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This study examined teacher and peer assessment of English language oral presentation skills in Japanese classrooms. Twelve graduate university students' oral class presentations were assessed by a teacher and four peers. After presentations were rated, teachers calculated the evaluations, and classmates shared their opinions on the top three presenters. The teacher gave summary comments on all presenters. The Many-Facet Rasch Measurement Model was used to investigate three areas (student ability, item difficulty, and rater severity). This analysis provided information on the relationship between the three facets (raters, students, and items); rater severity and fit statistic; student ability and fit statistic; item difficulty and fit statistic; and functioning of rating categories. Results suggest that the test can be improved by examining the fit statistics (misfit items) statistically and by having discussions with raters or students when they are misfitting. The study indicates that peer assessment can successfully motivate students to improve their presentations, students can be reliable peer raters, and the Rasch model can yield considerable significant data on several factors involved in presentation assessment (student academic adequacy, item difficulty, rater severity, and ability of students to adjust socially). (Contains 11 tables.) (SM)

By age two, a child begins to form complex sentences by joining two or more sentences or by embedding one sentence into another. Formation of conjoined structures is a simpler process and emerges earlier than that of embedding structures. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Do children produce or understand embedding sentences correctly from the beginning of their acquisition or do they make mistakes? (2) Are there discrepancies between syntactic perception of embedding sentences and comprehension of the meaning? A longitudinal study of syntax development and acquisition of relative clause construction in one Japanese child forms the basis of the theory. Data consist of 120 elicited imitations of Japanese relative clause sentences, collected at ages 2:8, 2:9 and 2:10. Past studies on acquisition of relative clause construction deal with difficulty of acquisition of relative types. In the present study, four types of Japanese relative clause sentences were used for a total of 40 test sentences. Results indicate the subject-subject type was both imitated and comprehended best, and the comprehension score exceeds that of imitation for each type. Various theories accounting for differences in ease of acquisition are discussed. (CHK)

An analysis of Kanji errors made by students of Japanese at International Christian University over a period of a year, as well as answers to a questionnaire on Kanji study, indicate that the learning of Kanji relies greatly on individual work outside of class. A method is presented which uses slides to enable students to study Kanji on their own. On the average, there are six or seven slides to a Kanji, and these are presented in the following sequence: (1) presentation; (2) comparison with similar Kanji; (3) breakdown into components; (4) demonstration of stroke order; (5) use of the Kanji in context; (6) origin of the Kanji; and (7) miscellaneous information. This method is flexible, as it can be used with any text and on any level. Student reaction was favorable to using the slides both for groups and for individual study. (AM)

The proposed educational policy and program of the United Nations University are described. The university's purpose is to provide innovative educational activities appropriate to "pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare," in accordance with the university charter. Education and research are undertaken together in an effort to integrate findings in the curriculum. The three research programs are in world hunger, human and social development, and the use and management of natural resources. The intended audience for the university is broad: regional and local officials, public and private agency employees, wage-earners, self-employed professionals, peasants, students, housewives, international officials, and university professors in both developed and developing countries. Programs take the forms of seminars, workshops, courses, and fellowships. Instructional materials must come from a variety of sources, now under investigation. Existing institutions in the countries served are to be used as bases for educational and research programs. A program advisory committee is proposed to provide unified programs for each of the three priority areas and to consider appropriate methods of teaching, the potential of new teaching aids, and the need for higher-level teaching skills. It is proposed that in 1978 two areas be emphasized: elimination of hunger and creation of appropriate technology for rural development. (MSE)

To express that a degree of one event is conditioned by (or paralleled by) a degree of another, the "the...the..." construction with a comparative after each "the" is used. Examples include sentences such as: (1) the more dangerous mountains are to climb, the more challenging they are; (2) the more often a man has been in prison, the more likely he is to return there; (3) the harder plastic models are to build, the more challenging they are. The comparative clause construction in English is notorious for its syntactic complexity. What is called in this paper "the shorter, the better" construction exhibits ambiguities and puzzles of great interest to the theory of grammar in general and comparative constructions in particular. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the syntactic structure of comparatives of proportion within the framework of transformational grammar. (Author/CLK)