The concept of comprehensible input in second language learning is applied to the teaching of English as a Second Language. Techniques for teacher adaptation of materials and classroom presentation are outlined. The first step is assembly of topic-appropriate pictures and the production of simple third-person statements to accompany them. Leisure…

In an effort to improve the ways in which words are learned, the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (JOCRF) is attempting to determine the difficulty level of all non-technical words in the English language. This item banking project entails: (1) identifying words that should be calibrated; (2) writing a test item for each word; (3) testing the…

A study was conducted to determine whether there was any match between student perception of reading ease and the readability of three main line, first-year college composition texts (Daugherty; Kinneavy, McCleary, and Nakadate; Lauer, Montague, Lunsford, and Emig) as determined by five commonly used readability formulas. Two chapters (on…

Factors affecting a lower-bound estimate of internal consistency reliability, Cronbach's coefficient alpha, are explored. Theoretically, coefficient alpha is an estimate of the correlation between two tests drawn at random from a pool of items like the items in the test under consideration. As a practical matter, coefficient alpha can be an index…

It is important to introduce and facilitate oral activities in the second language classroom with enthusiasm in a climate of mutual support and cooperation. Students should understand that mistakes are inevitable but not fatal, and that each attempt will build greater ease and confidence in using the language for communication. Oral proficiency…

The purposes of this study were threefold: (1) to identify school principals' perceptions of their occupational responsibilities and the academic preparation needed for those responsibilities; (2) to determine significant relationships between perceptions of preparation and perceptions of difficulty; and (3) to identify significant differences…

The determination of appropriate cut scores is a critical step in the development of licensing and certification examinations. Passing point methodologies based on the estimation of item difficulties are underlain by the estimation of the probability of a correct response to items by a hypothetically minimally competent candidate. The Angoff…

This study was designed to investigate the empirical consequences of building tests for which the size of the difference in average scores between Black and White examinees is made to be as large and as small as possible within certain constraints. Test forms for two item types were developed that maximized or minimized the differences in average…

The scope and sequence format for foreign language instruction in Waukesha, Wisconsin's public schools is presented. It charts the specific concepts, skills, and objectives to be included in foreign language exploration (FLEX) courses and courses in French, German, Latin, and Spanish at each of five levels. Each concept, skill, and objective is…

In this study 6,942 items from two standardized achievement test batteries--the Stanford (Early School Achievement Battery, Achievement Battery, and Test of Academic Skills) and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills--were analyzed. Focus was on determining: (1) the extent to which these test batteries included general cognitive operations (GCOs)…

Two experiments investigated children's strategies for solving geometric matrices that were correctly or incorrectly completed and that varied in number of elements and number of transformations. Examining the relationship between working memory and item complexity, the first experiment tested 90 boys and girls of 7, 10, and 13 years of age for…

The poorer performance of older people in laboratory tests of episodic memory may result from failures or deficiencies in metamemory processes, e.g., failure to monitor task or individual item difficulty. To study age differences in prediction of memory performance, an associative matching task was used to compare young (N=20) and older (N=20)…

This report studies the learning and use of computer applications programs--i.e., word processing programs, database management programs, and spreadsheets--in elementary and secondary school computer literacy courses. This study was designed to identify teachers' pedagogical assumptions and expectations underlying the use of applications software…

In this paper, the detection of response patterns aberrant from the Rasch model is considered. For this purpose, a new person fit index, recently developed by I. W. Molenaar (1987) and an iterative estimation procedure are used in a simulation study of Rasch model data mixed with aberrant data. Three kinds of aberrant response behavior are…

The effects of the randomization of information in clinical cases on the comprehension of 16 physicians and 16 medical students were studied, using structured and unstructured forms of two clinical cases. Attention was directed to the effects of case difficulty and text structure on representations of cases in written protocols, ability to access…