"English Only" and "Official English" are two terms that are used to describe the movement to declare English the official language of the United States. Sixteen states have laws declaring English their official language; 14 of these laws have been passed since 1981. This report decribes the effect of the movement in New York…

Guidelines employed by the Neighborhood English Scheme (Brent) in London, England, to insure that student placement interviews are purposeful and effective are outlined. Ideally, a successful interview results in the student being placed in an English-as-a-Second-Language class that is at a convenient time and location, at an appropriate level,…

This study investigated how and when foreign language competence makes a difference in the international operations of U.S.-based corporations, what skills are required, and how companies access them. Thirty-two interviews were conducted in nine companies of varying size and type, with people representing a variety of perspectives in human…

Current thinking about academic language and the variety of language appropriate to school and similar settings is discussed. Recent literature concerning academic language is explored, and common themes and significant observations that emerge when the concept is viewed from a sociological perspective are examined. The research reviewed includes…

A discussion of the relationship of second language course content and testing focuses on the instruction and assessment of language proficiency. Basic principles of measurement of proficiency and syllabus design for proficiency and their implications are examined. An approach is recommended to syllabus design that has the learner's real needs at…

This paper reports the development of a test battery to replace the structural testing used in Kuwait to assess skills acquired in the communicatively-based Crescent English Course. A list of activities and tasks required of students at level six was drawn from the course syllabus, and four modules containing clusters of integrated language tasks…

Factors in reading comprehension relating to English as a second language (ESL) are considered, focusing on what contributes to text comprehensibility (grammatical structure or density of new vocabulary), the effect of a learner's English language proficiency on use of grammatical words for comprehension, and the possible interaction of these…

The self-concept scores of 50 learning disabled male adolescents (mean age 16.5 years) on the Situation Specific Subject Competence Test for mathematics, English, and physical education were compared with their most recent achievement test performance in these three subject areas. Results suggested that math achievement was positively correlated…

Research findings that indicate the need for greater integration in the development of verbal and mathematical skills for college technical majors are presented in this paper. Although the project discussed was originally designed to isolate language-related difficulties that affect mathematical skills among bilingual Hispanic students, some…

A study of the relationship of language proficiency level and bilingualism or monolingualism to the comprehension of anaphoric third-person subject pronouns in 9- and 10-year-old children found that bilingual children have the same difficulty with anaphora as their monolingual counterparts. In the comprehension of the pronouns tested, partial…

A study is described which investigated the differences between English-as-a-second-language (ESL) writers and native-English-speaking writers and examined closely a range of ESL writers and their composing processes. The procedures used were those used by Sondra Perl in a study of the composing processes of unskilled college writers (1979).…

A collection of essays on current issues in the field of second language proficiency assessment includes: "The Unassimilated History" (Pardee Lowe, Jr.), which chronicles the development of proficiency testing; "A Research Agenda" (John L. D. Clark and John Lett), a discussion of research considerations and needs in proficiency testing; "Issues…

The situation card used in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Educational Testing Service (ACTFL/ETS) Oral Proficiency Interview provides a kind of linguistic-topographical map of the student's foreign language ability by measuring what the student of business Spanish is able or unable to do in business situations in that…

A study investigated the relationship between writing proficiency and two aspects of proofreading: (1) the ability to detect structural errors, and (2) the ability to accurately correct them. During the fall of 1986 seventeen English-as-a-Second-Language students in the intermediate-level grammar review and paragraph writing class at Biola…

Discussions about the value of language-across-the-curriculum policy are often clouded by confusion over two different underlying principles or motives for its implementation: that it stimulates and enhances learning and that it consolidates the teaching and learning of writing in a variety of subject contents. In practice, it is the second…