The development and validation of the Spanish-English Verbatim Translation Exam (SEVTE) is described. The test is for use by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the selection of applicants for the positions of Language Specialist or Contract Linguist. The report is divided into eight sections. Section 1 describes the need for the test,…

Questions are addressed that focus on why lower class and minority group test takers score lower on standardized tests than their middle class Anglo counterparts. The questions include the following: (1) In what ways can dialect differences affect testing? (2) How can dialect differences directly affect a test of language? (3) Shouldn't standard…

This document consists of the printed technical documentation that accompanies the English Language Proficiency Study (ELPS) machine-readable data file when obtained from the Bureau of the Census. The ELPS was conducted by the United States Bureau of the Census for the Department of Education to provide materials with which the Department of…

This study criticizes current approaches to language test development for their restrictive views of how language should be measured. Language tests are based either on an input component (what goes into a test) or an output component (how should the test be measured). An integration of both components on language tests is advocated. The…

Efforts to expand the generic language proficiency guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) began when developers realized that the ACTFL guidelines were too Eurocentric; the guidelines included grammatical categories specific to Western European languages and…

In this discussion of techniques for teaching and testing listening comprehension according to the Provisional Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, five questions are addressed: (1) the nature of the relationship between listening and speaking; (2) the kinds of listening tasks that should be…

A language-specific test-item is one which includes a distractor which is a predictable mistake made by Persian speakers, and determined by syntactic and lexical contrastive analysis of Persian and English. The term 'universal' is used for a test-item which does not contain contrastive distractors as defined here. (Author)

This paper is the result of a study of ninety-two essays on three different topics by fifth-form pupils in the city of Ibadan. (Author)

The Micronesian Test of English Abilities (MTEA) is a measure of English second language achievement comprised of a listening comprehension section, a structure and vocabulary section, and a reading comprehension section. The original purpose of the test was to determine how well junior high Micronesian students had learned materials studied in…

The issue of language dominance testing is explored with special attention to: (1) a history of language testing in the United States from 1943 to 1974, (2) methods presently utilized for the determination of language dominance, (3) problems encountered in language dominance testing, and (4) some specific research that has been carried out related…

THIS EXPERIMENT IS DESIGNED TO ULTIMATELY ESTABLISH A TECHNIQUE FOR STUDYING THE APHASIC'S ABILITY TO DEMONSTRATE HIS GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE. HOWEVER, BEFORE EXPOSING APHASICS TO THE TASK, AN EXPERIMENT WAS CARRIED OUT WITH NORMAL SUBJECTS (COLLEGE STUDENTS) TO OBTAIN BASELINE DATA. THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT STUDY WAS TO DETERMINE WHETHER…

THIS PAPER WAS PRESENTED AT A TWO-PART CONFERENCE ON PLANNING AND OPERATING LANGUAGE LABORATORIES. DISCUSSED WERE PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CONSTRUCTING TESTS OF ORAL PRODUCTION. TEST EXAMPLES WERE GIVEN IN FRENCH. METHODS FOR DEVELOPING MORE OBJECTIVE TEST PROGRAMS WERE PRESENTED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PART OF A SERIES, ED 003 919-ED 003 924, AND ED 003…

LANGUAGE ABILITY IS ESSENTIAL TO A CHILD'S SUCCESS IN SCHOOL, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF COMMUNICATION IS THE CHILD'S ABILITY TO PUT WORDS TOGETHER IN MEANINGFUL PATTERNS. THE ABILITY OF ADULTS TO GIVE AN INTERPRETATION TO NONSENSE LIKE "JABBERWOCKY" DEPENDS ON THE SYNTACTIC CUES GIVEN BY RELATIONAL WORDS AND WORD ORDER. IN ORDER TO FIND OUT…

The need for adequate language assessment techniques has grown as schools attempt to deal with linguistically different pupils. Many testing procedures have been developed to meet this need; sentence repetition is one such procedure. This paper briefly reviews three issues which have been raised concerning sentence repetition as a language…