A Scottish study investigated qualities contributing to or detracting from an oral foreign language test's ability to test communicative competence in conversation. The study was undertaken in French, German, and Spanish second language classes in the third and fourth years of secondary school. Pupil discourse competence was assessed during verbal…

Pronunciation is an important subskill in second language learning, therefore worth evaluating. Its quality is commonly assessed in a global, impressionistic way by having learners read aloud. While this allows comparison of examinees' skills, ability to read aloud is a possible confounding variable. An alternative method is to have learners read…

A study investigated the use of the interlanguage of a native speaker of Chinese using English. The subject was an art school instructor, and data were drawn from three recordings of language used in his role as teacher. It was found that despite different situations, the nature of the task determined the kind of language-learner language used.…

Although mathematics can be described as a formalized language, the signs and symbols of mathematical representation are subject to individual interpretation, which, if inaccurate, can lead to inhibitions about and interferences with the mathematical learning process. The purpose of this study was to explore communication in an intermediate-level…

The working papers by students and professors of linguistics on research in progress include the following: "Are Cariban Languages Moving Away From or Towards Ergative Systems?" (Desmond D. Derbyshire); "A Double-Verb Construction in Mbya Guarani" (Robert A. Dooley); "Semantically Ergative Languages in Typological…

The first task of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's International Study of Written Composition was to conceptualize the writing domain by determining the most significant parameters that have to be taken into account in all writing situations. A model was developed that used the level of cognitive…

The symposium from which these papers are gathered was one component of the Assessment of Bilingual Persons Project to pursue research on the nature of language proficiency and to keep teachers informed of related assessment issues for classroom assessment improvement. The papers include: "A Sociolinguistic/Discourse Approach to the…

Novice poetry readers need to realize that there are limits to poetic license, specifically with regard to the order of words in a sentence of poetry. For example, the integrity of independent clauses is not violated--no word placed in one independent clause is meant to be read as an element of another independent clause. Although parenthetical…

The state of the art in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is characterized by diversity in philosophies, activities, and materials. It has been summarized in a variety of reports. The perspectives developed here are a supplement to the other reports rather than a summary. Aspects of the state of the art are examined through…

Three suggestions are offered to the teacher of reading: permit the students to read, encourage students to guess or predict, and focus the students' attention on meaning. (JH)

This study examined deaf children's reading comprehension in relation to the linguistic structures of their sign languages of fluency and the amount of sign language input they had received. Children (n=47) born severely or profoundly deaf, in age groups from 7 to 15 years and all attending day classes in which the English-structured Manually…

This study investigated the relative ability of literate (n=24), semi-literate (n=45), and non-literate (n=21) adults to erase the initial consonant or vowel from non-words and pronounce the remaining phonemes. It was hypothesized that difficulty in removing the initial consonant from the vowel with which it coarticulates is due not only to…

In constructing a syllabus for the teaching of Modern Greek as a foreign language to English-speaking students, it is suggested that some lexical items be taught from the corpus of Greek loan words in English. These words fall into the following categories: direct loans; words that, in joining English, have acquired a different meaning, which was…

Four studies were conducted in which subjects performed three sets of tasks tapping, in a standard format, progressively refined, non-linguistic processes in speech processing. The studies examined the following: (1) auditory versus phonetic processes in the discrimination of consonants; (2) auditory versus phonetic processes in loudness and pitch…