Both on-level and out-of-level tests were administered to third and fifth grade children in order to compare the scaled scores of different level tests of the same testing program and to discover whether the relationship between levels might be distorted by ceiling or floor effects. Only reading tests were used in this study. The Stanford…

In eight Title I classrooms 32 first grade students were observed as they completed reading and writing assignments without continuous teacher supervision. Observations focused on the students' immediate responses, such as attention, performance on the assignment, and reported understanding of the task. Two working hypotheses are presented about…

Four forms of a 36-item adaptation of the Stanford Achievement Test were administered to 484 fourth graders. External factors potentially influencing test performance were examined, namely: (1) item order (easy-to-difficult vs. uniform); (2) response location (left column vs. right column); (3) handedness which may interact with response location;…

This report is a cross-linguistic study that compares the sequence of emergence of semantic relations in English with the sequence of emergence of these relations in the acquisition of American Sign Language. American Sign Language (ASL) differs from English in modality (it is a visual-gesture language rather than an auditory-vocal one) and in the…

This study focused on linguistic analyses used in the PIF Project (Project in Error Analysis, Interlanguage Studies and Contrastive Linguistics), an ongoing study of learner language and a project in foreign language pedagogy. For the project, 120 Danish learners of English were divided into 12 groups representing different Danish educational…

An attempt was made to measure the language behavior of students in the upper elementary grades. The procedures and results of research in the following five areas are described in this report: (1) Relationship between the Linguistic Ability Test and the written discourse of fourth and sixth graders; (2) Comparisons of the discourse of fourth and…

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of subject pronouns in third language (L3) production. Participants were 90 Basque-Spanish bilingual students, learning English as a third language in a formal setting in the Basque Country. All the participants, who had received the same amount of exposure to English, were divided into three groups…

Mathematics educators are concerned about students' lack of ability to translate mathematical word problems into computable forms. Researchers argue that linguistic problems lie at the root of students' difficulties with mathematical word problems. The issue becomes more complicated for bilingual students. It is argued that if students study…

The 1995 supplement to the annotated bibliography for French second language instruction cites materials that are useful for a variety of French language programs, are appropriate to age and proficiency levels of French language learning, promote positive attitudes toward and greater understanding of French language and culture, take into account…

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a project which developed, implemented, and evaluated the effectiveness of a microcomputer/videodisc math instructional management system for grades K-4. The system was designed to operate on an APPLE II microcomputer, videodisc player, and input-output devices. It included three…

A collection of essays on second language vocabulary learning includes: "Historical Trends in Second Language Vocabulary Instruction" (Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman); "The Lexical Plight in Second Language Reading: Words You Don't Know, Words You Think You Know, and Words You Can't Guess" (Batia Laufer); "Orthographic Knowledge in L2 Lexical Processing: A…

The appropriateness of the Angoff method (W. H. Angoff, 1971) for setting standards on tests was studied. Evaluators (judges) from California school districts and teacher training institutions reviewed 15 NTE (National Teacher Examinations) Program Specialty Area Tests published by the Educational Testing Service for their appropriateness in…

Intermediate level students of English as a second language reach a critical stage in their language learning after which motivation wanes if no specific attainable goals are offered as encouragement to progress. The ability to enjoy recreational reading can provide those goals, but students must make the transition from dependence on the teacher…

Three polytomous DIF detection techniques--the Mantel test, logistic regression, and polySTAND--were used to identify GRE® Analytical Writing prompts ("Issue" and "Argument") that are differentially difficult for (a) female test takers; (b) African American, Asian, and Hispanic test takers; and (c) test takers whose strongest…

The application of communicative and grammatical approaches to syllabus design for conversational English for specific purposes is discussed. Each approach is examined, and applications are suggested for each at different stages of instruction, based on learner readiness and the linguistic organization of the target language variety. At the early…