Implementation of an adaptive achievement test for teaching signed-numbers operations to junior high students is described. A computer program capable of finding 240 basic errors in signed-number computations was written on the PLATO system and used for analyzing a 64-item conventional test, as well as an adaptive test of addition problems. The…

Forty-three first-grade children, who had received no formal instruction in addition and subtraction, were individually administered 20 problems that could be solved using addition or subtraction. The problems were selected to represent the following semantic types: joining, separating, part-part-whole, comparison, and equalizing. Responses were…

A free response cloze test was administered to 31 third graders to test the hypothesis that qualitative as well as quantitative differences in syntactic abilities or skills exist between good and poor readers. The subjects were divided into two reading level groups (good readers and poor readers) according to their scores on the SRA Assessment…

When classes are the units of analyses, estimates of the reliability of class means are needed. Using classical test theory it is difficult to treat this problem adequately. Generalizability theory, however, provides a natural framework for dealing with the problem. Each of four possible formulas for the generalizability of class means is derived…

Results are presented of an onsite review of data gathered in 1971 by the Consolidated Program Information Report (CPIR), a survey instrument designed to fill the data needs of the Office of Education and state education agencies in relation to federally funded elementary and secondary education programs. This validation and error analysis of CPIR…

Participants in a seminar series in second language acquisition held at Harvard University discussed three papers by Dulay and Burt ("Goofing: An Indicator of Children's Second Language Learning Strategies,""Should We Teach Children Syntax?", "Natural Sequences in Child Second Language Acquisition"), and developed…

This paper discusses the concept of error in the learning of the phonology of a second language and argues that the concept of error must be viewed as a positive element, an initiation of the process of successive approximations toward the correct phonetic realization. Based on the idea that interference between two languages generates a…

This paper discusses the problem of how to deal effectively with students' errors from the perspective of Error Analysis. Basic aspects of the theory such as "interlanguage,""learning strategies" and "the interpretation of errors" are introduced; and empirical data from child language learning studies are presented to support the underlying…

The nature of common language errors for learners of second languages is explored, and it is found that the errors cannot adequately be explained in terms of the theory of language interference. A new rationale for these errors can come from an investigation of the perceptual strategies common to error analysis, and thus it is postulated that…

Differences in articulation error rates and error patterns as a function of five elicitation modes (picture, picture with pretraining, word repetition, sentence repetition, and nonsense word repetition) were examined. The same 15 words (or pictures representing them) were stimuli in four real word conditions; nonsense words were formed by…

Children's self-control behavior in motor and cognitive tasks was examined in a series of two studies in which modeling and self-regulatory mechanisms were varied to assess the influence of each. In the first study, 6-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children individually played a 20-trial game of 'Simon Says' (involving activation and inhibition trials)…

Examines errors made by English speakers learning German and, in attempting to find sources for them, contrasts certain phenomena of German and English grammar. The phenomena in question are cleft sentences and the treatment of case. (TL)

Shows how third graders' error patterns on a reading test related to their cognitive styles. Suggests corrective teaching strategies to follow such categorization and analysis. (RL)

Reasoning patterns and learning difficulties of six students are illustrated in support of the contention that language and notation often disguise thought. (MN)

The ability of respondents to properly execute Thurstone scaling procedures as opposed to Likert scaling procedures was investigated in a sample of high school students. Results indicate difficulty among respondents using Thurstone-type instructions to resist giving Likert-type responses. (JKS)