The problem of a perceived decline in secondary school students' reading comprehension and the efforts of one high school English department head to address that problem are described in this paper. The first section of the paper presents an extensive documentation of the decline in reading comprehension and of reactions by state and local…

The testing of non-English dominant children cannot be achieved through written examinations that demand reading proficiency and that fail to ascertain the strengths or weaknesses of individual performance. Nor can an oral proficiency test, involving a lengthy tension-inducing interview and relatively inconclusive scoring, provide the information…

Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this guide contains instructional objectives for the area of seventh grade language arts. Included in the guide are (1) an instructional objectives checklist providing all objectives and…

This article hypothesizes that language repetition of young children (in the sense used by Kobashigawa and Snow) does not help language acquisition. The evidence comes from the results of a prior study in which no indication was found that mothers who repeat themselves a great deal have children who acquire language more quickly. However,…

Five articles concerning college reading instruction are included in this special interest journal. Bill Fowler and Barry M. Kroll investigate hidden factors in tests of reading comprehension, revealing that most conventional tests have question-design weaknesses allowing students to perform successfully by the use of test wisdom alone. Imogene…

This article describes the principles for planning an experimental teaching-learning system of the comprehension of English social and behavioral scientific texts at the university level. Results from a related evaluation study are also presented. The study was undertaken because of the unsatisfactory development of foreign language teaching and…

This report to the Louisiana legislature describes the results of the student assessment phase of a mandated accountability program, in which criterion referenced tests of reading performance in vocabulary, phonetic analysis, structural analysis, comprehension, study skills, and word attack skills were administered to 160,771 students in grades 4,…

Two focuses of a discussion of literacy and vocational competence should be the need for a more profound understanding of literacy and the relevance of that understanding for studying reading in vocational settings. A developmental model of the acquisition of literacy considers reading a second signaling system for speech. People who become…

Students of English as a second language at a French engineering college participated in an experimental program which allotted to independent study a portion of the time previously given over to classroom instruction. Spoken language was emphasized in this self-instructional component. The program, which was new at the time of publication, is…

Book two, part two, of an intermediate-advanced level German refresher course for college students is presented. The volume consists of 42 lessons of text material and 42 prerecorded tapes. A typical unit is made up of spontaneous dialogues, substitution drills, and tests. A dialogue for listening is a short conversation between German speakers…

The Environmental Education/Communication Skills program was designed to improve junior high school students' reading and writing skills. The key idea of the program was to motivate reading and writing improvement through environmental topic learning. Content focus areas were: orienteering, plant life, animal life, environmental problems, and…

The rationale for delayed oral practice in language teaching is that the same rules underlie both speaking and listening and that the student has to understand how a language works before being capable of creating a sentence in the language. Having to focus on speaking performance as well as on listening comprehension distracts the learner from…

The tenth of 20 volumes of lessons designed for use in a full-time, intensive training program in Arabic is presented. Each lesson deals with grammatical patterns and vocabulary through explanations, vocabulary lists, dialogues, audiolingual drills, question-answer and free oral expression exercises. A review lesson is included after every four…

The twelfth of 20 volumes of lessons designed for use in a full-time, intensive training program in Arabic is presented. Each lesson deals with grammatical patterns and vocabulary through explanations, vocabulary lists, dialogues, audiolingual drills, and question-answer and free oral expression exercises. A review lesson is included after every…

The fourteenth of 20 volumes of lessons designed for use in a full-time, intensive training program in Arabic is presented. Each lesson deals with grammatical patterns and vocabulary through explanations, vocabulary lists, dialogues, audiolingual drills, and question-answer and free oral expression exercises. A review lesson is included after…