This text on foreign language testing provides an overview of testing principles, problems, and practices, and examines the multiple roles of the classroom teacher, as well as the construction and scoring of more formal language tests. The following types or foreign language tests are distinguished: achievement or attainment tests, proficiency…

The curriculum guide for Ohio's secondary level programs in English as a second language (ESL) begins with background information on factors to consider in developing an ESL curriculum, including limited-English-proficient students' characteristics, the language acquisition process, skill areas to be covered, instructional goals for four major…

Following a brief review of the literature on cognates, and a discussion of six arguments in favor of using cognates as a vocabulary acquisition device, a study is described which was designed to determine whether students were able to utilize English-French cognates in listening and reading comprehension in French. Seventy-four tenth grade…

Teachers of English as a second language need classroom communication activities to help students develop communicative competence. A procedure which uses a group-learning approach and which ensures real communication is the "Strip Story," an adaptation of scrambled story exercises in which each student is given one sentence of a story…

This report presents detailed, nonevaluative descriptions of instructional methods used in a sample of outstanding language training centers. Together these 19 different training programs represent a student age range from subteen to adult. Included are both intensive and nonintensive, military and civilian, and governmental and nongovernmental…

A college-level course is described that is designed to increase oral proficiency and comprehension in Spanish and to introduce students to the culture of the Hispanic world. The course is taught in Spanish, and faculty members from other disciplines serve as guest lecturers to provide reinforcement of material learned in the areas of history,…

This collection resulting from a workshop on language teaching methodology contains the following papers: (1) "Current Views and Principles on Unlocking the FL Treasure Chest," by R. Lado; (2) "Effective Ways of Teaching First-Year French," by J.G. Nicholas; (3) "Teaching Conversation and Comprehension Skills in Elementary…

A study was conducted to determine the extent to which listening comprehension is impaired when students are confronted with the colloquial use of French, as opposed to its formal use. It was found that amoung 128 prospective French teachers who participated in the study, there existed a low comprehension level of colloquial French, a discrepancy…

This article deals with the issue of gaining proficiency in oral expression in a second language. A functional approach to teaching oral proficiency is outlined, an approach which focuses on the audience as a determining factor in the speaker's linguistic output. Claims in the article are based on an experiment in the teaching of oral proficiency…

This basic textbook for Latin American Spanish contains 10 units. The text is adaptable for use in an academic institution (Completion time is expected to be one year.), in an intensive program (Completion time is about 90-120 hours.), or in independent study. The vocabulary is limited and only basic, essential, grammatical structures are…

This paper is part of a series presented at the symposium on a European units/credits system for modern language learning to adults. Included are a list of 58 modules or units of study, together with some indication of real-life situations in which the skills associated with the modules could be used. These modules have to be further divided so…

This volume, one in a series in applied linguistics, is a concise handbook of testing theory and practice in foreign language instruction. Two broad categories, "prognosis" and the "evaluation of attainment," are treated in five major chapters, including: (1) prognostic measurement, (2) achievement measurement, (3) proficiency measurement, (4)…

This manual is designed to offer teachers ideas that appeal to middle school students (ages 10-11 to 14-15) and give them short-term successful experiences in the foreign language classroom. The activities described here provide ideas for learning that involve the four basic skills of foreign language learning - listening, speaking, reading,…

This guide describes well-established and practical pedagogical behaviors for a foreign language teacher in an ordinary situation, a classroom with 20-35 pupils who are beginning the study of a foreign language in school or college. The first chapter, "The Five Stages," discusses the stages through which an item (a word, construction, or idiom) in…

It is argued that slowed-down speech is a useful tool for teaching both listening comprehension and pronunciation to students of English as a second language. For listening comprehension, introduction of more, and longer pauses at grammatical boundaries allows more time for processing speech. The greater number of accented words and shorter…