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 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…

The IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test (IPT II), an individually-administered measure of speaking and listening proficiency in English as a Second Language designed for secondary school students, is described and discussed. The test consists of 91 items and requires 5-25 minutes to administer. Raw scores are converted to one of seven proficiency…

Twenty-two junior-year college students were tested at a college language, speech and hearing clinic. A statistical analysis was performed on their scores on the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery and on oral and written language samples. Results were compared with those of a group of 25 normal college students in their junior year.…

Intended for teachers and administrators who wish to assess student oral communication needs before designing an appropriate program, this guide provides a review of tests for measuring acts of speaking and listening. The guide surveys and discusses procedures for assessing speaking and listening skills among school children and focuses on…

One teacher's experience with traditional language tests suggested that the tests did not reflect the kind of communicative language learning going on in the classroom and might be counterproductive. As a result, an experiment in oral testing was undertaken in which examinees were required to process natural discourse and to relate language to…

This handbook describes Los Angeles Pierce College's (LAPC's) English Skills Tutorial Package, which seeks to identify specific areas of strength and weakness in students' language proficiency and to strengthen those specific areas through discrete and holistic approaches and, sometimes, conscious coaching. Following introductory comments about…

Oral proficiency tests were constructed for French, German, and English by the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement to determine how well students could cope linguistically with daily living situations, after 3 years of foreign language instruction. Originally the rating scale featured six categories. Because of difficulties in…

Discusses the issue of oral communication tests through an account of an oral test administered to nearly 1,000 students at Yarmouk University Language Center. The ways in which the institution attempted to overcome problems in the oral test's feasibility, validity, and reliability are presented. (Author/CB)

This highly technical, data-rich paper examines how the Many-Facet Rasch Measurement Model can be applied to communicative language test data analyses and how beneficial the model is to language teachers. The results for a 20-item conversational response test and a 15-item sociolinguistic test of oral communication ability in English for 30…

The influence on interlocutors' relative content knowledge on conversational participation in interactions between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) with limited oral skills is investigated. Results indicate that both NSs and NNSs appeared conversationally active, but there were different patterns of participation that could to…

The situation at Haifa University, which has received approximately 250 new Russian immigrants each semester for the past 2 years, is discussed in terms of testing and evaluation, student performance, and implications for learning and teaching. Differences between multilingual and monolingual language learning are described. (six references) (LB)

Examines the performance of six student interpreters attending a training course at the University of Oslo. Data are drawn from video recordings in which the students interpret dialogs in two test situations. Students use consecutive interpreting with short speaker intervals and perform in Norwegian/Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. Compares students'…

Explores ways of measuring implicit and explicit second language (L2) knowledge and examines the relationship between these measures and measures of general language proficiency. Factor analysis revealed a two-factor solution, reflecting a clear distinction between measures that incorporated a time constraint and those that did not. (Author/VWL)

This article is drawn from a large-scale ongoing study on linguistic progress in advanced French as a second language (FL2). The performance of 48 English-speaking students who spent their third year of university in France the "experimental" group) has been compared to that of 39 classmates who chose to stay and study at home in…