In Quebec, English is taught as a second language to four groups of people: French-speaking Canadians; immigrants; Indians and Eskimos; and foreign students. The first group, in contrast to the others, is not integratively or instrumentlly motivated. They are not submitting to anglicization in North America nor are they being required to know…

The English Oral Language Lessons were developed by the Foreign Language Innovative Curricula Studies (FLICS) of the University of Michigan. The lessons were designed for pre-school children of Mexican American migrant workers with an emphasis on the structure of English sentences rather than on vocabulary. The study was constructed to test the…

This concise report, one of a series, focuses attention on the topic of correlation of work in the foreign language class with drill in the language laboratory. Viewing the attitude of the language teacher as the critical factor in this problem, the author presents fundamental material on: (1) selection of appropriate materials, (2) the use of…

The primary objective of the Regional English Language Center (RELC) is the improvement of standards of teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language in the countries of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This report on the RELC seminar on English language testing contains the…

Test development efforts for constructing 12 items to measure achievement of each of 30 selected language arts concepts are described. Item and total score statistics for data collected on 186 boys and 259 girls who had just begun the sixth grade are presented and discussed. (Author)

The distribution of errors in children's responses in four elicitation tests of their color-naming abilities is explored with a view to clarifying states of ignorance. Subjects include 47 Polynesian children ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The four experiments include a naming task, two identification tasks and a mapping task. Children are…

Analyzes in detail some of the incorrect responses made by subjects (culturally disadvantaged Israeli children) performing on cloze tests and suggests what may be inferred about the cognitive processing employed by the subjects that leads them to make such responses. Results indicate the need for further detailed linguistic analysis of responses…

Advises the secondary school teacher lacking special training how to use the ACFL Guidelines to test for oral proficiency in the classroom. Sample situation cards and a sample grading sheet are included. (LMO)

Dutch native children and Turkish immigrant children, born and reared in the Netherlands, were asked to tell a story from a series of pictures, at age six and again at age eight. The Turkish children exhibited about the same level of narrative proficiency in Dutch as their Dutch peers. (Author/LMO)

Suggests that the use in English language teaching of visual media is based on insufficient analysis of the properties of visual formats, the skills demanded in using them, and the existing literacy of the students. The design and implementation of the appended Visual Information Test are described. (Author/SED)

Describes a one-semester conversational language course based on specific proficiency goals. The oral proficiency pre- and posttests, goal contracts outlining performance objectives for each chapter of the text, specific instructional and grading techniques, and class activities are detailed. (MSE)

The recent drive of Chinese modernization and world globalization has caused the rapid development of TESL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) and there are currently 300 million ESL (English as a Second Language) students in China. At the same time, due to similar forces and China's market economy reform, more and more foreigners are…

Articles in this volume include the following: "Assessment Challenges in Supported Distance Learning: How the ABE Distance Learning Project Is Implementing the Massachusetts ABE Assessment Policies and Procedures" (Roger Hooper); "The NIFL LINCS Assessment Special Collection" (Dianna Baycich, Tim Ponder); "Making Sense of…

This report is based on a test that was arranged in April and May of 1997 among first- and second-year students at Tallinn Pedagogical University who studied the Finnish language as a general subject and among the students of the eleventh and twelfth grades in some Estonian secondary schools. There were among 105 Estonians and 25 Russians among…

With the advent of the communicative approach, the role of speaking ability has become more central in language teaching. Consequently, performance testing, especially testing speaking ability, has become one of the most important issues in language testing. There are many limitations in this area because of the nature of speaking ability and the…