Connor comments on Raimes' research on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) essay component, the Test of Written English (TWE), and the practices of the Educational Testing Service. Raimes' response is directed toward the TWE research agenda. (five references) (Author/LB)

Discusses what has been done in the last five years to enhance the intrinsic power of the MET, the English test for entrance to all universities in China. (JL)

The development of an English for Academic Purposes placement test is described that aims to reflect an integrated approach to language use. It approximates natural language behavior by providing a series of tasks that each contribute to the overall context of language use. (42 references) (Author/LB)

The topic development process for the Educational Testing Service's Test of Written English (TWE) is described, along with the work of the Core Reader group and the procedures for reading and scoring the TWE. The TWE scoring guide (revised 2/90) is appended. (Contains 20 references.) (Author/LB)

In part one of a two-part essay, a broad view of foreign language testing and a comprehensive philosophy for meaningful pragmatic tests are advocated. (10 references) (JL)

The term "alternative assessment" has become commonplace in the field of adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) literacy. Just what it means and how to practice it are discussed. (Contains 14 references.) (LB)

Tested the Aspect Hypothesis using second-language Japanese data. Two experiments are described. Results of the studies extend the applicability of the Aspect Hypothesis to a non Indo-European language. (Author/JL)

Explored the relative contributions to Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score dependability of various numbers of persons, items, subtests, languages, and their various interactions. Sampled 15,000 test takers, 1000 each from 15 different language backgrounds. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the effect of semantic inconsistency on performance of an auditory sentence-grammaticality judgment task among school-age children with and without language-learning disabilities. Children judged grammatical correctness of semantically consistent sentences and correctness of grammatically inconsistent sentences. Results are discussed.…

This research report presents new young adult norms for the Test of Adolescent/Adult Language-3 (TOAL-3) using data from the Ottawa Speech and Language Study (N=242). It is thought this population better represents the full range of young adult language abilities (because the original norms included only individuals who pursued postsecondary…

Provides information and strategies for helping language teachers know how to prepare students for the new computerized version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Information focuses on changes in scoring and test format. (Author/VWL)

A review of literature on language testing focuses on new testing issues beyond the traditional concerns of validity theory, including incorporation of social values into tests, ethics of testing, test impact, including washback, and the political character of language tests. Critical language testing, the activity of contextualizing tests in…

To discover the extent to which academic register develops in language-minority children, it is important to describe the academic register of the minority language and then to develop instruments to measure its development. This article looks at the means that were developed to accomplish these two tasks of description and instrument development…

This study compared differences in preschool children (n=201) clinically diagnosed with specific language impairments (SLI) who were and were not identified through standard psychometric discrepancy criteria. A combination of mean length of utterance, percent structural errors, and chronological age was found to be more useful for predicting a…

Three studies were carried out that tested sign theory, which predicts that nonverbal abilities should correlate positively with primary language abilities. The first examined the possible effects of bilingualism on cognitive ability; the second and third examined Korean adults learning English as a foreign language. (Author/VWL)