This study examined the effects of taking notes in the portion of the Test of English as a Foreign language (TOEFL) listening comprehension section that contains short monologues, or "mini-talks." These effects were assessed in experimental testing sessions with students in intensive English language programs and with undergraduate and…

Administration of the Test of Spoken English (TSE) yields tapes of oral performance on items within six sections of the test. Trained scorers subsequently rate responses using four proficiency scales: pronunciation, grammar, fluency, and overall comprehensibility. This project examined the consistency of statistical relations among TSE scores with…

This report addresses the reliability of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), not as a measure of speaking ability, but rather as practiced by testers trained by the ACTFL, such as by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR), in English as a Second Language (ESL), French, German,…

Although testing language has traditionally taken the form of testing knowledge about language, the idea of testing communicative competence is becoming recognized as being of great importance in second language learning. Communicative language tests are intended to be a measure of how the testees are able to use language in real life situations.…

The report describes one segment of the Federal Language Testing Board's Unified Language Testing Plan (ULTP), the validation of the speaking proficiency test in Russian. The ULTP is a project to increase standardization of foreign language proficiency measurement and promote sharing of resources among testing programs in the federal government.…

This guidebook provides refugees being resettled in the United States with general information about what they will encounter and the services they can receive in their first months in the country. Available in several languages, the book is distributed to overseas processing agencies and refugees overseas who have been approved for U.S.…

This study sought to develop a description of second language fluency, based on the concept that the microcontext of the testing task and the resulting psycholinguistic demands on speech production affect the nature of the discourse produced so that different tasks have differential impact on an individual's display of fluency. It investigated how…

The final project report on development of an advanced Russian language listening and reading proficiency test is presented. It summarizes activities in the second year of the project, including dissemination of summer 1985 test validation results to participating higher education institutions, item analyses, completion of the final test edition,…

A study investigated the study strategies used by 450 native Cantonese-speaking distance education students in Hong Kong/Macau studying in English, and the correlation between language skill levels and study approaches used. Students were surveyed concerning study motives and strategies, demographic information, langbuage use patterns, and…

This collection of 10 reports focuses on research in the area of language and understanding, with emphasis on the effects of such research on language teaching and applied linguistics. The reports address issues in psycholinguistics, pragmatics, second language acquisition, syntax, text linguistics, language testing, and sociolinguistics. The…

This overview of the 40 year development of language proficiency rating at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) and elsewhere in the federal government focuses on three issues pertaining to the scale and the raters: (1) the number of levels of differentiation in the scale; (2) the relation of the scale to the rating task; and (3) the calibration of…

A study of the discourse structure of oral language proficiency interviews focused on (1) one principal discourse variable, topic, for analyzing contingency and goal orientation in dyadic interactions, and (2) contextual factors (interlocutor, theme, task, participant gender). Data came from 30 dyadic oral interviews in English as a Second…

This paper examines whether individuals who train themselves to score a performance assessment will rate acceptably when compared to known standards. Research on the efficacy of rater self-training materials developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics for the Texas Oral Proficiency Test (TOPT) is examined. Rater self-materials are described…

The report describes activities in the final year of a 3-year project designed to address the placement needs of adult education agencies teaching English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in California. The long-term goal was to identify instruments appropriate for use with the state's model standards for language proficiency. The two primary…

The paper examines some critical issues regarding the Spanish language proficiency of bilingual education teachers, primarily those from the Spanish-language-origin community. Recent longitudinal studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between sustained native language instruction and student achievement. Because this finding is…