A study compared the results of administration of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Educational Testing Service (ACTFL/ETS) oral proficiency interview and those of two laboratory-administered Modern Language Association tests, one in the listening mode and one in the speaking mode. The comparative study was undertaken to…

This annotated bibliography contains references to articles and books that provide teachers with specific techniques to use in class to develop their students' oral proficiency. The items cited can be obtained from any good college or university library. Most of the publications have appeared since 1970, and the works cited pertain directly to the…

A study investigated variations in five native Japanese-speakers' consonant patterns in English as a Second Language. The eight phonological segments considered were English consonant clusters and final consonants. Subjects listened to a recording of a text by a native English-speaker and then read the text aloud five times. A similar procedure…

Traditional tests, sometimes called prescientific, and post-modern tests, such as cloze tests and dictations, take the same approach toward content validity: the examinee must show in an "integrated facile performance" that he or she can use the language fluently. Where traditional tests fail is in a third dimension, test method. These…

Approaches to the testing of foreign language proficiency have tended to mirror prevailing philosophies in foreign language teaching, and for many years, no serious effort was made to devise oral proficiency measures. However, after World War II, structural linguistics applied to the classroom produced audiolingualism, which was a method heavily…

The final report of the Bilingual Prediction Project presents a review of the project from its inception in 1975 through completion in 1979. The main goal was to predict a student's academic ability in English. A prediction index was constructed in two stages. The first stage was a description of the target population and their school setting, as…

Some of the major research on the effects of meaning, frequency, context, and redundancy on word identification in first language reading comprehension is reviewed. The research indicates that the ability to identify words accurately and automatically has a direct effect on comprehension; at the same time comprehension affects word identification.…

This paper deals with the history and practices of the language assessment policy being used by the state of Illinois' transitional bilingual education programs serving over 42,000 students. The first section of the paper treats the history of bilingual program evaluation efforts. It divides the discussion into three periods, prior to 1976, from…

In an effort to learn at which level of language proficiency English for Special Purposes can be taught effectively to nonnative speakers, 50 students at an electronics institute in Algeria were administered eight tests after a 16-week intensive English course. Four of the tests were of skills in English as a second language (ESL): the grammar…

Guidelines for conducting a self-study of international educational exchange programs and services are provided for colleges and universities. Attention is directed to: the self-regulation program of the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA), conducting NAFSA self-study processes, and using NAFSA principles. The major elements…

Recent research by Valette, Oller, and others has shown the utility of dictation as a measure of general language competence when correlated with achievement and proficiency batteries for French and English as a second language. No such studies have been conducted with Spanish. The investigator hypothesized that since Spanish is a phonetic…

Describes the research approach used to develop the MAT-SEA-CAL Oral Proficiency tests designed by the authors. Language test performance depends on both language proficiency and knowledge of the culture. (TL)

The articles and presentations in this publication relate to the general theme of the 1982 Northeast Conference, the foreign language teacher as a lifelong learner. The concept that in the best teachers learning and teaching form a progressive continuum, and that learning and teaching occur simultaneously is the basic assumption underlying all the…

Subjects 9 to 15 years old were divided into four age levels by 18-month increments to compare learning disabled and normal students on indexes of both oral and written language. Four questions guided the inquiry: (1) Does the syntactic development of oral language differ at the age levels measured? (2) What is the trend of syntactic development…