Information is provided for teachers of English as a second language in Israel on teaching methods and testing procedures. The eight articles and a number of brief notes discuss the official syllabus and examination for secretarial English, a new series of lessons designed for grades 11 and 12, the use of translation, teaching English to the…

One teacher's experience with traditional language tests suggested that the tests did not reflect the kind of communicative language learning going on in the classroom and might be counterproductive. As a result, an experiment in oral testing was undertaken in which examinees were required to process natural discourse and to relate language to…

This handbook describes Los Angeles Pierce College's (LAPC's) English Skills Tutorial Package, which seeks to identify specific areas of strength and weakness in students' language proficiency and to strengthen those specific areas through discrete and holistic approaches and, sometimes, conscious coaching. Following introductory comments about…

A study of the information gained by students in the process of taking a cloze test in English as a second language was conducted with 34 full-time undergraduate foreign students at a state university. The subjects came from a variety of native language backgrounds. A 35-item cloze test was developed in which every eighth word was deleted,…

The history and rationale for entry and exit tests devised to meet Pennsylvania's standards for certifying foreign language teachers are outlined and discussed. The involvement of the Educational Testing Service in developing and validating tests in a variety of subject areas is described, and the need for institutional rather than standardized…

Issues related to the estimation of individuals' vocabulary size are discussed, including the rationale for vocabulary size research and the psychological, pedagogical, and quantitative approaches to vocabulary research and methodological problems associated with them. Some results from a large-scale assessment of Finnish comprehensive school…

A study was designed to develop a number of tests of oral proficiency and to compare those tests with the existing, highly subjective testing method used at the end of secondary school in Israel. The study used four experimental tests: the oral interview, role playing, reporting task, and group discussion. The experimental tests were analyzed for…

The Basic English Skills Test and its supplement (Best Plus Supplement), a structured oral interview, were administered to 72 of 119 limited English proficient 12th grade students in the Dade County (Florida) Public Schools, to determine their oral proficiency. The students were native speakers of Haitian-Creole, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Oral…

This collection, including the proceedings of a colloquium at TESOL 1979, includes the following papers: (1) "Classification of Oral Proficiency Tests," by H. Madsen and R. Jones; (2) "A Theoretical Framework for Communicative Competence," by M. Canale and M. Swain; (3) "Beyond Faith and Face Validity: The Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix and the…

An ethnographic study of language proficiency in the home and school languages of bilingual children was conducted. From a qualitative sociolinguistic perspective, language proficiency, the relation of linguistic performance to community language use and attitudes, and the correlation of the sociolinguistic findings on language repertoire with…

An experiment was carried out at Lewis and Clark College to measure the effect of Transcendental Meditation (TM) on learning German. Three sections of first-year German were formed into a TM group, a TM-like group, and a control group. The TM group received training in TM given by two trained, experienced teachers. The TM-like section received…

This study was undertaken to examine the suspicion that a young Greek girl in the short time span of two years had become more fluent in a second language (English) than in her native tongue. To provide a basis of comparison the tests used in this study were also given to the child's older brother who had been in the United States for…

One of a series of experiments attempting to overcome practical constraints on testers is described. This test was based on rehearsed communicative situations that were recorded by groups of students. The subjects of the experiment were 250 students in their first year of study for a joint language degree who were following a 12-week spoken…

Oral proficiency tests were constructed for French, German, and English by the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement to determine how well students could cope linguistically with daily living situations, after 3 years of foreign language instruction. Originally the rating scale featured six categories. Because of difficulties in…

This paper addresses the lack of language dominance assessment instruments and curriculum materials for Greek-speaking children in the U.S. These children need appropriate language screening tests, based on research and data derived from their native language group, for diagnostic and placement purposes. The development of an instrument for…