An experiment using dictation in foreign and native accents of English suggests that this is a fruitful device for the study of individual and group differences affecting mutual intelligibility. P r i o r listener-experience with the voice of the speaker appears to be a prominent factor in intelligibility, indicating that accommodation to the speaker over time is a crucial variable, and that languaqe teachers are a p t to be the poorest judges of their students' ability to communicate with strangers. A combination of age, education, and ESL teaching experience s e e m s to increase ability to comprehend unfamiliar speakers. Bilingual Spanish-English listeners have a n advantage in decoding Spanish-accented English, while American Indians scored below ESL students in ability to decode a heavy Spanish accent. N e i t h e r clear nor noisecontaminated tapes showed consistent superiority in maximizing discrimination among listener groups.
A simple teacher-scored method can be used to determine the proportion of correct usage in freshman ESL compositions. The method correlated highly with impressionistic rankings of overall writing quality and discriminated among four very narrow-range levels of proficiency: intensive English, minimally accepted freshman ESL, lower-level ESL, and a parallel lowerlevel freshman English class (remedial) for native speakers. Within this narrow range of skills, the scoring method provided reliable discrimination for purposes of class assignment and measurement of in-class progress. Six teachers of varying experience in ESL and freshman composition achieved high correlations both as a group and individually among numerical and impressionistic rankings of 20 selected essays, all on expository themes. All scoring was individually determined without group consultation or group grading practice. The two career freshman composition teachers showed slightly lower correlations among all data than the four career ESL teachers, indicating that discussions of criteria might have improved consistency between these two professional groups. Correctness scores are easy to compute and appear to be psychologically convincing to those teachers who prefer an exact numerical score to impressionistic rating as a measure of 1) the seriousness of a given usage error, 2) progress in usage improvement, and 3) readiness to pass into a higher level class. One year's trial and theoretical implications for composition research are discussed. A Practical ProblemThis study was the result of attempted solutions to problems encountered administering a university program in English as a Second Language. We needed a simple and quantitative measure of achievement level and progress in writing skill: a measure which would allow us to place students in classes along a continuum from Intensive English through two to three subsequent semesters of freshman English classes geared to both foreign and remedial American students. Intensive English is a full-time course of study five hours a day, five days a week, during which students are not permitted to enroll in any other university classes. Upon graduation from Intensive English, students attend a series of freshman composition classes each of which meets for 16 weeks (one semester) five hours a week, which carry university credit, and which permit simultaneous enrollment in other university classes. In general,
An original personality test based on Myers‐Briggs style statements is used to aid in screening and advisement of applicants to a freshman English tutorial program for foreign, minority, and Anglo‐American students. The test gives indications that it is strongly predictive of good and poor language‐study behavior as judged by language teachers.
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