Based on a paper given at the Third Annual Conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, London, England, December 30, 1969 to January 2, 1970. (VM)

This article addresses the question, "Does the introduction of a language laboratory improve the functioning of a given teaching method?" Four experiments with the language laboratory are described and analyzed: the Keating and Lorge experiments in New York, the Jalling experiment in Sweden, and the Freedman experiment in Great Britain. These…

This study was made to see if there were descriptive statistics on (1) size of enrollment, (2) location (by population density), (3) availability of staff, (4) curriculum (transfer or terminal), and (5) cost per student that would predict rejection of experimental programs in staff use. The attitude of the chief administrator as the single most…

This report contains experiment results obtained from a comparative study of two groups of seventh grade students learning German in Sweden. The main objectives of the investigation, which lasted one school year, are: (1) to investigate possible achievement differences in German between similar groups of students when one group is instructed…

A program designed to increase the effectiveness of foreign language laboratory utilization by employing language laboratory aides in a city high school which has a large concentration of culturally disadvantaged pupils is described in this report. By providing laboratory aides, teachers have more opportunity to give individual attention to pupils…

This is a preliminary report on a series of small-scale language teaching experiments, aimed primarily at demonstrating that valid research into language teaching methods is possible. Small-scale refers not to the number of subjects involved, but to the scope of the experiment. Instead of looking at a method as a whole (as happens in large-scale…

Beginning with a brief review of the growth of the audiolingual method of foreign language instruction in the United States of America, this paper examines implications and lessons drawn from an educational experiment in language instruction known as the Pennsylvania Report. The text of a memorandum to school administrators in Pennsylvania by the…

This report examines one aspect of a broad experiment in language instruction designed and implemented at 10 participating colleges of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Two types of language laboratories (recording and nonrecording) are examined to determine the effect of each upon the cultural-orientation scores of the students. The scores…

In order to gain some insight into the issue of optimum age for second language learning, the experiment described in this report was based on the negative hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the ability of randomly selected subjects, kindergarten through grade six, to imitate critical sounds and sound clusters embedded in words…

Research described in this report compares the relative achievement of three groups of secondary school students beginning language instruction in German, French, and Spanish using the electronic classroom, the record-playback laboratory, and the broadcast language laboratory with that of a control group. The second major area of research…

An experiment, using College Board Achievement Tests in German Reading and Listening Comprehension, to compare the effectiveness of earphones and loudspeakers in language test presentation is described. Related opinions, implications, and conclusions on the effectiveness of communication media in language teaching and testing are offered. (AF)

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of the assumption that auditory discrimination and pronunciation in a foreign language are closely related. If the assumption were to be well-founded, then it might be possible for foreign language students with high auditory discrimination ability to work alone in the language…