In 1989, the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) celebrated its silver anniversary at a conference designed to provide participants with an opportunity both to reflect on the past and to look at the future of foreign language teaching and of SCOLT in the light of a quarter century of experience. Seven of the papers in this volume were…

This report presents results of a fall 1993 survey of 164 adult education agencies in California concerning their placement procedures for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. The survey had two purposes. First, the information gathered by a questionnaire (appended) was to provide the California department of education with a profile of…

This digest focuses on the use of children's literature in adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. Because high quality children's literature is characterized by an economy of words, stunning illustrations, captivating and quickly moving plots, and universal themes, carefully chosen books can offer educational benefits for adult ESL…

This paper synthesizes ideas from the fields of graphical modeling and education testing, particularly item response theory (IRT) applied to computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Graphical modeling can offer IRT a language for describing multifaceted skills and knowledge, and disentangling evidence from complex performances. IRT-CAT can offer…

The guide provides information on 28 public foreign language examinations offered by 14 organizations in the United Kingdom. The information is intended for use in selecting examinations for certifying language skills for employment purposes. Each listing notes the language exams offered, the aims of the test, levels of difficulty, intended age…

A study used causal modeling to examine how second-grade students' language ability interacted with two characteristics of a teacher's language during naturalistic expository instruction to explain students' attention to and learning from a science lesson. Subjects, 120 students from 13 suburban classrooms, working with an instructor in groups of…

This study investigated the effect of multilingual linguistic experience on the perception of Japanese durational contrast by learners of Japanese as a foreign language at the basic level. Five monolingual and five multilingual learners listened to recorded sentences containing the utterances /iken/ or /ikken/ and were asked to identify which of…

This project extended the application of a model for development of semi-direct tests of oral proficiency, originally developed for Chinese, to a diverse set of less commonly taught languages spanning various language families and representing diverse cultural backgrounds. This second, final report covers development of tests for Hebrew, Hausa,…

In recent years, the theoretical framework of Jim Cummins has been widely discussed by bilingual educators. This paper traces the evolution of Cummins' theory and examines the criticisms which have been raised against it. The first part of the paper discusses the major elements of his theory of bilingual proficiency: the threshhold hypothesis, the…

The Victorian (Australia) assessment approach of developing national subject profiles has potential for language assessment. Within each language area, levels of development would be identified and defined by observable language behavior, which could then be tested by a variety of test types. Assessment would be done by teachers in schools using…

An adaptation of the Foreign Service Institute's (FSI) oral interview test for oral language proficiency developed for use at the American Institute of Musical Studies' (AIMS) summer vocal institute in Austria to determine students' improvement in German language is discussed. The reasons for its selection over other major comparable tests are…

The effect of Fulbright grantees' experience in West Germany is analyzed in terms of subsequent careers, involvement with international education activities, personal values and life styles, and German language proficiency. Some comparisons are made between Fulbright scholars to Germany and those to other Western European countries. Data were…

The use of a comprehension question, involving reading a Latin paragraph and then answering related questions, is thought unnecessary for the British Ordinary-level examination. Suggested alterations are: reconsideration of skills being tested; use of such questions only where not redundant; comprehension as part of literary reading instead. (CHK)

Results of a diagnostic test revealed that Thai students have no more trouble in learning English prepositions than others learning English as a second language; all the groups had difficulty. Error analysis was found to be just as effective in explaining mistakes as contrastive analysis. (AG)

Error analysis has been presented as a means of "finding a shorter way" in the analysis of learners' difficulties in foreign languages. The alternative starts with a comparison of the native and foreign languages in order to predict such difficulties. The two types are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. (Author/MSE)