There are normally two major research reasons for assessing second and foreign language (L2) knowledge: either to gauge a participant's actual level of competence/proficiency or to assess language development over a period of time. In testing, the corresponding contrasts are typically referred to as proficiency tests on the one hand and…

Outlines some of the key ideas in the development of a British project for improving literacy. These include expressive language, the connection between language and learning, and the idea of participant and spectator roles. (CT)

The Reporter's Test (DeRenzi and Ferrari, 1978), which investigates the expressive abilities of aphasics, is proven to be useful, through its use in two studies of features of Welsh, for sociolinguists studying language features. The test has great capacity for predicting syntactic forms and eliciting casual styles of speech. (Author/CB)

Impromptu speech is characterized by the simultaneous processes of ideation (the elaboration and structuring of reasoning by the speaker as he improvises) and expression in the speaker. Other elements accompany this characteristic: division of speech flow into short segments, acoustic relief in the form of word stress following a pause, and both…

Discourse is basically interactive. This is clear in conversation, but the concept can be extended to written language. Written text can be analyzed as spoken discourse. The methodology of English text studies has adhered too much to a textual approach and even extended it to spoken data. Another approach would be to begin with the spoken form of…