Investigation of the retention of school-learned French language skills in Dutch students over a period of four years following training revealed that global receptive skills actually improved. Only lexical and grammatical skills attrited, although students' self-perception of their skill retention was much more negative. (Author/JR)

Two considerations are brought to bear on the reading approach presented here. First, because the major focus in a teaching method designed for use with bilingual education students is to increase both language facility and reading ability, the approach is designed to provide the student with the opportunity to read, use, and listen to a standard…

Reports on evaluation studies of the French proficiency of graduates of early- and late-entry immersion programs in Ottawa and Carleton, describes the tests used, and interprets results. The report also examines the students' perceptions of their ability to participate effectively in out-of-school situations using all four language skills. (MSE)

An experiment was conducted with twenty native French speakers using a set of four reading passages, each followed by five multiple choice comprehension questions. Each subject was tested twice when reading aloud and twice when reading silently. Other test materials included a pre-test designed to check whether certain lexical items from the…

Few instruments have been developed for evaluation of expressive vocabulary in early childhood. This project attempted to develop an instrument sufficiently structured to call forth appropriate verbalization yet varied enough to elicit a wide range of responses, and to use the instrument to test whether socioeconomic class groupings can be…

A bilingual prediction study was conducted in order to gather information that school districts could use in making decisions about instructional transition for students in transitional bilingual programs. In 1976, 115 third graders were tested in reading, verbal ability, and aural comprehension in both English and Spanish. Attitude toward…

We study the benefits of junior kindergarten for linguistic-minority 4-year-olds compared to their linguistic-majority classmates from the same low-income neighborhoods. At the end of the school year, linguistic-minority children made significantly greater improvements in language skills than their host society classmates. At the mid-year point,…

Articles include: (1) "Variables psychologiques et sociales reliees a l'apprentissage d'une langue seconde par l'immigrant adulte en situation scolaire" (Psychological and Social Variables Related to the Learning of a Second Language by the Adult Immigrant in the Academic Situation) by A. d'Anglejan and C. Renaud, (2) "Les contacts…

The purpose of this study is to compare the English syntactic structures produced in spontaneous oral language and the receptive English syntactic and vocabulary skills of bilingual Spanish and Indian children and monolingual Anglo-Americans, all of whom qualify for Title I elementary schools (Grades 1-6). People in Action, the Northwestern Syntax…

Comparison of free written compositions of 86 bilingual (Finnish-Swedish) and 86 monolingual (Swedish) third-, sixth-, and ninth-graders in a Finland Swedish comprehensive school revealed that bilinguals produced significantly more syntactic, vocabulary, and phraseology errors. Background variables correlating with errors included the student's…

Designed to serve newly arrived, immigrant pupils in the Cleveland Public Schools, the English-as-a-Second-Language project aims to help participants acquire enough English proficiency for adequate functioning. The project uses a pull-out model in which, for about 30 minutes daily, small groups of students are given additional reading, language,…

Examined six aspects of vocabulary instruction given to fourth and sixth graders prior to reading in two basal reading series. Found that words targeted for instruction were already known; instruction in the two series differed markedly; much of the instruction was not sufficient to improve comprehension; and instruction was not necessarily suited…

This study examines the relationship between an open-ended cloze test and its multiple-choice versions generated from three sources: (1) interlingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from one language group and administered to a different language group, (2) intralingual learner-generated distractors--distractors selected from…

This guide communicates the increasing need in California for young people to develop skills in languages other than English, and to direct attention to assessing these skills in terms of language use competency in realistic situations rather than in terms of courses taken or units earned. The guide recognizes successive stages of competency and…

This study explores several research questions. Of primary concern was the identification of variables that might be employed to predict the potential of students to succeed in monolingual English classrooms following transition from bilingual programs. Although consideration was given to various background and demographic factors, the principal…