The process of taking a high-stakes test stretches well beyond the day of the test itself; indeed, months may be spent preparing for such a test. Strategy research has proved to be a fruitful means of investigating the test-taking process, but it has typically relied on only one research approach at one contact point. This study explores three…

This laboratory-based study of second- and third-year American university students learning French examines the effectiveness of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on noun-adjective agreement errors. The treatment consisted of one hour of interactive tasks. Implicit feedback was operationalized as a single recast with interrogative…

Paper delivered at an in-service training session for grade 6 French teachers at North York, Ontario, Canada. (DS)

Essay tests are widely used to assess ESL/EFL learners' writing abilities for instructional, administrative, and research purposes. Relevant literature was searched to identify 70 empirical studies on ESL/EFL essay tests. The majority of these studies examined task, essay, and rater effects on essay rating and scores. Less attention has been given…

Presents a summary outline of an approach to oral testing used in the past two years with groups of students completing Fernand Marty's "Active French." (Author/PP)

Describes underlying concepts and current issues in communicative testing and illustrates application of these ideas by examining theoretical constructs, issues, and work done so far in relation to second language testing. (Author/BK)

The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) is a cross-curricular literacy test issued to all secondary school students in the province of Ontario. The test consists of a reading and a writing component, both of which must be successfully completed for secondary school graduation in Ontario. This study elicited 16 first language and second…

Advocates the study of poetry in FL classes and suggests methods by which students could be tested on poetry. (KM)

Describes development of testing program to evaluate listening comprehension in second language classes. Suggests it is necessary to incorporate the aural component into classroom activities to a greater degree. Time and effort must be spent in developing the ability to understand and process the spoken word. (Author/BK)

The present study is a continuation of the work presented in the 2001 article by Greidanus and Nienhuis. In the current study, we also examine the quality of word knowledge among advanced learners of French as a second language (L2) by means of a word associates test. We studied the development of word knowledge among six groups of…

A student, who also appears to be a language teacher, reviews the highlights of a Spanish course, describes her teacher's approach, recalls classroom episodes, assesses her own and other students' reactions, the ebb and flow of motivation... all in the form of a letter to her former teacher. (MES)

Examines the hypothesis that certain errors occurring in oral foreign language tests are due to the recurrence of phonological features both in the questions and in the answer. (AM)