Maintains that measuring syntactic error alone is inadequate and that syntactic maturity should also be considered. Discusses ways of measuring syntactic maturity in spoken English of nonnative speakers and examines the relationship of syntactic error to syntactic maturity. (EKN)

Between 1898 and 1948, English was the language of instruction for most post-primary grades in Puerto Rican public schools. Since 1949, the language of instruction in all grades has been Spanish. We use this policy change to estimate the effect of English-intensive instruction on the English-language skills of Puerto Ricans. Although naive…

Discusses the role of intonation in language development in relation to the use a child makes of the concept of a story. Concludes that children express much meaning through intonation, that this system may be more developed than lexical or syntactic systems, and that complex literary competencies can be developed early in life. (JOW)

Describes a model unit from the new basic German course for the Defense Language Institute designed to teach appropriate language and responses for everyday situations. (EKN)

Presents study which evaluated L2 performance of 15 bilingual preschool children in terms of basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive/academic language proficiency (CALP). Results show that several aspects of L2 proficiency by which teachers frequently evaluate students' mastery of English are poor predictors of…

Discusses producing German language plays as a way to increase student facility in spoken German and at the same time promote campus-wide contact with German language and culture. (EKN)

Lists five objectives in creating an item bank for language proficiency test items and describes the design of an item bank card. Briefly discusses item analysis and population distribution in this system and points out the numerous advantages of the system and conditions for its success. (PMJ)

Focusing on the distinction between inferential measures of language proficiency and tests which assess language skills more directly, the article discusses briefly various dimensions relevant to language proficiency testing and some of the special problems involved in the testing of equivalent proficiencies. (NQ)

This study was designed to analyze the use of communication strategies, particularly circumlocution, by speakers at the intermediate high and advanced levels of oral proficiency in Spanish. Analysis of learner discourse found that advanced speakers, more than intermediate high speakers, rely on a range of second-language-based strategies that…

Reports research that aimed to identify the foreign language and cross-cultural skill needs of workers in the tourism and hospitality industry in Australia and to develop foreign language competencies for use in industry training packages. Provides evidence for the need for foreign language skills in the industry and gives an account of the…

Evaluates the cumulative evidence on the use of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level second language writers' overall proficiency in the target language. Discusses implications of the findings for further research. (Author/VWL)

A study observed a significant curvilinear relationship between speaking rates and accentedness and comprehensibility judgments of utterances produced by users from a variety of first language backgrounds. A second study manipulated rates with speech compression-expansion software established that this effect was due to the rate differences rather…