The "dictee" as a method of language testing is discussed. Commonly made mistakes are described, and ways to help the student perform well discussed. (RM)

The typical day of a student travelling in France is outlined, with discussion of the different types of language he would be exposed to. Ways in which classroom teaching can provide similar experience are suggested, and abilities involved in listening and reading which are not language-specific are discussed. (RM)

A conversation with the author's 7-year-old son who is just beginning to learn French serves to illustrate the concept of communicative competence and its implications for second-language teaching and testing. Communicative competence is defined as the ability to engage in spontaneous, interpersonal transactions, in contrast to linguistic…

Detailed discusion of the theoretical papers presented at the second conference on "Problems in Foreign Language Testing" held at the Idyllwild campus of the University of Southern California, November 1968, and a brief summation of the practical ones. Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, March 1969. (FWB)

While most foreign language programs list communicative language use as a primary goal, classroom tests seldom reflect this objective but rather focus on discrete-point linguistic competence. The authors present a model of the communication process and point to the main task in constructing tests of communicative competence: devising simulated…

The entries in this annotated bibliography are divided into four major sections. The first includes some of the arguments pro and con on the cloze procedure and a few research studies along with some articles that give "how-to" recommendations. The second major section includes five subsections: the first deals with basic research concerning the…

The experimental test measures the ability of a subject to reconstruct obscured words by means of sentence analysis, carried out not as a separate academic task, but in the normal procedure of understanding what the sentence says. It is a task built on the assumption that the ability to handle reduced redundancy is a valid measure of linguistic…

A study was carried out to test the hypothesis that a difference exists between the results of a paradigmatic/syntagmatic word association test given in an individual's native language and in his second language. The sample used in this study consists of 23 Iranian officers attending a course at Air University in Alabama. Their primary language is…

The following papers are presented in the conference proceedings: (1) "Development and Current Use of the FSI Oral Interview Test," by H. Sollenberger; (2) "Interview Testing in Non-European Languages," by W. Lovelace; (3) "Measuring Second Language Speaking Ability in New Brunswick's Senior High Schools," by M.…

It is the task of educational linguistics to describe and analyze language education in all aspects. With respect to the Navajo Reading Study, it is within the realm of educational linguistics to develop and make available information that will permit the Navaho people, working through their own institutions, to make informed decisions about…

Results from research with eye movement photography (EMP) are discussed with a view to defining differences between native-speaker and non-native reading processes. The greatest contrast is in terms of the duration of eye fixations; non-native speakers at the college level require about as much time for a fixation as an average native-speaker at…

The guidelines presented here consider important questions of English language proficiency for foreign students entering colleges and universities in the United States. Several problems are discussed: admissions, measurement of proficiency, responsibility of the institution, administration of the English-as-a-second-language (ESL) program, ESL and…

The idea of reducing the redundancy of a verbal message in a statistical way is presented as a practiced technique of language testing. Considering the temporality of speech comprehension, and the necessarily sequential intake of information, these cues may include the serial order of elements and transitional probability. To give the background…

Communicative competence can be defined as the ability to function in a truly communicative setting, that is, in a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors. The research described in this book focuses on the development of…

This course guide for a teacher education program takes a modular approach to the training of teachers for Spanish-S programs in bilingual elementary schools. Each of the four modules presents a number of tasks for the student to accomplish, and provides a list of resources to assist the student. The modules cover the following topics: (1)…