The ability of school-age, language-impaired children to respond when faced with a communicative obstacle was investigated. Eighteen language-impaired children were compared to two control groups, age-mates and language-mates. The language-impaired communicated more effectively than younger language-mates and less effectively than age-mates.…

Examines whether significantly high correlations exist among language skills in second year students as measured by their final exams. Results support previous research suggesting the existence of shared language aspects across skills. However, each language skill appears to retain enough unique variance that the score in one skill cannot…

Discusses the second language production of adults when responding to the same stimuli (the SLOPE test) under two conditions: (1) unmonitored, when giving spontaneous oral responses and (2) monitored, when giving written responses without time limit constraints. (EKN)

Discusses an attempt to derive, use, and partially validate (for one area of language use) a theoretical approach to the design of language-use tests, also called "explicit direct testing." (EKN)

Discusses an aural discrimination test given to British students of French and examines the relationship between good aural discrimination ability and high achievement in a second language. (EKN)

Presents study designed to examine trait structure of a cloze test using confirmatory factor analysis. Results suggest that a modified cloze passage, using rational deletions, is capable of measuring syntactic- and discourse-level relationships in a text, and this advantage may outweigh considerations of reduced redundancy which underlie random…

Discusses two requirements for successful use of tests for self-correcting by the learner: (1) the learner must, as quickly as possible, compare the model answers with his own, and (2) the teacher must provide a summary of the learners' achievements and deficiencies. (IFS/WGA)

Examines objectivity as a criterion for excellency in language tests through a critical presentation of the characteristics of objective tests. This examination leads to a discussion of what the best approach to testing language might be, endorsing a combination of integrative and objective techniques. (Author/MES)

A project designed to study the feasibility of utilizing the eight components of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf Communication Performance Profile for evaluating the receptive and expressive communication skills of deaf secondary level students was conducted on 420 students (ages 11 to 21) at two residential schools for the deaf.…

Forty preschoolers performed a sentence imitation task under four conditions: immediate or delayed imitation of auditorily presented stimuli or immediate or delayed imitation of auditorily and pictorially presented stimuli. Immediate imitation subjects produced fewer total errors and more verbatim responses than did delay interval subjects.…

The study investigated the extent to which information obtained from the WISC overlaps with information obtained from the ITPA. A canonical correlation analysis revealed that only 24 percent of the WISC subtest variance is redundant, given the ITPA; while 22 percent of the ITPA subtest variance is redundant, given the WISC. (Author/DB)

Describes the benefits derived by the University of Alabama at a time of declining enrollment from offering the Goethe Institute exam for the "Certificate in German as a Foreign Language." Also mentions other innovations introduced by the German department: an intensive first year course and a German House on campus. (MES)

Describes the structure of the United Nations (Geneva) French language test, with exerpts from the listening comprehension portion of the test. The test is given to professional candidates to determine their level of functional proficiency in French. (AM)

Describes the Indiana University French Communicative Ability Test, developed to test communicative ability at a relatively low level (beginning university French), and in a large, multi-section program. (AM)

Explains unique features of a Branched Program Achievement Test for college French students, and presents data that validate the testing strategy and demonstrate the value of the test as a placement instrument. (JB)