A variety of fluency materials--inexpensive games and exercises designed to offer learners practice in the component skills necessary for literacy--are discussed in this report. Various sections contain discussions of the materials within the context of a broader literacy project, the materials and the levels of organization of written language,…

On the basis of the grammatical theory developed by Noam Chomsky, it is reasonable to presume that the different parts of a sentence may not all be understood with equal facility and speed. One purpose of this study was to determine whether some of the grammatical relations within a sentence were understood more readily than others. Sentences of…

The present paper discusses some linguistic correlates of early bilingualism, correlates which have implications for first cognitions about language. The paper also touches on the question of what linguistic environments are optimal for the very young child to acquire two languages fluently, testing the importance of a one-speaker/one-language…

This pamphlet outlines an attempt to provide an instrument by which the linguistic background of Welsh children can be measured. In a group of Welsh-speaking children there are different degrees of Welshness, and it is essential, for educational purposes, that the degrees of Welsh linguistic background be estimated. The two versions of the Welsh…

This paper describes a procedure designed to enhance the effectiveness of teaching writing skills in intermediate and advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. The procedure consists of a correction sheet and a testing technique. The student prepares a written assignment which is corrected by the instructor with regard to the student's…

Early language aptitude tests were generally tests of ability in English or work-sample tests in the target language or an artificial language. Recent work has involved various correlational studies and factor analyses to determine what factors correlate most with success in foreign language learning. Approaches include: (1) correlations of…

The experimental test measures the ability of a subject to reconstruct obscured words by means of sentence analysis, carried out not as a separate academic task, but in the normal procedure of understanding what the sentence says. It is a task built on the assumption that the ability to handle reduced redundancy is a valid measure of linguistic…

This is a pilot survey of foreign language use in British industry, carried out by the Language Teaching Centre at the University of York. It seeks to determine the demand for language skills in industry, but as a pilot survey it also seeks to test the effectiveness of the survey techniques used. Section 1 discusses the project's limitations,…

This paper attempts to place bilingual schooling in a sociolinguistic context by relating language use in school to language use in the community. The city treated here, Redwood City, California, has a growing Mexican American population and was one of the 23 California cities selected for bilingual schooling through Title VII; programs were…

This study was conducted to explore the ability of children (6 to 12 years of age) to understand certain relatively complex relationships as they are commonly signaled syntactically in our language. It was hypothesized that development in language performance during this age range was, in some measure, a function of a growing ability to comprehend…

The author feels that this study reaffirms the importance of attitude as one of the factors explaining the degree of proficiency a student achieves in learning a second language. Four groups of students representing 80 countries were administered (1) a direct questionnaire on which they were asked to rate the importance of 14 possible reasons for…

The language training program for Peace Corps participants is investigated. The objectives were: to investigate the validity of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) for predicting end-of-training Foreign Service Institute (FSI) language proficiency; to discover the relative difficulty of various target languages; to develop tentative…

The purpose of this study was to develop a data base concerning the home background of Puerto Rican pupils as it relates to present and potential educational progress. Specifically, the study was designed to secure and summarize systematic data concerning the following factors: (1) the educational level of the parents and their educational…

Stresses the need to synthesize techniques and methodologies, and to establish a central focus for beginning and intermediate programs of foreign language education in schools, higher education, and adult education programs. General conclusions and priorities are also offered. (EJS)

The multiple choice technique can test written and oral comprehension and linguistic competence at beginning and intermediate levels. Examples of test items concerning sounds, stress, vocabulary, and structures are presented, and brief comments on the items are included. (SW)