US teacher education has been scrutinized for years. In this essay, the author discusses the four major questions that have driven educational reform. Afterward, a historical account of teacher education focusing on teacher certification, teacher testing, and the teaching of modern languages is presented. An international perspective is added by…

A pilot study used the Spanish Oral Proficiency Test (SOPT)--a taped oral test--to evaluate the oral proficiency level of students of intermediate Spanish. Also examined what variables might affect the development of students' oral skills. (Author/VWL)

Reports on a study which sought to determine the validity of the Advanced Placement Spanish Language Examination by comparing the performance on the multiple-choice section of this test of three groups: (1) advanced placement students, (2) second-year college students, and (3) third-year college students. (AM)

Explores the few studies that compare the psycholinguistic processes characterizing second language acquisition in the classroom and native-speaking environments. A description of a study that found that, although intermediate Spanish students extensively monitored language usage in both environments, their monitored knowledge was still quite…

An oral testing method used in an intensive high school Spanish program is based on a model of communicative competence positing four forms of competence: strategic; sociolinguistic; discourse; and linguistic. All oral domains but linguistic are tested in the first and second years. In the first year, benchmark testing occurs. The rubric used has…

Examines the results of a nonce-verb test administered to adults and children in five hispanophone communities to determine their control of the inflectional morphology of the Spanish verbal system. Results indicate that adults have less access to natural productive verbal processes than do children. Notes that these results have implications for…