This study examines the differences of approaches to second language testing in West Germany in regard to linguistic bases, pedagogical aims, and the desired degree of standardization and empirical quality control. One approach demands a curriculum-integrated diagnosis of language development aiming at a highly differentiated description of the…

The Lau Remedies, federal recommendations to help school districts comply with the law in providing education for non-English-speaking children, raised questions of language assessment and resulted in a variety of language tests. Four years later, an examination of 46 currently available language tests, in the context of commonly accepted notions…

The Language Proficiency Interview's structure, administration, and rating scale are outlined by an officer of the organization that designed it (Educational Testing Service), and some common mistakes made in its administration are listed. The need for training in the test's administration is emphasized. Its application in the corporate situation…

Using a study of 30 Danish freshman college students' vocabularies as a springboard, this paper explores and discusses a number of current assumptions about vocabularies in the mother tongue and in foreign language pedagogics. The paper contends that it is logical to assume that vocabularies in reading are fluid and depend on the text read, on the…

Divided into seven sections, this report contains: (1) data delineating the population of postsecondary-degree-planning candidates, by native country and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) region; (2) differences among native country contingents with respect to degree level, age, sex, and all other basic TOEFL variables, except TOEFL…

Methods to contextualize tests in the four skill areas of listening, reading, writing, and speech are described. The roles of grammatical and lexical cues, recording semantic details, cloze adaptation, comprehensive questions, logical continuation items, global classification, and sociolinguistic factors are examined in relation to test formats.…

The one-parameter psychometric model known as the Rasch model is described and examined. The basic principles underlying the model and the concepts of unidimensionality, local stochastic independence, and additivity are explained in non-mathematical terms. The requirements of measurement procedures, the measurement of latent traits, the control on…

Inclusion of oral exams as a regular part of the school-based testing program has the advantages of providing motivation to learn oral skills, oral testing experience, additional opportunities for students to perform well, and improved relationships with students. However, logistical problems can be substantial. Adequate time for and efficient…

The "Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache," an examination developed by the Adult Education Centers in West Germany and the Goethe Institute to measure a student's proficiency in German as a foreign language, consists of two main parts, group testing and individual testing. The group testing section covers listening and reading…

A debate has been carried on in Dutch educational circles about the widespread use of multiple-choice tests, and a number of objections have been raised against the use of such tests. This paper reports on research into the validity of the objections, in particular with respect to the possible effect of multiple-choice tests on the teaching of…

Foreign language testing in schools has followed the general trends of foreign language education, from teaching and testing grammar, through a combination of reading and translation, to the audio lingual approaches of the sixties and the developments since that time. Contemporaneous with the decline in foreign language programs in the 1970's…

Reliability and validity of the Ilyin Oral Interview (IOI) are examined with respect to interscorer agreement. This test is a structured questionnaire based on a sequence of pictures depicting common events in the daily life of a student. Interviews of 11 students from an English as a second language (ESL) class at the University of New Mexico…

Partial results are presented of a study investigating the relationship between an oral interview and a cloze test in Hebrew and focusing on issues related to the oral interview procedure. An oral interview speaking test and cloze tests were administered to 106 students of Hebrew at the University of Minnesota. The taped interviews were rated by…

Two methodological reviews of the Children's English and Services Study (CESS), a congressionally mandated estimate of the number and needs of limited English proficient children, are presented. Such reviews are needed because the CESS is the only national study of its kind which administered a language proficiency test to determine the language…

A technique for measuring the acquisition of Spanish skills is described. The technique is designed for fourth-year advanced Spanish students enrolled in business Spanish. It not only tests the students but promotes learning by requiring the use of new vocabulary items and comprehension of printed texts. Students are given a text with 25 to 30…