This paper presents research on the contribution of the amount of schooling to performance in French as a second language, assessed by newly developed measures of communicative competence. Test items addressed three components of communicative competence: grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic. Aware of the relationship of context to…

Principles of language assessment and instruction for Spanish speaking preschoolers at St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson, Arizona, are presented. Basic definitions and program model (which looks at the child's communication skills based purely on semantic content contained in spontaneous language samples) are explained. The program's theoretical bases…

The Bilingual Reading Study employs several measures of oral language proficiency: (1) a standardized oral language proficiency test, the Language Assessment Scales (LAS); (2) teacher ratings on the Student Operational Language Assessment Scale (SOLA); (3) teacher ratings on the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) Oral Language…

The Functional Language Assessment (FLA) is a screening test which, when used in combination with teacher ratings and English achievement test scores, helps identify students, aged 5 through 13 from non-English speaking backgrounds, in need of bilingual programs. The language proficiency test can be administered by school staff who do not speak…

Early identification and supplementary instruction for the Mexican American child who is also handicapped are essential. The purposes of the Ability Development Programs are to identify the child with existing and/or potentially handicapping conditions, to develop and test supplementary materials, and to determine the efficacy of supplementary…

Even though modern methods of teaching emphasize listening and speaking, seldom are students of English tested in a standardized way on their ability to communicate through these skills. Many people learn to communicate well enough to conduct daily affairs in a new language, yet are unable to read, write, or speak any educated form of it. They are…

A bilingual language test was constructed and standardized on 384 children in three groups: Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans, English-speaking Mexican-Americans, and Anglo-Americans. The three groups' scores were significantly different. Data on parents' income and education was obtained and compared to the children's test performance. No…

The syndrome of childhood autism is typified by major abnormalities in language development, yet there are few systematic descriptions of autistic children's linguistic systems. This paper represents the beginning of a comprehensive investigation of the language of verbal autistic children and concentrates on comparing the syntax used by ten…

A group of seven Japanese-language Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) testers licensed by the American Council on the Teaching of foreign Languages (ACTFL) conducted research related to ACTFL-OPI criteria. They first examined 24 audiotaped interview tests to see what kind of consistency there would be when individual testers applied general criteria…

This paper considers the influence of the values and the discourse behaviors of the native-speaking assessor as interlocutor. These variables in the assessments of oral proficiency interrelate in complex ways with features of test design such as tasks, prompts, topics, guidelines, and assessor training. This paper reviews some previous studies,…

Discusses issues of concern to community college English teachers in the 1960s: institutional growth, professional recognition, work load, sexism in language, students' right to their own language, teacher training, racism and bias, back to basics movement, usage tests, and doublespeak. Presents excerpts from a speech made by the author in 1969…

One teacher's experience using student-written texts as a basis for testing other students has become a good way of integrating the four language skills in a natural progression and in pinpointing students' language weaknesses. Using students' texts has also reinforced the importance of choosing visual materials carefully. (MSE)

A study examined the differences between 17 children with language disorders and 20 children with normal language development (ages 8-13) in the way they developed shared knowledge with an adult using an interactive communication task. The structure interaction map task involved the child describing a route through a simple schematic map to an…

The International Language Testing Association has some 250 members in 15 countries. Most are specialists in the testing of second language skills, with a special interest in performance assessment because of the testing of speaking and writing performance that is critical to second language skills assessment. The association believes that certain…

This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the psycholinguistic abilities of first-year undergraduate student learners of French. In particular, it reports on the construction and use of a battery of tests of metalinguistic knowledge, language aptitude, grammatical accuracy in French, and French linguistic proficiency, and explores the…