A study investigated the use of a narrative discourse task to test oral English proficiency in non-native speakers for screening and placement. The subjects were Japanese university freshmen entering a five-level course in spoken English. The subjects were shown an animated cartoon of a Japanese folk tale, with narration in Japanese, and later asked to narrate the story in English. The recorded speech samples were rated for pronunciation, accuracy, and fluency, and T-unit analyses were performed on a portion of the recordings. The results of the narrative task analysis were compared with the results of written tests. The findings suggest that this form of recorded narrative discourse can be useful in screening and placement, and further research on the length of speech samples necessary for adequate analysis is planned. Care must be taken to provide all students with appropriate background information for the narrative task. (MSE)