The purpose of this study was to locate those measurable criteria of responsiveness to language which have not been utilized to any significant extent in standardized tests. The project involved creating a testing instrument, reviewing of the instrument by a panel of experts, and applying the resultant test to a small population of college students and to a criterion group of acknowledged sensitive users of English. By means of pre- and post-test, comparison was made between the performances of students and members of the criterion group. Reliability and validity studies were made of the results. Though the test was necessarily crude, it was found that certain areas of linguistic response warranted serious consideration in the development of future language competency tests: sociolinguistic and semantic context, deep structure of word-groups and sentences, primary factors of extended discourse, and, possibly, organization of extended discourse. (Author)