A comparison of the performance of age- and intelligence-matched bilingual (n=46) and monolingual (n=38) six- and seven-year olds on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities indicated that the bilinguals had significantly inferior performance in tests of the visual-motor channel, analogous auditory-vocal tests, and representative level. (18…

Examination of the effects of oral proficiency interview (OPI) testing on third-, fourth-, and fifth-year high school foreign language students found significant correlations between student performance at the higher OPI levels and on achievement tests as well as providing a sense of common direction to teachers and programs. (26 references)…

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines are first reviewed and analyzed, followed by an analysis of the Spanish language writing produced by students at a very selective, private university who were enrolled at different levels of Spanish language study. (75 references) (LB)

Reports on a study of a normally developing boy who made pronominal errors for about 10 months. Comprehension and production data clearly indicate that the child persistently made pronominal errors because of semantic confusion in the use of first- and second-person pronouns. (28 references) (GLR)

Connor comments on Raimes' research on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) essay component, the Test of Written English (TWE), and the practices of the Educational Testing Service. Raimes' response is directed toward the TWE research agenda. (five references) (Author/LB)

Discusses what has been done in the last five years to enhance the intrinsic power of the MET, the English test for entrance to all universities in China. (JL)

The development of an English for Academic Purposes placement test is described that aims to reflect an integrated approach to language use. It approximates natural language behavior by providing a series of tasks that each contribute to the overall context of language use. (42 references) (Author/LB)

The topic development process for the Educational Testing Service's Test of Written English (TWE) is described, along with the work of the Core Reader group and the procedures for reading and scoring the TWE. The TWE scoring guide (revised 2/90) is appended. (Contains 20 references.) (Author/LB)

In part one of a two-part essay, a broad view of foreign language testing and a comprehensive philosophy for meaningful pragmatic tests are advocated. (10 references) (JL)

The term "alternative assessment" has become commonplace in the field of adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) literacy. Just what it means and how to practice it are discussed. (Contains 14 references.) (LB)

Tested the Aspect Hypothesis using second-language Japanese data. Two experiments are described. Results of the studies extend the applicability of the Aspect Hypothesis to a non Indo-European language. (Author/JL)

Explored the relative contributions to Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score dependability of various numbers of persons, items, subtests, languages, and their various interactions. Sampled 15,000 test takers, 1000 each from 15 different language backgrounds. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the effect of semantic inconsistency on performance of an auditory sentence-grammaticality judgment task among school-age children with and without language-learning disabilities. Children judged grammatical correctness of semantically consistent sentences and correctness of grammatically inconsistent sentences. Results are discussed.…

This research report presents new young adult norms for the Test of Adolescent/Adult Language-3 (TOAL-3) using data from the Ottawa Speech and Language Study (N=242). It is thought this population better represents the full range of young adult language abilities (because the original norms included only individuals who pursued postsecondary…

Provides information and strategies for helping language teachers know how to prepare students for the new computerized version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Information focuses on changes in scoring and test format. (Author/VWL)