This module on assessing students' personal characteristics is one of a set of seven on vocational students and is part of a larger series of thirty-four modules constituting a core curriculum intended for use in the professional preparation of vocational educators in the areas of agricultural, business, home economics, and industrial education.…

Sixty-five grade 5-6 children were tested on a verbal recall task involving material of varying semantic and syntactic content. There was no difference between best and poorest readers in their performance on random lists of words, but there were clear differences on meaningful sentences and on syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous…

This paper reports on a pilot study conducted to determine the possible use of the cloze procedure as a substitute measure of achievement in a second-year Spanish culture and civilization class. Twenty students enrolled in a third-semester Spanish class at the University of Colorado were simultaneously given multiple choice tests and cloze tests…

This newsletter contains five articles. The first, "Discourse Structure in Reading," by Ron Shook, suggests that reading materials for the beginning ESL (English as a second language) reader often have three defects: (1) profusion of detail as question fodder; (2) an oversimplified syntax; and (3) an artificial construction that violates…

A sample of high school seniors was surveyed in spring 1972 to provide baseline data for the NCES National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. The First-Followup Survey of this sample took place in fall 1973. This report describes how these young adults changed during this period of about 1-1/2 years with regard to their view of…

This evaluation focuses on a comprehensive arts and reading enrichment program for socially and economically deprived inner city adolescents who are performing two years below grade level in reading and/or mathematics. One hundred children participated in this six month program considered to be strongly oriented toward reading improvement. A…

This collection of papers assesses the validity of the MLAT. It is not self-evident that a test designed for English speaking university students in America and validated there is necessarily valid in an English university. The differences between American English and British English are evident, and American universities admit a greater…

The development of local norms using the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities was part of a larger study, the purpose of which was to identify the percentage of Arizona school children having a handicap. The first step in this part of the project, which involved screening for communication disorders, was the selection of tests to identify…

This project has been directed towards the development of procedures for assessing children's curiosity. Better procedures are needed to reach one of the long-range goals of Center Program III: an understanding of the relationship of curiosity to academic achievement and other cognitive skills, styles and motives. This paper reviews briefly some…

Individualization of education has been variously defined, from fairly narrow and circumscribed to fairly extensive and comprehensive definitions. The development of a comprehensive procedure for the individualization of education involves consideration of such factors as family/personal, instructional systems, data access, and decision rule…

This study was designed to test the validity of using creativity and academic motivation variables, in addition to the traditional variables of scholastic aptitude and high school GPA, as predictors of college GPA. The sample consisted of the 1973-74 freshman class at the College of Basic Studies (CBS) at Boston University; CBS is a two-year…

This paper deals with the phenomenon of code switching among bilinguals. Whereas previous studies of code switching have, however, concentrated on instances in which code alternation can be correlated with a change in social occasion, this paper uses examples from the speech of Mexican-American and Afro-American bilinguals to focus on those…

This two-phase experiment was conducted to determine: (1) whether foreign language aptitude as measured by standard aptitude tests (Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery, Carroll-Sapon Modern Language Aptitude Test) can be significantly increased by training, and (2) whether increases in language aptitude so obtained would result in better language…

Dr. Simon Belasco's paper "Programmed Instruction and the Psychology of Second Language Learning" explores basic assumptions held by curriculum designers and teachers concerning the possibility of second language acquisition in an artificial, unicultural, and contrived classroom environment. Concepts relating to scope and sequence, New Key…

A project to develop instructional and evaluative procedures for special classes of intellectually gifted students in grades four, five, and six was developed as part of California Project Talent. Two demonstration programs were observed over a 3-year period; the two classes were all-day, full-week programs for children with an IQ of 130 or over.…