This guide to Spanish language proficiency standards is intended to aid the University of Minnesota's staff in developing curricula and tests for the university's language courses, and to help foreign language teachers outside the university understand the university's language programs. The standards are geared toward the language skills expected…

This guide to French language proficiency standards is intended to aid the University of Minnesota's staff in developing curricula and tests for the university's language courses, and to help foreign language teachers outside the university understand the university's language programs. The standards are geared toward the language skills expected…

This guide to German language proficiency standards is intended to aid the University of Minnesota's staff in developing curricula and tests for the university's language courses, and to help foreign language teachers outside the university understand the university's language programs. The standards are geared toward the language skills expected…

This manual was developed to help regional administrators and teacher educators conduct inservice training for local teachers who teach writing in preparation for the new General Educational Development (GED) test. The manual is organized in six sections. The first section explains the rationale for the GED writing sample and outlines what the…

A study investigated the problem of systematic oversights by students taking language passage correction (PC) tests. In these tests, students are asked to correct errors inserted in written prose passages. When errors are not overtly marked, students often overlook them. This study examined patterns of oversight in two PC tests used to evaluate…

A study investigated the appropriate use of item types for testing reading at various levels of proficiency. It was specifically concerned with item types found in the standardized group-administered Defense Language Proficiency Tests. The item formats investigated were signs in the target language, identification of underlined information,…

The study investigated the issue of differential selection of foils (incorrect responses) with Black English structures by black and white examinees. Linguistic research revealed systematic differences between Black English and Standard American English. Grammatical and phonological features were important distinctions. Five categories of Black…

Papers are presented on the loss of language skills by those who have studied and then discontinued the use of a second language. The scope of the papers is summarized and dimensions of language attrition research is briefly discussed. Theoretical aspects of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics with special relevance to language loss are…

An administrative policy adopted at the University of Washington providing an alternative to relying entirely on English language proficiency tests for determining foreign students' ability to succeed in an academic program is described. Issues from which this program evolved are discussed and the related literature is reviewed. The issues include…

The feasibility of reducing scoring costs for the Test of Spoken English (TSE) by using one rater was investigated. Currently, two raters are used. It was found that, because of the possibility of different standards used by potential raters, it does not appear feasible to use a single rater as the sole determiner of speaking proficiency under the…

This self-instructional course is designed to help students in attaining a high degree of competence in French pronunciation and a basic knowledge of how French sounds correspond to the writing system. The material is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter has three parts. Part One is the presentation of a short dialogue for memorization. It…

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have declined during the last 14 years. Similar score declines have been observed in many different testing programs, many groups, and tested areas. The declines, while not large in any given year, have been consistent over time, area, and group. The period around 1965 is critical for the interpretation of…

The purpose of this practicum was to develop a bilingual management system to enable bilingual teachers to monitor individual students' performance in the bilingual program. This required: (1) revising the kindergarten thru sixth grade student performance objectives; (2) developing kindergarten thru sixth grade criterion-referenced tests and…

A study was conducted in Jalapa, Mexico, to test the hypothesis that a student of average and below average language aptitude may have greater difficulty with the accelerated pace of learning in an intensive program. The Modern Language Association Cooperative Spanish Test was administered to the eight beginning students enrolled in the Jalapa…

This report describes the seven-week program of the first-, second-, and third-year German language courses taught at Middlebury College during the summer of 1977. This was an intensive program with at least four hours of formal classroom instruction per day. The high scores achieved on the MLA-Cooperative Foreign Language Tests, Forms LA and MA,…