To determine the extent to which the perceived English language performance of employed bilingual Mexican-Americans influenced or handicapped them in performing job duties as proficiently as their monolingual counterparts, personal interviews were conducted with equal numbers of Mexican-Americans, their non-Mexican-American occupational peers, and…

The need to find which social contexts elicit children's fullest language repertoire generated this study of the effects of three social distance variables on language production, as measured by mean length of communication unit, vocabulary diversity, and use of black English. The social distance variables investigated included race and sex of…

A suggestion is made for solving the problem of testing spoken English. The students were from the Economics Department of a university in Finland. Their needs (practical ones), their courses in spoken English, the form of the test--oral, reading, and writing--and the marking system are considered. (SCC)

Cree and Ojobwa children (N=100) ages 6-15, were administered the WISC. The mean Performance IQ (PIQ) was in the normal range at all ages; the Verbal IQ (VIQ) was in the mentally deficient or dull-normal range. A comparison of Indian IQ norms with original WISC normative data is given. (Author)

Describes design and progress of the Ontario Test of English as a Second Language (OTESL) developed in response to need for a common instrument for Ontario postsecondary institutions that need to determine whether students in academic programs have adequate English skills. The test provides placement and diagnostic information to ESL programs for…

Describes some reading comprehension exercises developed for university-level students whose native language is not English. By keeping the ultimate focus on meaning, rather than on strict grammatical correctness or "dictionary meaning," it is hoped that students will become better able to develop awareness of how meaning is conveyed, not only in…

Examines the hypothesis that adults and children have media-specific conceptions of picturing and that the functional uses of photography and drawing differ across development. Results showed an age progression from viewing photography as only reflecting the real object to viewing it as a medium that allows for control and alteration of reality.…

Proposes model of language teaching designed to balance teacher/learner input, whole class teaching vs. small group work, and teaching language as either form or function. Although amount of teacher intervention varies, all classroom activities are communicative, providing a situation where students are involved, contributing and interacting with…

"Re-tell" is examined as an activity designed to involve students in an interactive process. Authentic reading and listening passages provide a context in which the student can negotiate for meaning and extract information from the surrounding environment (the real world), thus fostering language acquisition via exposure to various learning…

Regular debating can be an effective way of improving the performance of ESL pupils and of assessing their language-learning propensities. It requires a lot of listening as well as speaking and generally seems to foster confidence in language use. The relationships set up in debating are pupil-pupil rather than pupil-teacher. (CFM)

Describes two experiments which were conducted to investigate the responses of eight-year-old children to differently worded spoken instructions for simple tasks, for which sentence length and complexity were systematically varied. Results indicate that children's accuracy improved with shorter and slower instructions. (Author/DB)

Argues that transformational grammar supplies an adequate theoretical model with explanatory power; all that is needed is that the language teacher take a long, hard look at transformational theory. (VM)

Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, March 1971, New Orleans, Louisiana, based on a study supported in part by a University of Hawaii Curriculum Development Grant. (VM)

The ability of two groups of different language proficiency to make appropriate grammatical judgments and correct sentences was analyzed. With increased proficiency, students moved from a general grammatical ability to an ability to identify and correct details. Results are discussed in terms of concepts of implicit/explicit knowledge and…