This is the third National Assessment report on the writing of children aged 9, 13, and 17, and young adults. The three exercises used in the writing assessment were: Age 9: The Forest Fire Exercise; Age 13: The Famous Person Exercise; and Age 17: The Famous Person Exercise. An exercise for young adults (Adults: The Commissioner Stroud Letter)…

The contrastive linguistics papers contained in this collection concern a wide variety of issues within the field -- ranging from phonology and syntax to interference and error analysis in foreign language instruction. The papers, while discussing specific topics, for example, "Equivalence, Congruence, and Deep Structure" or "Comparative Analysis…

A systematic and explicit approach to evaluation of pronunciation is proposed. Generalizability theory was applied in order to comprise all relevant factors in one psychomotor model. French and German pronunciation tests (in Appendix) were devised and evaluated. Common pronunciation problems for native Dutch speakers were incorporated. (Author/LMO)

Respondents (n=321) to a survey of learning disabilities teachers in the Chicago (Illinois) Public School system reported that, while they found several assessment procedures to be useful, they relied primarily on standardized test results for informing educational decisions. Most teachers indicated they had high levels of competency with all…

College administrators are complaining that "Yahoo! Internet Life" magazine used a flawed surveying process and inaccurate data to select the institutions it named in a recent ranking of "American's 100 Most Wired Colleges." Even some institutions faring well in the ranking have concerns about the survey, citing problems with…

Replicates an earlier study that used videotapes to examine the types of errors made by novice economics students in graphic analysis of a simple supply-demand problem. Further explores the issue by improving the framework for analyzing errors and documenting some methods used by novice groups to correct errors. (MJP)

Describes development of the Rochdale Assessment of Mirpuri Phonology, a phonological assessment for bilingual children that was administered to normally developing bilingual children as well as children suspected of having a speech disorder. Normally developing children showed phonological error patterns in English that are considered atypical of…

This study argues that positive second-language (L2) data do not necessarily rule out inappropriate L2 grammar. Rather, L2 learners appear to postulate first-language (L1) grammar as an interim theory about the L2, at least in the initial stages of L2 acquisition. The case where L2 grammar intersects L1 concerning time adverbial clauses was chosen…

A survey of 34 professors teaching English as a second language in 20 Japanese universities elicited information about common errors in student writing. In open-ended questions, respondents identified 40 student error types, which were grouped into 18 categories. The most common problem category was sentence development, and other high-frequency…

A study was conducted by New York's Broome Community College (BCC) to compare student-reported parental income with income reported by the students' parents on their 1982 tax records. Student reports of parental income were obtained from a survey administered to students entering BCC in fall 1983. The college had parents' federal income tax…

A theory of how people learn certain procedural skills is presented. It is based on the idea that the teaching and learning that goes on in a classroom is like an ordinary conversation. The speaker (teacher) compresses a non-linear knowledge structure (the target procedure) into a linear sequence of utterances (lessons). The listener (student)…

A study of Greek speakers' ability to understand and produce two varieities of codes--Katharevousa (K) and Demotic (D)--is reported. The investigation was undertaken to provide evidence supporting or refuting the Greek government's decision to legislate Demotic as the official language of the country. A sample of 545 informants were tested with a…

A study of self-correction, or repair (the righting of the trouble source) among bilingual secondary students differed from most repair studies in three ways. It: (1) examined results in the form of description rather than in quantifiable analyses; (2) defined errors as trouble sources (hearable errors, breaks in communication such as word…

The type, number, and scope of errors on Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (BEOG) program applications were estimated in a replication of a 1976-1977 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Comparison Study. Information reported on BEOG applicants and IRS income tax returns was compared for various categories of applicants. The study provides information…

A study of the interlanguage of bilinguals and multilinguals compared the oral French proficiency of 20 native Swedish-speaking and 20 Finnish-speaking university students as evidenced in error patterns in oral tests. With the exception of phonological and phonetic errors in pronunciation, errors were classified by word class (article, noun,…