This report describes the development, operation, maintenance, and future prospects of the item banks pioneered by the Portland (Oregon) School District. At the time of this report, there were 3,500 mathematics, 2,200 reading, and 2,300 language usage items calibrated under the fixed parameter model of item response theory (IRT) for Grades 3-8.…

A study of students' and teachers' attitudes toward cheating in the classroom of English as a second language (ESL) compared responses of five groups to a questionnaire concerning the use of crib notes, copying from another student's test, and allowing or refusing to allow another student to copy in hypothetical test situations. The comparison…

The language arts objective-item bank contains 100 objectives each represented by five to eight multiple choice items. Grade levels covered are one through eight. The objectives deal with such topics as composition, grammar, literature, phonetic analysis, reading comprehension, structural analysis, study and research skills, vocabulary, and…

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was administered to 26 hearing impaired college students, in order to test the assumption that the English-language deficiencies of hearing impaired students are similar to those of foreign students. The students were attending Gallaudet College's School of Preparatory Studies and were identified…

A collection of papers on language testing addresses these topics: language tests seen from a communicative viewpoint; microcomputers and testing; productive second language skills; developing teachers' assessment skills; content validity of holistic tests; statistical regression in group conversation tests; reading comprehension; unique…

Data from a national survey of students and teachers working within Norway's system of mixed-ability instruction in the elementary and early secondary schools suggest that, after ten years of implementation, the teaching and testing system is workable and that some aspects work relatively well. Instruction in English as a second language in a…

The 1985 volume of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) newsletter includes articles on the role of grammar in language teaching; teaching English in Spanish schools; software for English as a second language (ESL); ESL teacher employment overseas; reading in English for special purposes; ESL techniques for…

The revised annotated bibliography describes 29 standardized tests appropriate for use with American Indians from preschool through high school levels, furnishing authors, copyright date, appropriate age level, physical format (microfiche), and publisher. A separate listing provides names, addresses, and telephone numbers of 11 major U.S.…

Three main issues relating to the question of silent speech in reading are considered: (1) How do Chinese speakers process Chinese ideographs in short-term memory? (2) How is Chinese students' learning of written English affected by the transition to an alphabetic language? (3) Are the strategies for encoding written words in short-term memory…

The purpose of this practicum was to develop a bilingual management system to enable bilingual teachers to monitor individual students' performance in the bilingual program. This required: (1) revising the kindergarten thru sixth grade student performance objectives; (2) developing kindergarten thru sixth grade criterion-referenced tests and…

The paper reports some of the results of a preliminary survey of the language proficiency of matriculation students of French in Britain and Australia. The technique used (especially the use of Chief Examiners' reports) is justified and the deficiencies that exist in current matriculation examinations are noted. In particular, the examinations are…

This memorandum reports the validation of the SCRDT Tests for Teachers in Spanish/English Bilingual Education Programs. The tests, which are designed for elementary and secondary teachers and aides, measure knowledge of methods used in teaching English as a second language (ESL), teaching Spanish as a second language (SSL), and teaching reading in…

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 study compared three reading skill areas (recalling details, understanding a main idea not explicitly stated, and making inferences) in Spanish, the subjects' native language, and American English, their second language. The sample consisted of 47 adults from nine Latin American countries and Puerto Rico who were completing an intensive ESOL…

THIS FINAL REPORT DESCRIBES TWO RESEARCH EXPERIMENTS CARRIED OUT IN TOKYO IN 1965 AND 1966. STUDY A, A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ACQUISITION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT TWO DIFFERENT AGE LEVELS (3RD AND 4TH GRADES), WAS BASED ON A COURSE OF THREE 15-MINUTE SESSIONS A WEEK, USING TEN-MINUTE TAPES. SOME RESULTS NOTED WERE--(1) NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN…