In language instruction, students do not learn to elicit needed information in the classroom or in real, everyday communicative situations because (1) the material they ask questions about in class is basically uninteresting to them, and (2) many student responses that would be incomprehensible to a non-English-speaking person are left uncorrected…

The Language Proficiency Interview's structure, administration, and rating scale are outlined by an officer of the organization that designed it (Educational Testing Service), and some common mistakes made in its administration are listed. The need for training in the test's administration is emphasized. Its application in the corporate situation…

A review of practical language and methodological activities in both Spanish and English to develop balanced bilingual proficiency in bilingual education teachers is geared toward college professors and teacher trainers. Suggested practical applications for developing language arts skills include all four language skills: listening, speaking,…

Methods to contextualize tests in the four skill areas of listening, reading, writing, and speech are described. The roles of grammatical and lexical cues, recording semantic details, cloze adaptation, comprehensive questions, logical continuation items, global classification, and sociolinguistic factors are examined in relation to test formats.…

Information is presented on a study determining the degree to which international graduate students studying in the United States reported different systems of motivation. The relationships between the postulated systems of motivation and self-perceptions of adequacy of language in academic study and in the broader life of the cultures were…

Despite the impact of communicative approaches to language teaching methodology, most of the world's second language learners continue to learn from materials in which organization and presentation are grammatically based. Language testing research has contributed greatly to understanding the role of grammar in language proficiency. This research…

The "Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache," an examination developed by the Adult Education Centers in West Germany and the Goethe Institute to measure a student's proficiency in German as a foreign language, consists of two main parts, group testing and individual testing. The group testing section covers listening and reading…

A committee was formed to examine the need for and the possible approach to foreign language instruction for International Business and International Relations students at St. Mary's University (San Antonio). Research literature of most interest to the committee described specific courses and programs in higher education, different formats ranging…

Partial results are presented of a study investigating the relationship between an oral interview and a cloze test in Hebrew and focusing on issues related to the oral interview procedure. An oral interview speaking test and cloze tests were administered to 106 students of Hebrew at the University of Minnesota. The taped interviews were rated by…

The language problems of foreign teaching assistants (TAs) at American universities are formidable. At UCLA, the ESL Section of the English Department has responded to the needs of foreign TAs through the development of an advanced course in oral communication that focuses on teaching-related skills. A research project has been undertaken as well.…

Research on the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development is reviewed, and two complementary models of bilingualism are developed to account for research results. It is suggested that research since 1960 shows a positive relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development, at least for some types of bilingualism. The advantage or…

Two methodological reviews of the Children's English and Services Study (CESS), a congressionally mandated estimate of the number and needs of limited English proficient children, are presented. Such reviews are needed because the CESS is the only national study of its kind which administered a language proficiency test to determine the language…

If sociolinguistics involves the specification and analysis of sociological, interpersonal, and pragmatic variables at issue in given language-use situations, and discourse anaysis is the observation and analysis of both linguistic and paralinguistic features of speech events within these situations, there are at least three areas in these…

Research conducted at the Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching. (HW)

Communication patterns of foreign immigrants in the process of acculturation are conceptualized on cognitive and behavioral levels. The cognitive level is observed in the complexity of an immigrant's perception of the host society; the behavioral level, in the immigrant's involvement in the host society through interpersonal and mass…