Describes a study that provides further evidence for differentiating between memory for meaningful and for nonmeaningful material in the context of language proficiency, suggesting that foreign language teachers with a good memory have no guarantee of proficiency in language learning. (CB)

Describes a study which sought to determine whether memory for input language is affected by proficiency in the nondominant language. The subjects were native Hebrew speakers with varying degrees of proficiency in English. Basic and advanced subjects did not score higher with input in their dominant language. (SED)

Describes a program which combines two years of college German into one and which culminates in five weeks of intensive study in Germany. Discusses the logistics of the program, along with student and faculty response and recommendations. (EKN)

Discusses the experience of a committee at the University of Southern California that was formed to implement the university's requirement that foreign languages become a "Skill Level" requirement. This means that the student must meet the requirement by performing at a certain level on a proficiency examination. (SED)

Maintains that measuring syntactic error alone is inadequate and that syntactic maturity should also be considered. Discusses ways of measuring syntactic maturity in spoken English of nonnative speakers and examines the relationship of syntactic error to syntactic maturity. (EKN)

Discusses producing German language plays as a way to increase student facility in spoken German and at the same time promote campus-wide contact with German language and culture. (EKN)

Lists five objectives in creating an item bank for language proficiency test items and describes the design of an item bank card. Briefly discusses item analysis and population distribution in this system and points out the numerous advantages of the system and conditions for its success. (PMJ)

Evaluates the cumulative evidence on the use of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level second language writers' overall proficiency in the target language. Discusses implications of the findings for further research. (Author/VWL)

A study observed a significant curvilinear relationship between speaking rates and accentedness and comprehensibility judgments of utterances produced by users from a variety of first language backgrounds. A second study manipulated rates with speech compression-expansion software established that this effect was due to the rate differences rather…

Research has suggested child but not adult immigrants to the U.S. and Canada make regular progress learning English as their length of residence (LOR) increases. Compared groups of Chinese adults living in the United States who differed in length of residence LOR to assess the role of input in adult's naturalistic acquisition of a second language…

Examined the variables related to U.S. immigrants' long-term attainment in English, their second language (L2), and their native language (L1). Differences in language proficiency among different groups studied were associated with differences in language use, language learning motivation, and cultural identification between the two groups.…

Describes a taxonomy of real-world listening tasks as a conceptual framework for teaching listening in a second language, and discusses the implications of the taxonomy for the design of listening instruction and the selection of authentic texts. The key elements of the taxonomy are listener function and listener response. (26 references)…

Examines three curriculum models for teaching second languages. Each model represents a particular form of teaching, either analytic "skill-getting" (microlanguage learning), experiential "skill-using" (macrolanguage use), or a combination of the two. (57 references) (GLR)

Analyzes linguistically "naive" native Spanish speakers' evaluations of American students' performance on oral Spanish interviews. Results found considerable divergence in how evaluators viewed particular candidates' proficiency, although evaluators were consistently more strict in their evaluations than was a trained rater. (Author/CB)