In order to facilitate the interpretation of test scores from the TOEIC[R] "Bridge" as a measure of English language proficiency, one form of the test was administered to more than 6000 test takers in three South American countries--Colombia, Chile and Ecuador. The appropriateness of the TOEIC "Bridge" test as a measure of…

In September 1998, the Education Department of the fledgling Hong Kong Special Administrative Region implemented a controversial medium-of-instruction policy which compelled around three-quarters of the territory's hitherto English-medium secondary schools to switch to Chinese-medium teaching in Forms 1-3 (years 7-9). Only 112 schools were…

The obligatory use of the preposition a with animate, specific direct objects in Spanish ("Juan conoce a Maria" "Juan knows Maria") is a well-known instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM; Torrego, 1998; Leonetti, 2004). Recent studies have documented the loss and/or incomplete acquisition of several grammatical features in Spanish heritage…

This article examines the oral proficiency in French of students in core French, intensive French (IF), and post-IF to determine the effectiveness of these programs. Between 2003 and 2009, students in nine jurisdictions were assessed using the New Brunswick Middle School Scale (MSS). Students were tested prior to beginning IF (multiple grade…

Brownsville Independent School District in Texas garnered the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2008 by narrowing the gap between its largely immigrant Hispanic enrollment and other low-income children in the state. Its efforts are notable for the district's ability to move English language learners to proficiency in a few years by its reliance…

A discussion of the simulated oral proficiency interview (SOPI), a type of semi-direct speaking test that models the format of the oral proficiency interview (OPI), describes its development and research and examines its usefulness. The test used for discussion is a tape-recorded test consisting of six parts, scored by a trained rater using the…

The Children's English and Services Study was a project designed to assess the bilingual education needs of limited English speaking children in the United States. The submission of a draft final report prompted the present report from the sponsoring organization, in which various methodological procedures are questioned and recommendations are…

Describes the original FSI oral interview and the ACTFL/ETS modifications. Discusses: (1) the characteristics of the test, (2) some possible pitfalls in application and their remedies, and (3) some possible long range effects of the oral interview on second language teaching and testing. Provisional generic descriptions for speaking and…

The need to teach standard American English in the schools of the United States is defended. (DB)

National Adult Literacy Survey data were used to estimate wage returns on second-language skills for 5,742 English monolinguals, 436 bilinguals who understand another language very well, and 124 who understand another language well. Nominal wages of bilinguals were higher but this reflected higher educational attainment. Regression analyses did…

Comparison of deaf students' performance on Gallaudet University's English Placement Test found that those students involved in classes using materials from the Electronic Networks for Interaction (ENFI) project, which affords considerable practice in English, performed significantly better or showed significant improvement in some test areas than…

Offers a state of the art overview of studies into trilingualism and looks at trilingual competence with a view to comparing it with bilingual competence to ascertain the extent to which any of the differences are amenable to explanation in quantitative or qualitative terms. (Author/VWL)

Studied ordinal numerical knowledge in 2- and 3-year-old children in 2 experiments involving 46 children. Results show that children as young as 2 years make purely numerical discriminations, but children who lacked any verbal numerical knowledge could not make ordinal judgments. (SLD)

We explored the relationships between immigrant adolescents' first-and second-language proficiency and their psychological and sociocultural adaptation using three models: the ethnic identity model, the language assimilation model, and the language integration model. The study was conducted in the Netherlands. Participants were 161 Turkish and 95…