Some new approaches to the assessment and treatment of language handicaps suggest the need to examine relationships between verbal creativity and language performance. Data were collected from 40 normally developing white fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children, drawn from both urban and rural communities and from a middle socioeconomic level.…

An item discriminability study of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Language Skills tests identified test items that are robust discriminators, psychometrically capable of separating low scorers from higher scorers in the language tests battery. The analysis was conducted by calculating a point-biserial correlation for each item on the four language…

Research on schema theory and the psycholinguistic perspectives of reading suggest that the measures of readability currently used on second language tests be reconsidered. Because foreign language readers, especially in the early stages of language learning, often do not have the necessary schema or background knowledge, teachers should include…

The paper, originally given at a 1986 Ethnic and Multicultural Symposium, reviews the language demands of schools and difficulties with conventional language proficiency measures in predicting the academic achievement of language minority children. It is suggested that language assessment include the assessment of syntactic competencies as well as…

Some of the issues involved in proficiency-oriented testing of foreign language listening, reading, and writing skills-- language modalities paid less attention currently than oral skills-- are examined. These general issues are discussed: What is proficiency?; the relationship of the four modalities and proficiency testing; proficiency testing v.…

A bibliography on American Indians contains almost 200 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (mother-child interaction, language community, form, content, usage, cognitive development); sociolinguistics (issues, dialect features, attitudes,…

A bibliography on Asian Americans contains over 100 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (mother-child interaction, form, content, usage, second language acquisition, cognitive development); sociolinguistics (issues, features, language…

A bibliography on Hispanic Americans contains over 200 citations of articles, papers, monographs, and books in seven categories: culture (language and customs); normal speech and language acquisition (theoretical framework, mother-child interaction, language community, form, content, usage, second language acquisition, cognitive development);…

An answer to the question of what sociolinguistics has to offer to the art of language assessment is sought in exploration of the following topics: (1) a history of the development of sociolinguistics and an outline of the research on dialectology; (2) a review of basic sociolinguistic foundations and theories about language, society, domains of…

Recently there has been a renewed international interest in direct oral proficiency measures such as the oral interview. There has also been a growing awareness among some language testing specialists that all proficiency tests must be subjected to construct validation. It seems that the high face validity of oral interviews tends to cloud and…

An empirical investigation into the construct validity of tests of speaking and reading English as a second language (ESL) was performed using the multitrait-multimethod convergent-divergent design of Campbell and Fiske. Interview, translation, and self-rating tests of the two hypothesized traits, "speaking ability" and "reading ability," were…

A collection of selected papers from the March 1981 Language Proficiency Assessment Symposium, a component of the National Institute of Education's Assessment of Language Proficiency of Bilingual Persons project, are presented. Papers include: "An Overview of Communicative Competence" (Cynthia Wallat); "Some Comments on the Terminology of Language…

It is concluded from a review of the literature and consideration of the type and objectives of tests and programs in English as a second language that, just as limiting an instructional program to what is to be tested in standardized tests would be inappropriate, so would constructing such a program without regard for what was to be tested. It is…

The Mat-Sea-Cal Oral Proficiency Tests are a series of comparable grammatical structure tests. They have been developed in six languages: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Ilokano and Tagalog. Their purpose is to identify linguistic skills and deficiencies of primary school children grades K through 4. This research reported on the…