A conference workshop for foreign language teachers on improving articulation between high schools and colleges, and the efforts resulting from the articulation in one district, are described by a participant from a community college. The session brought together 30 teachers committed to taking responsibility for colleague cooperation in their…

A comparison is presented of alternate-choice and true-false item forms used in an undergraduate natural science course. The alternate-choice item is a modified two-choice multiple-choice item in which the two responses are included within the question stem. This study (1) compared the difficulty level, discrimination level, reliability, and…

A study investigated the appropriate use of item types for testing reading at various levels of proficiency. It was specifically concerned with item types found in the standardized group-administered Defense Language Proficiency Tests. The item formats investigated were signs in the target language, identification of underlined information,…

In one high school French department, videotaping began to be used as part of a final examination. It was found that the students wanted to see their tapes and began to critique their own and others' performances. The next year, taping was done earlier in the school year so that the tapes could be used as performance models. Students were more at…

Test scores were compared for two types of objective achievement tests--multiple choice tests and the recently developed Multi-Digit Test (MDT) procedure. MDT is an approximation of the fill-in-the-blank technique. Students select their answers from long lists of alphabetized terms, with each answer corresponding to a number from 001 to 999. The…

The materials status report for Uigur, a Turkic language spoken in the Sinkiang-Uigur Autonomous Region in northwest China and in the Soviet Socialist Republics of Kazakh and Uzbek, is one of a series intended to provide the nonspecialist with a picture of the availability and quality of texts for teaching various languages to English speakers.…

An experiment was performed with computer-generated data to investigate some of the operational characteristics of tailored testing as they are related to various provisions of the computer program and item pool. With respect to the computer program, two characteristics were varied: the size of the step of increase or decrease in item difficulty…

A pilot study on the development and administration of a test using a spatial reasoning problem, the 15-puzzle, is described. The test utilizes on-line capabilities of a real-time computer to record an examinee's progress on each problem through a sequence of problem-solving "moves", and to collect additional on-line data that might be…

This study involved the manipulation of question-asking in a learning task. The hypothesis that learners should ask the most questions when their knowledge was well-matched to the level of presentation was tested, using two levels of background knowledge and two levels of difficulty of material to be learned. The more simple instructional…

Four new versions of an acoustic structuring test were developed, administered, and analyzed in order to produce better tests and to contribute to better understanding of the abilities measured by these tests. The tests consist of tape recordings of patterns of musical notes played on an electric organ or an acoustic guitar. Item analyses and…

A collection of 33 reading items are presented for state and local education agencies to draw upon in designing their own minimal competency tests. These items, developed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, have been reviewed in terms of their appropriateness for testing competencies required for high school graduation. The items…

Reports on a study designed to assess the kinds of learning opportunities students had as they dealt with science content and the problems teachers faced in managing different kinds of assignments. Management strategies associated with these assignments are described and the effects of these strategies are considered. (Author/TW)

Results of the first year of the ongoing Confidential, Measurement-Based, Self-Evaluation Project that examines variables related to A-level English and Mathematics achievement in 10 comprehensive schools in the United Kingdom are presented. A-level results were found to be strongly predicted by teacher assessments and by prior O-level achievement…

A discussion of the role of the Japanese language in the English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom in Japan presents several arguments in favor of using Japanese, followed by some notes of caution and a call to teachers to reflect on their classroom language use. Arguments for using students' native language (L1) include these: in mixed level…

A series of both daily classroom activities and a long-term assignment in which secondary school language students actively use the Internet and the World Wide Web are described. Class activities target each of three proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced). They include having students check the weather, check out major…