Are We Really Measuring Proficiency with Our Foreign Language Tests?*

Brière, Eugène J.

doi:10.1111/j.1944-9720.1971.tb02055.x

Cited by 14 publications

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“…Mackey (1967), in support of Lado, asserts that a student may avoid sentence structure and vocabulary of which he is unsure when given a spontaneous language test. On the other hand, Spolsky (1969), Upshur (1969), and Briere (1971) reject discrete-point proficiency tests because they believe that these tests do not give an overall assessment of proficiency, that is, how well the candidate communicates. Perren (1967: 28) claims that at present 'there seems to be considerable justification for deliberately using tests of gross skills of communication rather than concentrating exclusively on tests of their assumed constituents.…”

Section: Instrumentationmentioning

confidence: 95%

Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with Aboriginal Australians: some research findings

Murtagh¹

1982

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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Section A. Research design and procedures Research designThe principal intent of this study was to find out whether or not a bilingual program which uses Creole and English as languages of instruction facilitates the learning of both Standard English and Creole. An attempt was also made to discover whether the attitudes of year 3 students toward Standard Australian English speakers affect their learning of Standard Australian English.Beswick Reserve, Northern Territory, Australia, which is situated approximately 450 km southeast of the city of Darwin, was the site chosen for the study. 1 This district offered the opportunity to measure the oral language proficiency of Creole-speaking Aboriginal children schooled biUngually and monoUngually. Tests of language proficiency were administered to students from years 1,2, and 3, while an attitudes test was administered to year 3 students only.This study was cross-sectional in nature. At the time of the data collection, those students who were in year 3 of the bilingual school were beginning their fourth year of bilingual instruction; those in year 2 were beginning their third year of bilingual schooling; while those in year 1 were beginning their second year of bilingual instruction, all students having begun in preschool.The data were collected during the first term of the 1979 school year. The basic model of bilingual instruction adopted for use was that of partial bilingualism (see Fishman, 1976: 266), which seeks fluency and literacy in both the mother tongue and the second language, but restricts literacy in the mother tongue to certain subject matter related to the ethnic group and its own cultural heritage.Fuller details of statistical results summarized or referred to in this paper are presented in Murtagh (1979: chapters 3 and 4).

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Section: Instrumentationmentioning

confidence: 95%

Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with Aboriginal Australians: some research findings

Murtagh¹

1982

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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“…While less than a decade ago communicative compe tence testing was still a relatively new field (Savignon, 1972;Briere, 1971) it is now a much discussed area of research (e.g., see Davies, 1978;Marrow, 1977;Briere, 1979). The measurement of communi cative competence faces many problems, some of them related to the already mentioned vagueness of the concept or trait to be measured.…”

Section: Linguistic Vs Communicative Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic and Communicative Competence of Students in a Spanish/English Bilingual High School Program

Politzer

Ramirez

1981

NABE Journal

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“…Educational officials worry about the right test to determine which is a bilingual Hispanic child's primary language, since only Spanish dominant children participate in bilingual programmes. Whereas Lado (1961) favours discreet point testing, Briere (1972) and Oiler (1979) prefer general communication tests. Recently, more ethnographic approaches to testing language dominance have become popular (Bennett & Slaughter, 1983;Philips, 1983;Saville-Troike, 1983).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The bilingual education of cuban‐american children in dade county's ethnic schools

Garcı́a

Otheguy

1987

Language and Education

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An ethnographic study was conducted in seven private, low-tuition ethnic schools attended mostly by working-class Cuban-American children.Our study was initially guided by questions that frame the discussion about the education of Hispanic children from these same socio-economic backgrounds in public bilingual programmes. They are the following: -Should schools maintain and develop Spanish? Should all Hispanic children receive instruction in two languages or should Spanish be used only with those not proficient in English? -How does one determine language dominance and is there a difference in the curriculum for Spanish dominant children and English dominant children? -How much instruction in English as a second language should children receive and when should it stop? -Which language should initial reading be in? When should reading in the second language start? The most significant finding of our study was that these four questions were irrelevant in these ethnic community schools. Bilingualism and biliteracy were naturally expected and obtained. We concluded that when Hispanic parents and educators are in control of the education of their own children, they question the educational process itself, and not the role of the minority language or the minority child in the majority school.

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Are We Really Measuring Proficiency with Our Foreign Language Tests?*

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with Aboriginal Australians: some research findings

Creole and English used as languages of instruction in bilingual education with Aboriginal Australians: some research findings

Linguistic and Communicative Competence of Students in a Spanish/English Bilingual High School Program

The bilingual education of cuban‐american children in dade county's ethnic schools

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