Translating psychological tests and attitude scales from one language and culture for use in others has been common in the history of educational and psychological assessment. Despite the long history, methods for conducting test and attitude scale translations and establishing equivalence of the multiple versions of an instrument are not…

Despite long-standing provisions in three Philippine constitutions naming Filipino as the national language, there has been no serious effort to implement the use of Pilipino in the Philippine educational system. Pilipino is based mainly on Tagalog, but is also a blend of words taken from English, Spanish, Arabic, Tamil, and Chinese. A 1973…

Adapting credentialing examinations for international uses involves translating tests for use in multiple languages. This paper explores methods for evaluating construct equivalence and item equivalence across different language versions of a test. These methods were applied to four different language versions (English, French, German, and…

The effects of specific guidelines in the taking and rating of tests of language summarizing ability were investigated, as well as interrater agreement regarding the rating of specific ideas within the summaries. The tests involved respondents reading source texts and providing written summaries as a measure of their reading comprehension and…

Some failure types that occur in cross-cultural interactions are described, mainly from the point of view of Finns and Finland and from primarily anecdotal and "folk theoretical" data. Material from such sources as newspapers, joke collections, proverbs, and student experiences are used as the basis of the discussion. Non-grammatical…

A classroom technique called "ubertragung," used for exercise and evaluation of oral communication, is explained as it is applied in a course in business German for native speakers of Norwegian. Learners read a text in Norwegian containing information relevant to the study of German for international trade. Later, students use the…

Impromptu speech is heard only once, at a rate of perception that depends on the speaker's delivery, and is specifically adapted to the listeners. These features trigger cognitive activities that facilitate translation. Impromptu speech is characterized by a constant interconnection between cognitive competence and language competence and between…

Conference interpreting is an oral impromptu activity. Since texts delivered at conferences range from unprepared oral texts to prepared written texts, there can be clashes between the impromptu features of conference interpreting and features of prepared written texts. Knowledge of the field of discourse and of the predictability of text…

Important features of eight second language teaching methods--grammar-translation, direct, audiolingual, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, community language learning, Total Physical Response, and the communicative approach--are summarized . A chart outlines characteristics of these aspects of the methods: goals, teacher and student roles, the…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "On Some Assumptions and Principles of Contrastive Grammar Illustrated from the Area of Reflexivity in Danish and English" (Torben Thrane); "Deletion in Coordinated Structures in English and Dutch" (Robert R. van Oirsouw); "Methods and Goals of Comparative Systematics"…

This preliminary report sets the Folktale project, an interdisciplinary cooperative effort involving literary criticism, linguistics, the craft of translation, psychology, and statistics, in the context of reading and reading research in the modern world, and discusses experimental reader response research in Denmark as well as in other countries.…

This report, the second of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the way in which potentially useful texts, i.e. folktales, were selected by team members. The report first…

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…

The text of this document was taken from a videotape of anecdotal stories told by Blackfeet elders to students at the Heart Butte School during the spring of 1983. An explanation of the transliterated Blackfeet language is presented. The stories are given in both English and Blackfeet. "No More Buffalo" describes Indian life in Montana…

A collection of photographs published by the Heart Butte Bilingual Program depicts student life in Heart Butte on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. Each photograph is captioned both in first-grade English and in Blackfeet. Included are Photographs of the community center, a general store, a church, the Heart Butte school, a…