocabulary, and…

The discussion centers around the amount and kind of participation that should be asked of a student taking reading and oral comprehension tests. For each test there are four levels of participation; zero, limited, extended, and complete. The test designer should create a situation which will encourage the subject to give maximum expression,…

In the Egyptian school system, English is required of all students beginning in the seventh year of study. However, few master the language well enough to handle it at the university level, where it is the medium of instruction in all subject areas. At the secondary level, students are highly motivated in sciences and mathematics, since their…

The ability of bilingual students to profit educationally when Spanish is the vehicle of instruction was inferred from a qualitative analysis of their responses to matched Spanish-English vocabulary tests. The responses of 53 bilingual junior high school students with strong Spanish language histories were classified as qualitatively higher or…

This study is one of a series on cognitive behavior related to lingual types among Navaho children. The present work has aimed at gaining additional descriptive data regarding the effects of lingual types (compound bilinguals, Egnlish-speaking monolinguals, and Navaho-speaking monolinguals) on school achievement as measured by the Metropolitan…

This paper contains remarks concerning the accomplishments and problems of the English-as-a-second-language program implemented at the Kalakaua Intermediate School in Hawaii for immigrant students as they enter a new, American culture. One of the greatest problems faced by the program is deciding which sections of regular classes the newly arrived…

This paper reports on a study in which twenty young adults were tested for their ability to accurately reproduce the articulatory and prosodic features of three non-Indo-European languages in which they had received instruction. The first of two basic goals of this research was to test, at the purely phonetic level, the "critical period for…

The most basic and simplest act of communicative competence in Spanish involves the appropriate decoding and selection of the pronominal address forms "tu" and "Usted." Their selection and semantic value are not, however, determined by linguistic criteria alone. Since "tu/Ud." mark the relative status of each speaker in a given context, their…

Because of the recent Lau vs. Nichols decision by the Supreme Court, school districts will be looking for various instruments to determine language functionality in bilingual students. Nine tests are reviewed: the Leiter International Performance Scale (LIPS), the Michigan Oral Language Productive Tests Structured Response, the Michigan Oral…

In Ireland Irish is taught as a second language in all primary schools in English-speaking areas. A form of code cognition approach known as the A.B.C. method was in use in all schools for about forty years prior to the introduction of audiovisual methods between 1965-1970. This report gives the results of a survey carried out among teachers who…

Spanish students in four inner-city high schools were first tested for conceptual tempo and then given the Test of Oral Proficiency in Spanish (TOPS). It is concluded that speeded and timed tests not only allow impulsive examinees to answer too soon, but often pressure normally reflective examinees to respond impulsively. (EJS)

Reports on the progress being made in an attempt to establish a second language acquisition index of development that would gauge a learner's second language proficiency. A project was undertaken involving the analysis of 212 compositions written by university students of English as a second language. (CFM)

Recent reports and proposals for the improvement of foreign language education and general education (with implications for foreign language instruction) are examined and critiqued, and consideration is given to current developments for this field and the establishment of a national foundation for foreign languages and international studies. (CB)

Reviews effects on faculty, teaching assistants, curriculum, and students of the proficiency-based foreign language requirement instituted at the University of Pennsylvania. Although important and valuable changes have occurred in the language learning and teaching environment, caution is urged in creating realistic and well-understood standards…

Data from responses to a grammaticality judgement test by 26 learners of English as a second language at two proficiency levels were used to investigate syntactic acquisition. Four syntactic structures were examined. Results suggest that less proficient subjects use syntactic strategies, while more proficient learners use semantic-based…