Following a review of language research and program results during the previous decade, a projection of ultimate and immediate goals in foreign language teaching during 1965-75 is made. The suggestions are incorporated under the headings of the audiolingual approach, programed instruction, linguists' role, mechanical aids, testing, program…

TWENTY HEAD START PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WERE GIVEN THREE LANGUAGE TASKS DESIGNED TO MEASURE THEIR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT--(1) A PRODUCTION TASK REQUIRED THE CHILDREN TO ENGAGE IN FREE SPEECH. THE CHILDREN WERE ASKED TO ANSWER A QUESTION, TO DESCRIBE A SERIES OF PICTURES, AND TO RETELL A STORY. THE FREE SPEECH OF THE CHILDREN IN RESPONSE TO THESE…

A current exploratory research project is directed toward developing means for gathering systematic data on nonverbal representation in young children. Tasks involving nonverbal representational functioning have been developed, evaluated in preliminary work with fifteen 4-year-old subjects, and revised. The revised series of tasks consists of four…

Four articles, written in German, discuss such aspects of the language laboratory as: teaching pronunciation in the laboratory (Heinrich Schrand), the dummy-element in transformational grammar (Helmut Heuer), testing in the language laboratory (Kenneth S. Leigh), and language laboratory work in Finland (Roland Freihoff). Nine book reviews on…

The report describes an analysis of errors yielded by a written test in English given to 424 Swedish 14-year-olds from 24 different classes in the comprehensive school. The analysis discusses the difference in attainment between pupils of high and low proficiency, frequencies and types of errors for regular and irregular verbs, and the occurrence…

There have been several recent works dealing with the Russian "root system." Most of these works operate on the claim that vocabulary-building in advanced Russian classes may be accelerated by a mastery of the systems of derivational morphology. Townsend's "Russian Word Formation," Gribble's "Russian Root List," and…

This paper reports on the results of seven questions asked to secondary level department chairmen regarding the unit tests which accompany textbook materials. Nearly 1,500 responses were received from teachers of French, German, and Spanish. The results indicate that most teachers do not use publishers tests when they are available. The…

A description is given of experiments involving the standardization of aspects of oral fluency testing. Oral fluency is understood to imply a "communicative competence" requiring an ability to formulate accurate and appropriate utterances of more than one sentence in length. Throughout the test emphasis is laid on ease of application and…

This pamphlet reports on an investigation into the problem of standardizing the marking of oral examinations at the Ordinary Level of the General Certificate of Education. Investigations were made into two languages - German and Welsh. Language teachers received a list of 63 questions, of which 20 were to be presented to the examination candidate,…

It is theorized that in English, phonology and semantics are involved in speech production, but the two are linked through syntax. This pilot study compared through error analysis the imitation of English sentences as produced by a Spanish-English speaking mother and her two bilingual daughters, ages six and seven, to determine the syntactic…

While most foreign language programs list communicative language use as a primary goal, classroom tests seldom reflect this objective but rather focus on discrete-point linguistic competence. The authors present a model of the communication process and point to the main task in constructing tests of communicative competence: devising simulated…

Earlier reports from the GUME project (Goteborg, UndervisningsMetod i Engelska-Gothenburg/ Teaching/Methods/English) have shown that different methods of teaching English produce no significant differences in learning effects. In the present study, a direct continuation of earlier ones, modifications in design, teaching strategies, etc., were made…

The problem of determining relative weights for quantity and quality in scoring foreign language speaking and writing fluency tests is studied. French speaking and writing fluency tests were administered to students of French in several schools in England. Data from these tests was analyzed to support the suggestion that scoring formulas should…

This article, a reply to William Gage's "Uncommonly Taught Languages" (ED 042 163), takes issue with Gage's assertion that "there is no generally recognized source of guidance for determining needs and priorities for the allocation of the scarce resources in the uncommonly taught languages, but...that a number of useful tools of…

The relevance of a specific linguistic concept--deep structure--to reading comprehension was investigated. The sample consisted of 87 fifth-grade students who were of above-average intelligence. To study the relationship of children's skill at recovering the deep structure of sentences to reading comprehension, the Deep Structure Recovery Test…