Intended for personnel in local school districts and state departments of education, this handbook presents suggested procedures and resources for the initial screening and diagnostic assessment of the English language skills of students whose dominant language is other than English. The handbook deals with the initial screening for placement and…

A study was carried out to assess the French language proficiency of students enrolled in two different programs at the kindergarten level in Montreal: an early immersion program and a "class d'accueil" program. Three groups of students were tested: (1) an early immersion class; (2) a "classe d'accueil," or class for immigrant…

In an appraisal of proficiency tests currently available for English as a second language (ESL), it is found that linguistic competence, rather than communicative proficiency, is being measured. Problems involved in developing standardized communicative tests for use with different age groups in a multicultural school context are discussed.…

Gains and grade level achievement in Total Reading and Language of four groups of fifth grade students, including LEP (Limited English Proficient) students, in SES (socioeconomic status) 1 and SES 2 schools were compared to determine whether the students were achieving at grade level in reading and at an equivalent level in language. Groups from…

A teacher training program was implemented over a 2-year period in cooperation with the Tucson Unified School District, where over 28% of the students have been identified as having a primary language other than English. The goal of the training was to provide a forum wherein teachers and administrators would explore the application of…

Major linguistic, cultural, and social problems posed by the education of the children of migrant workers (more than 1.5 million in 1975) in the European Community Member States are examined. Varying attitudes of rejection, assimilation, or integration of new environments, bilingualism or plurilingualism, anomy, and linguistic interference are…

An examination of the applicability of self-assessment as a tool for student placement in foreign language instruction focused on: (1) the ability of first-year university students to assess their performance level in the second language through a self-assessment questionnaire; (2) the quality of the questionnaire itself and its potential for…

Part IV of the proceedings includes five presentations. They are: "Pitfalls in Teaching Business Language Courses and How to Avoid Them" (Margit Resch); "Achieving Active Student Participation in the Business Foreign Language Course" (John Holley); "Business Language Components for Various Levels of Foreign Language…

Empirical data and staff opinions were gathered to determine the enrollment of Mexican immigrant/alien students in the Rio Grande City Schools during the 1976-77 school year and their impact on space utilization, educational programming, staffing, and funding. Eleven staff members, representing administrators, principals, teachers, and counselors,…

This article reviews research and literature to identify the most appropriate and effective work on promoting the acquisition of English by limited-English-speaking students via the use of computers. Fields covered in the review are linguistics, culture, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. First, studies on when a child best learns a second…

This study investigated the relationship between a test's psychometric characteristics and school staff satisfaction with its use in programmatic activities. The Inventory of Test Use Satisfaction (IOTUS) was used to evaluate two individually administered oral language production tests used in Hawaii's Students of Limited English Proficiency…

Process writing and communicative-task-based instruction both assume productive tasks that prompt self-expression to motivate students and as the principal engine for developing L2 proficiency in the language classroom. Besides this, process writing and communicative-task-based instruction have much else in common, despite some obvious…

Interim results of the American Institutes for Research study on the impact of the ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program imply that certain inferences can be made about the program, inferences which are unjustifiable. By providing only statistical averages on a national sample, the report does a serious disservice by failing…

It is often the case that intelligence tests do not measure what they purport to measure, although it is commonly assumed that every test with a different name is a test of different skills, and that tests with the same name test the same skills. Spearman attempted to study the relationship between tests that supposedly measured different mental…

The 32 papers in this collection on the general topic of bilingual education technology are presented in three sections. The first group of papers deals with models, methods, and materials; the second group treats measurement and evaluation. The papers in the final section are about language mixing and bilingual education and public policy. (AMH)