Reports on an experiment designed to evaluate the effects of "slowed speech" on language students' achievements in listening comprehension. Two second semester college level French classes provided the experimental and control groups. Contrary to expectations, pre- and postexperiment tests showed a significant drop in the experimental…

Starting from the premise that the assessment of second language learners' competence is a must at several points during the learning process, discusses the usefulness of laboratory testing. Argues that it allows for standardized testing, facility of test administration, easy scoring, objective measures, reliability and validity of results. (MES)

Provides an overview of the most widely used methods of classroom oral testing, as well as evaluations of their practicality and conformity to the goals of communicative teaching and testing. Also described are ways the video camera and task-based activities have successfully been used to make oral testing a more realistic communicative…