Reviews some trends in the measurement of oral fluency in a foreign language and offers an alternative to integrative and discrete point testing and to the oral interview. This alternative looks at two components of fluent speech--speech rate and consonant attraction--as they fit into the parameters of fluency. (SED)

Discusses the concept of reliability in language testing and considers several simple ANOVA (analysis of variance) models which can be used to define and estimate reliability coefficients. Summarizes the main statistical results associated with the commonly used measurements of reliability. Presents results likely to be of use to language testers.…

Describes the Sign Communication Proficiency Interview (SCPI) and discusses the SCPI rating scale, linguistic and cultural factors important for sign communicative competence, and skills in communicating simultaneously in signing and speaking. (EKN)

Discusses several tests designed to determine speaking ability which preceded the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Educational Testing Service test and describes the benefits of the American Institute of Musical Studies oral proficiency testing program. (SED)

Presents results from a case study of a bilingual reader who read both easy and hard texts in her first and second language. Rational cloze and introspection tasks were used to examine quantitative and qualitative differences in comprehension in the two languages. Discusses implications of the test for diagnostic testing. (SED)

Discusses the difficulties of testing listening comprehension in a second language and describes test procedures which try to overcome these difficulties used in a French course taught at the University College in Cardiff. The specific tests are note taking and summary writing, oral translation, and transcription. (SED)

Soldiers in each of the 3 countries answered questions relating to content and vocabulary of material in languages of the other 2 countries. Nonlinguistic factors (education, travel, etc.) were taken into account. Investigation indicated that the languages are so similar that comprehension could be improved with little difficulty. (RW)

This article is mainly concerned with a study of the relation between the content of a multiple choice test and its composition, from the point of view of those features in tests which enable the testee to derive the correct answer by studying the composition of the test itself. (Author/POP)

Task-based language assessment (TBLA) grows from the observation that mastering the grammar and lexicon of a language is not sufficient for using a language to achieve ends in social situations. In TBLA, language use is observed in settings that are more realistic and complex than in discrete skills assessment and that typically require the…

The paper discusses the key criteria of good language tests: practicality, validity, and reliability.

This paper presents an application of the bookmark procedure to a test comprised of increasing text difficulty levels. The Test of English Proficiency for Adults (TEPA) was used for this study. Three forms of the TEPA were field tested in 1999 with approximately 1,000 non-native English speaking students enrolled in English-as-a-Second-Language…