The paper examines aspects involved in providing an accurate evaluation of speech and language of culturally different preschool children. Dialectical differences of Spanish and Black English speakers are detailed. Culturally based nonverbal behaviors and situational factors, including touching behavior and eye contact, are considered. Cultural…

A three-year study aimed at measuring the English speaking proficiency of Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) candidates on a direct basis is described. A variety of "semi-direct" testing formats (involving test stimuli delivered by tape recording and accompanying booklet, with examinee speech tape recorded for evaluation) were…

In order to investigate the effect of kindergarten upon articulation of first grade children, 15,255 first grade children were tested for articulation problems. One-half were tested in 1960 because Seattle had had no kindergarten program in 1959. The other half were tested in 1961 because Seattle reinstituted a kindergarten program in 1960.…

To explore the adequacy of a 50-word list, produced by item analysis of a set of 160 words in an earlier study, also by Tikofsky, tape recordings of 20 adult dysarthrics reading list were evaluated by university students who were native speakers of English and had no history of hearing loss. Results of the intelligibility study showed that the…

Standardized tests in speech and language may be culturally biased for use with rural children. Recommends (1) training school personnel for cultural awareness; (2) purchasing culture-free tests; (3) developing local norms and conducting item analyses on tests; (4) identifying bias and modifying testing procedures; (5) accepting dialectical…

This study, involving five experienced and trained speech language pathologists, categorized the elicited imitations of five profoundly and five severely prelingually hearing-impaired subjects using the Phonetic Level Evaluation. Failure to obtain acceptably high levels of reliability suggests that this measure may not yet be an accurate and…

This study compared the responses of 28 Detroit (Michigan) low income African-American preschoolers who were speakers of Black English (BE) on the Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale, using a standard English and a BE scoring procedure. Findings indicated that this test does not require a BE scoring adjustment for northern BE speakers.…

Most junior syndicate teachers have concerns about the speech clarity of some of the children in their class. It is difficult for teachers to know whether to refer such students for speech assessments by their speech-language therapist. This article outlines a project which gathered New Zealand normative data for a test of articulation. A summary…

Issues involved in teaching and assessing communicative competence are identified and applied to adolescent native English speakers with low levels of academic achievement. A distinction is drawn between transactional versus interactional speech, short versus long speaking turns, and spoken language influenced or not influenced by written…

Tests for the very young child must be nonverbal, and must be fairly brief, inexpensive, and reasonably simple to score and administer. This annotated bibliography represents a selected sample of 109 tests for children aged two through six. The selection covers most of the areas assessed in early childhood programs, including intelligence,…

The Speech Perception in Noise Test was administered to nine native-Mexican Spanish-speaking adults who learned English either before age 6 or after age 14 and nine monolingual American-English adults. Levels of noise at which speech was intelligible were significantly higher and the benefit from context was significantly greater for monolinguals…

This article describes the Colorado Phonetic/Phonologic Assessment of Hearing-Impaired Infants and Toddlers (PHONE) and the speech of 91 hearing-impaired infants and toddlers, examining number of vowels, consonants, elements per utterance, and utterances; differences by age and by hearing loss for each vowel and consonant; and relationship to…

Improving the quality of undergraduate speech communication education depends to a large extent on effectively measuring student achievement in college level communication skills. While formal tests are not as well developed for speaking skills as for other areas of the curriculum, they are available. The two used most frequently are the…

The ninth volume in the SER-LARS (Special Education Resources Location Analysis and Retrieval System) series, a diagnostic-prescriptive instructional data bank for teachers of the handicapped, presents information on tests used for measuring intelligence and mental maturity; general achievement/readiness; reading; mathematics;…