The French oral reading errors of two groups of seventh‐grade English‐speaking students with intermediate and advanced competence in French as a second language were analyzed and compared to the errors of native French‐speaking students. It was found that the intermediate students made a significantly lower proportion of deletion and insertion errors than did the advanced and nativespeaker students and a significantly higher proportion of substitution errors that graphically resembled the text than did the native speakers. Also, the intermediate students made a significantly higher proportion of errors that did not conform to the syntactic, semantic, or discourse constraints of the text than did the advanced and native‐speaker students. It was concluded that both native French‐speaking students and students with advanced competence in French as a second language appeared to use an interactive strategy of drawing on both graphic and contextual information in reading French. In contrast, students with less competence in French did not use contextual information to the same extent and instead employed a more “bottom‐up” strategy of relying primarily on graphic information.
This essay presents arguments for the view that complex human behavior of the type that interests educational researchers is by its nature unpredictable if not indeterminate, a view that raises serious questions about the validity of a quantitative, experimental, positivist approach to educational research. The arguments are based on (a) individual differences, (b) chaos, (c) the evolutionary nature of learning and development, (d) the role of consciousness and free will in human behavior, and (e) the implications of quantum mechanics. Consequently it is argued that educational research that attempts to predict and control educational outcomes cannot be successful and that educational research should focus on providing descriptions and interpretations of educational phenomena to provide findings that can be used to improve our understanding of learning, development, and education and to facilitate their evolution.
The present research was conducted to determine whether modifications of existing integrative testing procedures could be made to improve the psychometric, criterion-referenced, and practical qualities of those tests which involve text presentation and reconstruction. For this purpose, a dictation test constructed of 14 segments varying from 2 to 21 words in length was administered to three groups, one of foreign university students taking ESL courses, another of foreign students succeeding at graduate studies, and a third of native Englishspeaking students. In addition, a "copytest" was created by presenting the same text on a computer-controlled visual display screen in a manner directly analogous to that of the dictation test. The copytest was administered to a smaller group of foreign and native English-speaking university students.Results of the dictation test indicated that scoring the protocols by segment using an exact-spelling criterion provided an integrated measure of language proficiency with improved psychometric, criterionreferenced, and practical qualities. Of particular interest was the finding that the 14 dictation segments scored in this manner formed a Guttman scale of high reproducibility and scalability. The implications of these findings as well as those of the copytest are discussed.
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Tandem language learning occurs when two learners of different native languages work together to help each other learn the other language. First used in faceto-face contexts, Tandem is now increasingly being used by language-learning partners located in different countries who are linked via various forms of electronic communication, a context that has become known as eTandem. In addition to providing a brief account of the history of Tandem and eTandem, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of electronic communication media suitable for eTandem, both asynchronous and synchronous, from the telephone and email to amateur radio and business-quality videoconferencing. Finally, the Electronic Network for Language And Culture Exchange (ENLACE) is introduced, a Webbased medium through which users of Windows, Macintosh, and Unix-based computers can find language learning partners and engage in eTandem language learning using synchronous text chat alone or in combination with video and/or audio conferencing.
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