This study describes the convergent, divergent, and factorial validity of a German C-Test in two parallel versions for German pupils in the fifth grade. The study investigated (1) the correlation between the C-Tests and the school grades in German, grammar, and English and with other language tests (convergent validity); (2) the correlation…

A study conducted in Israel investigated the relevance of subject-specific reading passages to performance on reading comprehension tests for advanced university students of English as a second language. The research specifically examined (1) whether students performed better when the reading test content was directly related to their field of…

A history of the Test of Written English (TWE), a section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), describes its inception and development process. The new test is a thirty-minute essay test providing a measure of a non-native English-speaker's ability to perform academic writing tasks similar to those required of international…

This study investigates cultural differences in second language aural comprehension levels among Asians under the constraints of background noise. It is determined that noise is an important component of language proficiency, for it is found where most interactions take place. Students from Hong Kong, Seoul (Korea), Tokyo (Japan), and the South…

Two groups of grade 12 French immersion students in Ottawa and Carleton, Ontario, one having been in immersion French since at least grade 4 and one having started in grade 6 or 7, were administered three tests of French proficiency in a study of the groups' comparative language achievement. Scores sufficiently high to excuse the students from the…

A study was undertaken to determine the feasibility of research on individual variation in translation performance. Three translations produced by 20 students in their second year of an advanced English translation program at the Dutch State School of Translation, were analyzed for variability in the translation of Dutch modal verbs. It was…

A discussion of bilingual education in the Pacific region focuses on the role of evaluation and testing in promoting educational quality. Based on a review of proposals, evaluations, and tests of all districts in Micronesia and Hawaii in the 1982-83 program year, these conclusions are drawn about program evaluation: (1) little program evaluation…

The first two years of a study of the development of bilingual language proficiency are reported in separate volumes. The core of the work during this period was the development of a model of language proficiency. Other related studies addressed topics such as the relationship between aspects of language proficiency and scoring methodology on…

The Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools (MCPS) provide English language instruction to approximately 3,800 students with limited English proficiency. This report represents results of an evaluation of the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)/Bilingual services offered during 1981-82. The first phase focuses on the entry/exit…

Random parallel reading comprehension tests in Japanese and English were administered to a sample of native Japanese students enrolled in intensive English instruction. The students had been placed at three different levels of English language proficiency based on an independent proficiency assessment measure. Evidence for a threshold competency…

A discussion of the implementation of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) second language proficiency guidelines in Florida's public schools and colleges includes a brief review of literature about the guidelines, background information on the oral proficiency movement, and a description of the effects of the movement…

A text concordancer is a computer program that operates on a body of text to locate and sort all occurrences of a target morpheme, word, or pattern. Developments in word processing and hard disks in small computers have made new applications of the technique possible with direct relevance to the classroom. A discussion of the technique looks at…

An alternative to the traditional standardized test of language proficiency administered to Israeli students at the end of secondary school is proposed as a means of giving schools more autonomy in the testing process. The test was designed based on the following assumptions: (1) the test matches the curriculum and not vice versa; (2) the…

In 1983, in the Netherlands' highly differentiated school system, two types of curriculum representing different ability levels were combined as a first step towards a more heterogeneous grouping of student abilities. A study of one aspect of the results of this change compared over 1000 samples of English and German second language listening…

A procedure for evaluating the oral language proficiency of limited English proficient (LEP) secondary school students is presented. The sample consisted of 101 twelfth grade students randomly selected from high schools in the Dade County Public Schools (Miami, Florida), including 72 LEP students. These students were or had been enrolled in…