The Arabic Proficiency Test (APT), developed in 1991-92, is described and details of its scoring are outlined. The APT is designed to measure general proficiency in literary Arabic in reading and writing, and in listening and production of standard spoken Arabic. Its proficiency rating scale corresponds to the American Council on the Teaching of…

The effects of specific guidelines in the taking and rating of tests of language summarizing ability were investigated, as well as interrater agreement regarding the rating of specific ideas within the summaries. The tests involved respondents reading source texts and providing written summaries as a measure of their reading comprehension and…

The purpose of this paper is to describe current practices in various states used to identify linguistically different students, provide a review of literature regarding recommended practices, and offer alternative practices for identifying linguistically different students. The paper provides an information base regarding current identification…

A report on the Language Assessment Battery (LAB) explains, in question-and-answer form, the causes and results of some changes made in the test norms. The LAB is a test of communicative language competence, written in English and Spanish versions and used for student placement in the New York City Public Schools. The report describes the test…

This report summarizes a follow-up study of the first cohort of 5,500 limited-English-proficient (LEP) students to be mainstreamed in Newark, New Jersey schools using English-language proficiency as the sole criterion for moving from bilingual to regular classrooms. The mainstreamed cohort was compared to regular students using basic achievement…

A study examined how the SPEAK (Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit) Test is perceived by both International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and instructors at a major midwestern university where it is used as a screening instrument for hiring ITAs. Subjects, 24 ITAs from the social sciences and 24 ITAs from the math-based sciences who took the…

Although recent classroom research on second language acquisition has begun to focus on student discourse, there are still few studies which examine student questions and their influence in the classroom. Based on multiple observations of four classrooms in an intensive English program, the researchers investigate the factors that work together to…

A discussion of the education of West Indian immigrant students in the New York City public schools focuses on identification and assessment of this population's needs. It is noted that West Indian students represent the fastest-growing immigrant population in the city, but no educational policy has been established in the city or state to address…

The influence of discourse and pragmatic transfer in cross-cultural encounters has received little consideration in studies on the construct validity of performance tests. With the current emphasis on direct assessment of speaking proficiency following the protocol of the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), the potential importance of cross-cultural…

This manual presents activities designed to encourage speaking in elementary and secondary school French language classes at the novice and intermediate proficiency levels. Following guidelines outlined in the Utah "Foreign Language Mastery Curriculum Guide," each of the activities is identified according to the topic, level, and…

This article reports on an ethnographic research project that investigated the relationship between home language use and acquisition of academic English as determined by the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) scores. The subjects were 33 children ages 10 to 14 from bilingual Spanish-English families. Data on home language use was collected…

This article examines the phenomenon of fossilization in second language (SL) learning and instruction, discussing this process as a form of simplification. Fossilization occurs when particular linguistic forms become permanently established in the interlanguage of SL learners in a form that is deviant from the target language norm and that…

This paper argues that unsatisfactory argumentative and expository texts generated by college students represent a simplification of complex discourse structures. It asserts that the usual explanations for poor student performance, such as illogical thinking, lack of academic commitment, and poor mastery of grammar, are unsatisfactory. The paper…

This study addresses the validation of an oral proficiency test by examining the language that is obtained from the items presented in the test. The study focused on the language elicited by a form of the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI), the Spanish version of the Texas Oral Proficiency Test (TOPT). The TOPT is used to measure the oral…

A writing test was developed with validation based on the assumption that the use of formulaic language is an important aspect of language proficiency and should be considered in assessing native and non-native English proficiency. Formulaic language is defined as language chunks learned and used together (e.g., "false sense of security"),…