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Writing samples representing argumentation, exposition, narration, and description were gathered from 51 fifth-grade pupils. Significant differences were found among the four modes of writing and among high-, medium-, and low-ability groups for T-unit length, clauses per T-unit, and clause length. Argumentation produced the most complex writing, and description produced the least complex, with exposition and narration sharing an intermediary position which varied according to the measure chosen. Reading comprehension correlated positively with T-unit length and clause length. Implications are discussed in terms of writing instruction, writing research, and education in general. (AA)

This study was performed on a sample of 1,276 part-time (PT) and full-time (FT) Language Learning Center (LLC) students enrolled in French, Spanish, German and Russian during FY67-74. The study sought to: (1) develop a statistical data base for use in future curriculum and testing studies; (2) examine factors affecting language learning success; and (3) to compare French, Spanish, German, and Russian training in terms of student body and instructional effectiveness. Findings include: (1) FT and PT students within each of the four languages have significantly differing psychological and linguistic profiles; (2) PT training is more effective than FT training for exit proficiency goals of S-1 and S-2; (3) the number of hours needed to attain S-1 and S-2 is significantly influenced by measured language aptitude; (4) the number of hours needed to attain S-2 is significantly influenced by prior language training; and (5) each of the four languages requires a different combination of factors to optimize the prediction of exit proficiency and improvement. Appendices contain: psychological measures; sample Modern Language Aptitude Test; language proficiency rating criteria; and tables and figures. (Authors/AM)

The ideal of general education in American universities has always been elusive. At the moment, a combination of forces would seem to be pushing both students and universities toward a still more narrowly conceived and utilitarian curriculum. This situation may be temporary, and concern about its effects on higher education is no doubt exaggerated in the press and then echoed in conversations on campus; but the sense of constraint felt by students is nonetheless real. The university assumes that college is a place where students discover what they can do well, and where they are encouraged to define their talents and to develop them in a concentrated way; it also assumes that college is where students are led to a certain self-consciousness about that discovery, and come to raise questions about the relation their particular talents bear to other forms of knowledge and action. Finally, the university would like to see more courses that address themselves, both practically and reflectively, to student fluency and writing. The committee's recommendations for general education in the university are summarized and argued for at length in this report. (Author/MSE)

A group of 18 children from 5 to 12 years old in a FLES course in Mandarin Chinese were graded by three native speakers on their ability to repeat Mandarin Chinese sentences with which they were already familiar and on their ability to produce appropriate sentences to describe posters used in the Chinese class. These grades in Chinese were correlated with the children's age in months and with their scores on two subtests of the Wing Standardised Test of Musical Intelligence and five subtests of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. All correlations between age, musical talent and psycholinguistic abilities on the one hand and achievement in Chinese on the other were positive, but only correlations with certain of the subscales of the ITPA were statistically significant. The results suggest a positive relationship between psycholinguistic maturity and potential success in foreign language learning. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of cross-age teaching experiences on the language achievement, self-concept, and school sentiment of eleventh graders who were identified as low achievers in language. Sixty eleventh-grade students were selected on the basis of language scores on the California Achievement Test and randomly assigned to one experimental and two control groups (Control I and Control II). Experimental and Control I students received three week's training in language arts and teaching techniques. Experimental subjects tutored fourth-grade students in language arts for nine weeks, and Control I returned to their regular classes. Control II students did not receive training nor did they tutor. The three groups were pre- and post-tested on the language section of the California Achievement Test, Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale, and the School Interest Inventory. Results of an analysis of covariance, using pretest scores as covariate, while not significant, showed interesting trends in the areas of self-concept and school sentiment. Tutors were found to be valuable assets in the classroom and represented a viable addition to the existing curriculum. (Author)

A reading problem does exist within the schools; moreover, reading retardation is of epidemic proportions in the inner-city schools. Educators continue to seek new materials and different approaches to reading instruction for students who read below their grade and expectancy levels and who need a remedial program. Reading, like speaking and listening, must be considered a language process. The reader must operate in response to real, meaningful, grammatical language if he is to have all the information available to him in proper interrelationship, and he must be able eventually to reconstruct and comprehend a passage. Those instructional materials and strategies in which learning is viewed as an accumulation of bits and pieces are unjustified and ineffective. For materials to be effective they have to be based on a thorough knowledge of reading as a language process. Remedial reading materials should, then, incorporate aspects of the native language developed naturally in a reading program. (HMD)

The grades which foreign students receive are not always based on the same criteria as the grades assigned to native American students. The use of standardized test scores provides a common data base from which to evaluate the relative proficiency level of foreign students. This study examines the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the English Placement Examination (EPE), the two tests most frequently used to place foreign students. The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) to determine the predictive ability of the TOEFL and the EPE using first and second semester graduate grade point average and also using a grade in a remedial English course as the criterion, (2) to assess the concurrent validity of the TOEFL and the EPE, and (3) to estimate the magnitude of the change in the TOEFL scores after the subjects have lived in an English speaking country and taken a remedial English course for one semester. (BB)

This study represents several years' work on devising tests to measure children's relative proficiency in two languages or speech varieties. A preliminary oral proficiency test in English and Spanish was administered to 45 bilingual students, of whom 41 took both versions. On the basis of difficulty and significant tendencies, 32 items were selected as the revised version of the vocabulary test and 16 items as the revised version of the grammar test. Five independent variables (grade, sex, years of schooling in the United States, place of birth, and reported language use with family) were used in a univariate analysis of test scores in order to determine whether they contributed significantly to the variance in those scores. In most cases the significant contribution of the independent variables were in the expected direction (e.g., performance in English increased with grade). Modification of the grammar test is required in order to focus students' responses on the intended grammatical structures. Administration of both parts of the proficiency test on grammar to larger and different samples of pupils, and the correlation of test results with other independent variables, are needed to establish the validity of the test. (Author/AM)

Three groups of subjects were tested in an elicited imitation study. These were 8-year-old, 11-year-old and adult native speakers of Arabic who were learning English as a second language. The subjects were asked to repeat sentences of seven different grammatical structure types. Previous research with 4-year-old native speakers of English (Smith, 1973) has found that three of the structures were easy to repeat (Type A structures) while four were difficult to repeat (Type B structures). In the present study, a similar difference in the repeatability of A and B structures was found for the youngest subjects, but there was no such difference for the adults and only a moderate difference for the intermediate group. The pattern of results suggested that this was not a function of differences in the subjects' English-language backgrounds, but represents a developmental difference in the ability of second-language learners to repeat certain grammatical structures. The theoretical reasons for the variability in repetition difficulty for the different structure types were considered. (Author)

This paper reports on the Redwood City study of bilingual schooling for Mexican American bilingual children (grades 3-5), a sequel to Cohen's original study (Cohen, 1975). At the end of six years of bilingual schooling, the comparison group was surpassing the bilingually-schooled children in English reading, while the Bilingual group was generally stronger in Spanish reading. In Spanish vocabulary and storytelling, the Bilingual group was stronger. In English vocabulary the results were mixed and in storytelling the Comparison group appeared to have an edge. In math, the results were mixed. Finally, the Bilingual group reported using more Spanish than the Comparison group, and more Spanish than English. The Bilingual program appeared to contribute to the maintenance of the Spanish language by encouraging the use of Spanish among the students involved. (Author)

Three methods for second language data collection are compared: free composition, picture description and translation. The comparison is based on percentage of errors in a grammatical category and in a source category. Most results obtained from the free compositions and picture descriptions tended to be similar. Greater variation was found for some error categories between these two tasks and the translation task. Analysis of the errors suggests that differences in results could be reduced through slight adjustments in the method of data analysis, and a variation of the translation task. Results obtained from the three methods should then be very similar. (Author)

The communicative behavior of nine severely and multiply handicapped children (5-9 years old) was analyzed over a 6-month period. Videotapes and photographs of Ss' behavior in differing situations indicated that they could communicate some of their wants and needs. When introduced to large photographs of the items which had prompted responses, many Ss were able to respond, and in some cases, call for pictures of their mother and father. (CL)

Five orders of approximation to normal English prose were constructed; 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, and 100th plus. Five cloze tests were then constructed by inserting blanks for deleted words in 5 word segments (5th order), 10 word segments (10th), 25 word segments (25th), 50 word segments (50th), and 100 word segments of five different passages of prose (100th plus). By a counterbalanced design to neutralize differences between groups and passages, it was demonstrated that the longer the surrounding context, the easier the cloze items; the beneficial effect of increasing amount of context extends beyond the 50 word mark. This suggests that the cloze procedure is a viable device for measuring effects (or knowledge) of discourse constraints extending well beyond the limits of 5-10 words of surrounding context. (Author)

Seventy-two deaf Ss (10- to 19-years-old) were tested, employing the Test of Syntactic Ability (TSA), the language sub-tests of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT), and analyses of written language samples, in a study of the influence of early language and communication environment on their later syntactic language ability. Ss were divided into four groups: the Manual English (ME) Group whose parents were deaf, had a good command of English, and used manual communication in the form of Manual English; the Average Manual (AM) Group whose parents were deaf, had language showing gross deviations from Standard English, and used manual communication with the Ss from infancy; the Intensive Oral (IO) Group who had been enrolled in a formal Oral educational program and whose parents had received formal training in using oral methods exclusively and intensively with their children; and the Average Oral (AO) Group who had been enrolled in a formal Oral educational program and whose parents had received no formal training in oral methodology. Results showed significant superiority of the ME group over the two Oral groups on five of the six test structures of the TSA; and significant superiority of the ME group over the other three groups on all four sub-tests of the SAT. (Author/LS)

Smith (1973), Stampe (1972), and Braine (1973) believe that by the time the child speaks his perception is well-developed, and that any discrepancy between child forms and adult forms are due to organizational and production difficulties. Other linguists believe immature perception determines the form of child speech. This paper suggests that children with articulation and/or reading and spelling dfficulties have failed to learn the phonological system of English and that in many cases the deviant phonological system reflects delayed or disordered perceptual abilities. Two kinds of tests, the oral verbal intelligence tests and the "phonic" spelling tests, are suggested as ways of gaining insight into the nature of possible misperceptions. It is further suggested that a child's success in verbal development depends on his ability to perceive the discrepancy between his forms and adult forms, and that the role of perceptual constraints should be considered in the investigation of deviant phonological systems. Studies of children with delayed language skills enable linguists to study phenomena that pass by too rapidly to be studied in most children. (Author/AM)

The purpose of the American Samoa program, Upgrading Language Abilities (ULA) funded under Title I Elementary Secondary Education Act, is to raise the English language proficiency of educationally deprived high school students to the point where they can successfully compete with native speakers in an English medium educational system unhindered by inadequate abilities in English. This report covers 1973-74 operations. All four high schools in American Samoa are involved in ULA. The program is administered by the Title I staff through the Secondary Division and the Division of Instruction. There are about 1700 students in the program, 36 teachers and 34 classrooms. Each high school has a teacher resource center for the ULA program. ULA students receive 90 minutes of instruction daily in addition to their other classes. The scope of ULA encompasses several broad areas: classroom instruction for second language speakers, curriculum development peculiar to Samoan students, special instructional materials for Samoa, and teacher training. Teachers are involved in continuous inservice training to increase their competencies to teach students who speaks English as a second language. Considerable progress was made during fiscal years 1973 and 1974 in designing a system for continuously assessing characteristics of the ULA program. (Author/JM)

This document, the first volume of the Congress of Italian-American Organizations Handbook, includes in addition to the normal perspective a handbook takes of the organization that it portrays, summaries of many of the statistics that have made CIAO's convictions possible and strong during the 1974 fiscal year. It begins with a review of previously established information about the Italian-Americans in New York. This information is derived primarily from census data on tract locations which contained at least 50 percent or more first and second generation Italian population. Other sources of information drawn on in the study were: (1) census figures (1970) on percentages of first and second generation Italian population in each tract; (2) the boundary lines of New York City's 26 poverty areas and "pockets of poverty;" these poverty areas are federally recognized and funded for a variety of programs; (3) Italian foreign stock population percentages in each health area of the city; (4) New York City health areas designated to be in the greatest need of poverty programs; (5) number of Italian-speaking children in New York City's public schools during the 1973-74 school year; (6) number of Italian bilingual programs operating in New York City public schools during the school year 1973-74, locations of these programs, and number of children said to be involved. (Author/JM)

"Linguistic ability" is a widely misused term in foreign language literature. This confusion prompted an investigation into language aptitude testing, the specific goals of which included determining: the distribution of language aptitude across ability range; the validity of Pimsleur's suggestions of combined verbal and auditory scores; and whether students are generally consistent in their pattern of scoring. On the first day of the investigation, 160 students at a high school in the Sydney suburbs completed a questionnaire requesting information about language background and interests. On the second day 151 of the students (9 were absent) took the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery. The data yielded the following findings, among others: (1) interest is more important than I.Q. or any other component of language aptitude in FL election and perceived difficulty; (2) evidence does not support use of a combined "verbal" and "auditory" score; and (3) students are not consistently "above average,""average," or "below average" in language potential. These and other findings reveal the importance of individualized instruction and the dangers of overgeneralization in FL instruction. This in turn assumes a commitment to the principle of equal opportunity for students in New South Wales. (Author/AM)

This paper summarizes the findings of an exploratory study concerned with certain temporal and qualitative aspects of simultaneous interpretation. Six French-English interpreters (2 professionals, 2 students and 2 amateurs) translated tape-recorded passages representing different types of materials from their weaker into their dominant language or vice-versa. As analyzed by computer, the translator's (T's) utterance generally shows the same pattern of temporal relationships as natural speech (by speaker S) but is less rhythmical. T speaks for a greater proportion of time than S and his speech rate vis-a-vis S's is greater in relation to prepared than to spontaneous texts. The synchronization of the 2 speech patterns suggests that T makes good use of S's pauses to deliver his version. Characteristically, T lags behind S by 2 to 3 seconds. Various types of translation departures occur (examples are given), and extent of omission is related to input factors such as S speech rate. A number of other observations are noted. (Author)

This study tested the effectiveness of Teams-Games-Tournament (TGT) for teaching basic reading skills. TGT is a classroom management technique which uses cooperative student teams, instructional games, and interteam tournaments in a particular combination. Fifty-three third-grade students were randomly assigned to either a TGT or a control condition. Both treatment groups were exposed to a five-week, sight-reading curriculum unit which focused on two objectives: development of vocabulary and verbal analogy skills. The results indicated a positive TGT effect on growth for vocabulary and verbal analogy skills. (Author)

Research has indicated that teacher age, education, previous training and experience, morale, teaching style and attitudes are related to student achievement. Therefore, this study developed and used an extensive (147-item) questionnaire to collect data on those Head Start and other preschool teachers who were teaching Longitudinal Study target children. Areas of requested information included: demographic characteristics, education and experience, attitudes toward minority-groups and economically disadvantaged children's motivation and learning abilities, and general attitudes about work and supervisors, breadth of interests, and professional orientation. A set of thirty language comprehension items was also included in the questionnaire as an index of teachers' language ability. Teachers' responses to these items are described, and the results of a scale analysis of a set of a priori scales delineated in an attempt to obtain reduced scores for future analysis are presented. Future reports will attempt to relate these teacher variables to observed teaching style and classroom behaviors and to child cognitive, affective, and social measures. (Author/RC)

A study was undertaken to determine whether children in early periods of language development use stress with any regular patterns, and if so, on what the patterns are based. The subjects were five children aged 21-29 months, MLU between 1.3 and 2.4. Tape recordings were made during play sessions with each child. Two-word utterances that could be clearly interpreted were extracted and grouped and their stress was determined. Analysis indicates that children have strong stress patterns and that semantic relations are more important to the child's stress than syntax. In use of locative phrases with verb-locative, the locative was stressed in every case. In modifier-noun use, the modifier was almost always stressed, in contrast to transformation generative theory. Other stress priorities are noted and arranged in a scale. It is proposed that children distinguish whether information in utterances is new or contrastive and apply stress accordingly, following a semantic hierarchy. The evidence showing that children early produce regular and significant patterns of stress is important for the syntax vs. semantics controversy in adult stress assignment. (CHK)

Marcy Open School has developed an educational reality where students are given freedom to be creative within a structured curriculum. Reflective of this philosophy are the three priority goals developed by Marcy staff and parents which are: (1) We want girls and boys to speak, listen, write, read, and deal with mathematical concepts effectively and confidently and in order for them to gain proficiency and enjoyment, these skills should be practiced widely as the child pursues his interests and seeks answers to his problems in school and out; (2) We expect that children will take more responsibility for their own learning in all areas--social, academic, and physical; and (3) We hope that children will increase their understanding of their individual rights and the rights of others. In order to accomplish these objectives, effort has been made to create a facilitative learning environment, which includes specially designed spaces with a variety of materials and activities and exploration of community resources. Adult-child interactions are stressed. Quantitative information on student academic achievement is based on standardized tests and qualitative information on participant evaluation. Although Marcy has succeeded in a fully integrated curriculum, questions have been raised on whether such integration is always desirable. (BJG)

Elizabeth City State University has established a program concentrating in speech pathology and audiology which is nontraditional in approach. It serves as a support in giving valuable substance and current expertise to those programs already offered in the area of language proficiency. Growing out of the established educational concept that skills can best be taught by those teachers with the specific, detailed knowledge from the discipline that have proven effective in developing expertise in particular areas, the program in speech pathology and audiology was instituted to give teachers the expertise in developing language proficiency. The courses in Phonetics, Introduction to Speech Pathology, Anatomy and the Vocal Mechanism, Pathology II, and Clinical Procedure and Practice, are especially useful in teaching reading skills, designing objectives for remediating basic speech and language problems, and establishing behavioral objectives for language arts. The program is especially useful in designing objectives, procedures and materials to serve the exceptional child, both retarded and gifted, in language growth. All courses are structured to provide expertise in servicing the exceptional child. Opportunities are available for interdepartmental use of materials, equipment, and student-faculty exchange of services. (Author/JMF)

This evaluation report is a description of an English as a Second Language (ESL) program for non English speaking disadvantaged students whose ability to read and write in their native tongue or English was not adequate to permit school success. The program was funded under the Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I. The purpose of the program was to improve reading grades, reading comprehension, and auditory discrimination. Slightly less than 400 tenth through twelfth grade students from five high schools participated in the program. Students were referred to the program by teachers, guidance counselors, agencies, and family friends. Students attended double periods of ESL classes. Pre and post standardized tests assessed reading improvement and auditory discrimination of the students. The report concluded that all students improved their reading grades at least one grade level. In addition, 74 percent of the students achieved some improvement in English comprehension. (JP)

The cloze test requires a student to fill gaps in a text with appropriate words where every nth word is deleted. The cloze procedure forms a test of a reader's ability to predict, on the basis of context, what word will occur. Test marking may be narrow, in which only the exact word omitted is counted as correct, or broad, where any acceptable word is correct. In addition to general reading and language skills, the cloze test requires the following abilities: (1) knowledge of vocabulary; (2) knowledge of collocation and colligation; (3) attention to nearer and farther context; and (4) flexibility as to word and context interchangeability. Two cloze test fragments illustrate how these abilities are called into play. (CHK)