Suggests a functional definition of levels in the preparation of proficiency tests which would test the student's ability to operate in a specified sociolinguistic situation with specified ease or effect. Appears in "The Florida FL Reporter special anthology issue "Linguistic-Cultural Differences and American Education. (AMM)

Talk given at the Sonnenberg International Conference, October 31, 1969. (DS)

Based on a paper delivered at the Canadian Linguistics Association Congress held in Toronto, Canada, June 10-13, 1969. (DS)

Identifies different types of tests and then treats evaluation tests at some length. Emphasizes that there is no such things as a universal test, which can be used to measure the second-language competence of any group of people," and that tests are only useful for the group they were designed to measure." (FB)

Second language teaching in Germany, as described in this article, follows the "moderate direct method" and has the principle aim of enabling the students to express their own ideas in the foreign language. (FWB)

The ability of school-age, language-impaired children to respond when faced with a communicative obstacle was investigated. Eighteen language-impaired children were compared to two control groups, age-mates and language-mates. The language-impaired communicated more effectively than younger language-mates and less effectively than age-mates.…

Examines whether significantly high correlations exist among language skills in second year students as measured by their final exams. Results support previous research suggesting the existence of shared language aspects across skills. However, each language skill appears to retain enough unique variance that the score in one skill cannot…

Discusses the second language production of adults when responding to the same stimuli (the SLOPE test) under two conditions: (1) unmonitored, when giving spontaneous oral responses and (2) monitored, when giving written responses without time limit constraints. (EKN)

Discusses an attempt to derive, use, and partially validate (for one area of language use) a theoretical approach to the design of language-use tests, also called "explicit direct testing." (EKN)

Discusses an aural discrimination test given to British students of French and examines the relationship between good aural discrimination ability and high achievement in a second language. (EKN)

Presents study designed to examine trait structure of a cloze test using confirmatory factor analysis. Results suggest that a modified cloze passage, using rational deletions, is capable of measuring syntactic- and discourse-level relationships in a text, and this advantage may outweigh considerations of reduced redundancy which underlie random…

Discusses two requirements for successful use of tests for self-correcting by the learner: (1) the learner must, as quickly as possible, compare the model answers with his own, and (2) the teacher must provide a summary of the learners' achievements and deficiencies. (IFS/WGA)