Reviews projects undertaken by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages during the past year. These include the production of a set of proficiency guidelines in a generic format as well as in French, German, and Spanish and projects to relate oral proficiency testing to instruction. (SED)

Addresses the issues of whether test scores are affected by the prior availability of the items on a test. Concludes that, while disclosing items significantly affects test scores, the magnitude of the disclosure effect drecreases with an increase in the size of the disclosed pool. (EKN)

Maintains that measuring syntactic error alone is inadequate and that syntactic maturity should also be considered. Discusses ways of measuring syntactic maturity in spoken English of nonnative speakers and examines the relationship of syntactic error to syntactic maturity. (EKN)

This issue of the National Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education (NCLE) newsletter includes an article titled "Assessment and Accountability: What Do We Know and Where Are We Going?" and a profile of Inaam Mansoor, director of the Arlington Education and Employment Program (REEP) in Arlington, Virginia. Also included are resource updates, news…

Summarizes Robert Lado's ideas on language testing and the study of linguistics. (DS)

Compares the audiolingual method and the cognitive-code learning theory in two elementary college French courses. (DS)

Condensed version of a study reported in "Pimsleur Language Test Forum No. 4, available from Test Department, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 757 Third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017. (DS)