Prochievement tests, hybrids of proficiency and achievement tests, assess students' linguistic and communicative competence and provide a means for formative evaluation of student progress. Assessing Spanish listening comprehension/speaking proficiency, creating listening/oral proficiency test formats, and scoring are described. Guidelines for…

A multisensory structured language (MSL) approach was utilized with two groups of at-risk high school students (n=63), taught in either English and Spanish (MSL/ES) or Spanish only. Foreign language aptitude improved for both groups and native language skills for the MSL/ES group. A group receiving traditional foreign language instruction showed…

To assist a class of Hispanic teenagers whose English reading and writing skills were limited, a program using both Spanish and English, or a bilingual model, was implemented. Application of the "alternate language" approach is described. (11 references) (LB)

Priority goals and objectives of 1,373 intermediate-level college students of French and Spanish and their instructors were examined. Results show students' goal priorities to be related to oral/aural skills of speaking, listening, and pronunciation; instructors ranked speaking high but pronunciation low. The survey instrument is appended.…

Studies the role played by native language transfer and task formality in the second-language acquisition of the Spanish voiced stop phonemes /b d g/ and their spirantized variants to identify specific problems affecting learners. Results indicate that native language transfer markedly inhibits acquisition of the voiced spirants. (21 references)…

Investigates the applicability of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) to non-English speakers. The GDDS described may be the first to provide automatic translation among languages. Although the translations are not perfect, the system provides a beginning step into the electronic support of multilingual groups. (16 references) (Author/CK)

Spanish-speaking preschoolers learning English in a bilingual preschool program were videotaped while working independently on tasks to examine their spontaneous private speech. Results show that the private speech of bilingual preschoolers appears to develop normally. Positive effects of second-language learning in a bilingual program on the…

Identifies factors that influence the English reading test performance of Hispanic children as compared with Anglo children in the same fifth and sixth grade classrooms. Suggests that Hispanic students' reading test scores seriously underestimate their reading comprehension potential. Discusses factors that adversely affect their test performance.…

Discussion of cooperative activities among libraries focuses on cataloging of Latin American materials among research libraries. Differences in motivation for cooperation in acquisitions and in cataloging are discussed; and a study is described that examined which libraries were providing online cataloging, and differences between OCLC and RLIN…

Discusses problems faced by innercity libraries and describes programs at a Cleveland Public Library branch that help make the library an integral part of the community. Topics addressed include a new immigrant population; developing a Spanish language collection; attracting children and adolescents; discipline and safety; and working with the…

Discusses research regarding College of Liberal Arts students at the University of Minnesota where there are proficiency requirement-based second-language programs. Research results provide data that compare qualitative results on reading, listening, writing, and speaking proficiency tests of students from the proficiency requirement program at…

In this study, 148 Hispanic Americans with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders were interviewed in English, Spanish, or both. Hispanic clinicians rated symptoms more severely than did Anglo clinicians, and severity was rated highest in bilingual interviews, followed by Spanish, and lowest in English. Implications for diagnosis and…

Interactive research can build English-as-a-Second-Language students' language skills and cultural awareness. This paper describes a research project in which Spanish-speaking students at a San Francisco college advanced their language skills while developing basic computer-literacy skills as they conducted meaningful, relevant research projects…

Proposes a language-socialization approach to the study of second-language acquisition and illustrates the application of this approach by analyzing non-instructional discourse between native and nonnative speakers of Spanish. Analysis draws from a corpus of videotaped data collected during a two-year participant-observer study at a Los Angeles…

Multicultural education can improve understandings among students of different ethnic groups only if it is implemented systematically. Research with 75 adolescent mothers in an inner-city California high school shows how the celebration of Kwanzaa leads to exclusion and isolation and the speaking of Spanish results in conflict and resentments.…