Examines how six major areas of foreign language education in Florida have been significantly affected by the proficiency movement. These areas include oral testing, curricular goals, instructional materials, teaching methods, state and county initiatives, and standards of achievement for teachers and students. (11 references) (GLR)

A group of core French studies involving the development and validation of the COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching) observation scheme, a French immersion observation study of vocabulary instruction and talk, and a French experimental immersion study regarding the effect on proficiency of functionally focused materials are…

The IBM SpeechViewer was used in tutorial sessions within a program of training for international teaching assistants (ITAs) to examine the value of computer-based displays of speech in the teaching of pronunciation. ITAs did not improve significantly with SpeechViewer, but both ITAs and instructors indicated great enthusiasm for it as a teaching…

The structure, level, and contents of four categories of final examinations, including the three-Point, four-Point, and five-Point Bagrut exams, are discussed. Possible reasons are offered for why some students take higher level examinations than those for which they are prepared. (LB)

The SEAMEO Regional Language Centre (RELC) English Proficiency Test development project is described, including objectives and methodology. The first and second versions of the RELC test showed four kinds of validity (content/face, concurrent, construct, and predictive), but the second version was found to be more valid. (LB)

An analysis is presented of the speech act sequence of indirect complaint/commiseration in conversational interactions between Japanese learners of English as a Second Language and their English-speaking peers. Consequences of nonsubstantive, noncommiserative responses are explored in light of missed opportunities for interaction. (46 references)…

A brief review of research on native language production precedes a critical discussion of recent second-language production research, focusing on native language research applications to second-language research, the relationship between second-language learning and production, and the various methodologies used to study such production. (190…

Describes Tongan language proficiency, language usage, and attitudes toward the language among the ethnic Tongans of Wellington, New Zealand. Although the language is strongly preferred and maintained by the Tongan community, incipient language shift, increasing English proficiency, and code switching are evident among younger people. (40…

Investigations of Japanese speakers' interlanguage constructions of English existential sentences with a locative sentential topic found a general shift from topic-comment to subject-predicate structures as proficiency increased. (24 references) (Author/CB)

Presents a model for evaluating culturally and linguistically different students to determine whether a learning problem is being created or exacerbated by sociocultural variables or a handicapping condition. The model presented allows examiners to put into practice an assessment procedure that uses a more holistic approach, incorporates informal…

A case is made for preventing the fossilization of proficiency levels for second-language students through the development of better instructional models, decreased acceptance and increased correction of inaccurate speech production, increased development of instructors as native speakers, and more research into the fossilization problem and its…

The group discussion test has gained prominence as a measure of oral interaction skills in second-language learning. This article reviews test types and administration, the communicative nature of the test, development of criteria and rating scales, and advantages. A sample rating scale is appended. (Contains 15 references.) (LB)

Tested the hypothesis that accented speech heard at a reduced rate would sound less accented and more comprehensible than speech produced at a normal rate. In two experiments, English native-speaker listeners rated a passage read by 10 high-proficiency Mandarin learners of English. Findings suggest that a general speaking strategy of slowing down…

Meier and Krashen, both employed in California's education system, do an injustice to students in rehashing an already settled battle. Fed up with two decades of failure, California voters replaced bilingual education with structured English immersion. Meier and Krashen offer no suggestions for coping with Proposition 227. (27 references) (MLH)

The validity of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (Third Edition) for identification and description of language disorders following brain injury was evaluated in 11 adolescents with traumatic brain injury. In general, the measure identified only those individuals who had previously been diagnosed as language impaired, not those…