This study of 20 stuttering and 20 nonstuttering preschool children found that stuttering children scored lower on 7 out of 8 language measures, with no significant intergroup differences on articulation proficiency or fluency. There were few significant correlations between measures of stuttering rate, speaking rate, and language performance…

Conversational language samples were elicited from 24 children (ages 2-7), half with specific language impairment (SLI), half with normally developing language (LN), matched for language level. For the SLI children, but not the LN children, increased proportions of questions were correlated to increased proportions of ellipsis. (Author/JDD)

Thirty-one children (aged 6-10) with auditory processing problems completed the Staggered Spondaic Words (SSW) Test and a battery of auditory-language tests. No significant correlations were found between the SSW right competing and left competing conditions and the auditory-language tests, suggesting that these two approaches measure different…

Administered tests of cognition, language, and metaphor interpretation to 3 groups of 15 students: native English speakers (NESs) and 2 groups of students in an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) course. ESL students performed less well than NESs on decontextualized measures of vocabulary and verbal analogies but equally well on measures derived…

Discusses the use of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Oral Proficiency Interview for assessing the effect of study abroad on foreign language learning, and provides a detailed account of the use of the Portuguese Speaking Test as a means of assessing participants of a summer program in Brazil. (15 references) (JL)

This study shows that a placement test cannot only be examined for items that display differential item functioning (DIF) by using an item response theory, but also that the identification of potential sources for these DIF items can be attempted and short- and long-term measures to reduce DIF can then be proposed. (JL)

Proposes a set of priorities for using language testing as an instrumental factor in upgrading second-language learning. These priorities are proposed as an outgrowth of the conviction that language tests can and should play an important role in the improvement of foreign-language teaching and learning. (JL)

Discusses the need for language-specific versions of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines, including speaking tests based on the simulated oral proficiency interview; listening/reading comprehension tests with items linked to the ACTFL guidelines and Interagency Language Roundtable skill level descriptions;…

Investigation of the use of a multiple-trait scoring procedure to obtain communicative writing profiles of adult nonnative English speakers found that the scoring method was highly reliable in composite assessment, but provided little psychometric support for assessing certain individual writing components. (28 references) (Author/CB)

Reports on an experiment investigating adult second language (L2) acquisition of Spanish object clitic placement by native speakers of English and French. Two experimental methodologies are compared: an on-line sentence matching task and an off-line grammaticality judgment task. (Author/VWL)

Examines what opportunities test takers have to display their knowledge of managing conversations in the second language in two types of tasks: nonscripted interviews and guided role-play activities. Data consists of 30 interviews and 30 role-play activities between near-native examiners and intermediate learners used in language exams in Hungary.…

Considers the ecological validity of tests in predicting the effects of speech and language impairment on communicative performance in real-world settings and the need for systematic observation of communicative behaviors, particularly of individuals from other cultures. Discusses whether standardized testing and systematic observation are…

Discusses a course and accompanying test for teaching spoken English in India. (Author/VWL)

Discusses a new test of English language proficiency for international medical graduates. The test, the Clinical Skills Assessment, consists of a series of encounters with "standardized patients" who have been trained to portray various medical conditions. (Author/VWL)

A communicative-competence orientation was undertaken to study the validity of test-score inferences derived from the revised Test of Spoken English (TSE). To implement the approach, a sample of undergraduate students, primarily native-English speakers, provided reactions to the test responses of a sample of TSE examinees. (Author/VWL)