This article describes the process of developing and implementing a quick Web-based screening test designed for the purpose of identifying, within a large, culturally diverse population of undergraduates enrolled at an English-medium university, those students unlikely to require English language support during their 1st year of academic study.…

Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of…

The study investigates the effect of explicit contrastive analysis and translation activities on the incidental acquisition of single words and collocations. We compared three high school groups of learners of the same L1 and comparable L2 (English) proficiency. Each group represented one instructional condition: meaning focused instruction (MFI),…

Students enter higher education with multiple identities that reflect their social, ethnic and cultural origins. Students from minority ethnic groups (as opposed to "new immigrant" or international students) straddle more than one cultural and language setting. This paper reports a Scottish study which suggests that, as university…

This book is a guide to categorizing, measuring, testing, and assessing aspects of language, and is intended for language teachers, speech therapists and other language-related practitioners, and researchers, in conjunction with other resources on research methods and statistics. The first part is a discussion of basic terminology and the varied…

A study in which the ability of Peruvian teachers of English as a Second Language to simplify their own use of English appropriately for classroom use was examined, is discussed. It is noted that the study provides new data and has implications for future research on classroom language. It supports prior work on teacher talk and implies that…

The Certificates of Foreign Language Proficiency are general purpose tests of language use designed for the adult learner in Finland. This paper deals with the techniques of validation used when designing the test specifications and implementing these into the first versions of the tests. The data comes from the development of tests in one…

Most research on language transfer has been conducted on the first and second language. This paper describes a case of transfer from the second language to the third language, specifically the influence of French (L2) on the learning of English (L3). The study focuses on French-English lexical cognates and suggests that although the learners…

As the British business community becomes increasingly internationalized, it should show more interest in language-related matters. After a review of the literature, this paper reports on a study of the 100 largest British industrial companies. The conclusions are as follows: (1) a wide variety of British employees are involved in international…

This paper discusses findings from an ongoing 3-year study of the impact of strategy training on Russian listening comprehension. In particular, the study focused on the techniques that encourage increased student control of their application of learner strategies. The research presented adds to prior research on listening training in second…

The development of the Cambridge Assessment of Spoken English (CASE) is reviewed, with particular reference to the trialling and validation of the rating scales. The objectives of the test are to assess an individual's ability to produce and process spoken English; demonstrate the ability to communicate in English through the use of grammatical,…

This digest focuses on the American Council on the Speaking of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Speaking Proficiency Guidelines. The history and development of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (originally, the ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines) are reviewed, the generic characteristics of each level of the speaking guidelines are presented in…

This paper presents a report of a 1987 symposium on the Evaluation of Foreign Language Proficiency held in Bloomington, Indiana. Although much has been accomplished in language testing, much remains to be done before the language teaching profession has at its disposal a common means of measuring proficiency in the functional use of language in…

Fluctuations in interest and enrollment in the study of Latin in the United States have led many to believe that the language was in permanent decline. However, in the last decade the public has become more aware of the need for language instruction, and high school Latin enrollments have risen dramatically since 1976. There is a shortage of…

The language teaching profession should avoid discussing reasons to study a foreign language because the tendency is to invent shallow reasons. The deeper reasons for offering a language are derived from a general appreciation of the value of culture and education. Those are the lures that attracted teachers to the profession in the first place.…