The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

Human raters are normally involved in L2 performance assessment; as a result, rater behavior has been widely investigated to reduce rater effects on test scores and to provide validity arguments. Yet raters' cognition and use of rubrics in their actual rating have rarely been explored qualitatively in L2 speaking assessments. In this study three…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

This research project addresses the validity of assessments used to measure the performance of English language learners (ELLs), such as those mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002). The goals of the research are to help educators understand and improve ELL performance by investigating the validity of their current…

Cloze testing and language performance is discussed as are two techniques for awarding partial credit: the quick performance measurement and feedback technique and the three-stage scoring hierarchy for partial credit. A figure and tables are included. (EJS)

The question of whether French-as-a-second-language reading can be facilitated by teaching some organizational patterns of discourse was investigated. It was concluded that strategic training is highly complex and difficult and that cumulative evidence is required to assess its usefulness in improving reading recall. (Contains 41 references.) (LB)

Content analysis of the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) revealed differences in the nature of perceptual and conceptual items. Both language-impaired and normal-language children performed significantly better on perceptual-type than conceptual-type items. The predominance of perceptual items was…

Discusses the development of a language aptitude test designed to help select students to study German. Four areas of assessment are memory ability, ability to deal with stress and intonation patterns, inductive reasoning ability, and ability to recognize grammatical case. (EKN)

A newly revised parent questionnaire for the assessment of vocabulary and syntactic development, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory-Toddlers, was evaluated. Concurrent validity correlations demonstrated high validity for parent report in both domains and some ability to differentially assess the two. (Author/DB)

The article provides a statistically derived method of developing an accurate profile analysis of the five major subtest standard scores comprising the "Test of Language Development-Primary" thus helping clinicians determine relative strengths and weaknesses within the child's overall language profile. (Author/DB)

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines are first reviewed and analyzed, followed by an analysis of the Spanish language writing produced by students at a very selective, private university who were enrolled at different levels of Spanish language study. (75 references) (LB)

Literature relating summarization skills to reading improvement and to test score gains is reviewed, and two new studies are reported. One study compared gain on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) of two groups of students, one (n=7 students) receiving instruction in summarizing skills and the other (n=14) receiving TOEFL…