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This Field Study Report concentrates on the appropriate language testing techniques for EFL tertiary teachers in different foreign language institutions and centres in Vietnam. It falls into five chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction and an overview of the problems with EFL testing and assessment in Vietnam. It describes the need for this study, its general testing terminology. It also describes some general problems, problems with specific testing techniques and problems with testing assessment. The second chapter discusses the role of classroom language testing, the relationship between language teaching and testing and the use of different kinds of tests. In the third chapter, four qualities of a good test and instructions to the testee are considered. After discussing the use of various kinds of tests, the Study Report examines different EFL testing and assessment techniques in chapter IV. This chapter focuses on the pros and cons of major language testing and assessment techniques such as translation, essay writing, oral interviews, multiple-choice items, shortanswer items, cloze tests, dictations, terminal assessment. Critical comments on these techniques are also given. In the final chapter, some practical suggestions and proposals for EFL testing and assessment in Vietnam are made. It is hoped that these suggestions and proposals will help to improve the present language testing situation in Vietnam.

That this field study report has been carried out originates from the fact that urgent remedies are needed to improve ESP testing in Vietnam. This field study report consists of five chapters as follows. Chapter one gives an overall picture of language testing in Vietnam, as well as dealing with the reasons why ESP testing should be improved. Chapter two covers questions such as the terminology in assessing (evaluation, assessment, and testing), role of testing, types of language tests, and main characteristics of a good test. Chapter three considers the problems concerning ESP, for example, a definition of ESP, ESP in the teaching learning process, ESP in Vietnam as well as ESP classification. Chapter four takes into consideration such questions as the theoretical background of ESP testing, proficiency tests in ESP testing, problems in ESP testing, ESP testing in Vietnam together with comments, and suggestions for improvements. Chapter five reconfirms the aim of this field study report - to improve ESP testing in Vietnam.

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The College English Test (CET) in China is the largest language test in the world. The number of CET test-takers has steadily increased from 100,000 for its first administration in 1987 to 13 million in 2006. CET scores are used to draw inferences about the test-takers’ English as a foreign language proficiency as well as their specific skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. To justify the inferences drawn from test scores, evidence from a variety of sources should be constantly collected (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955; Messick, 1992; Chapelle, 1998; Bachman, 2000; Weir, 2005). Despite the large-scale and high-stakes nature of the CET and the importance of test validation, studies on the quality of the CET are scarce. This study aims to examine the construct validity of the reading comprehension section of the CET by modeling the internal relationships between test-takers’ scores on the CET reading section and their underlying reading abilities. Six components have been chosen as observed variables of the latent variable of reading ability, namely, word recognition efficiency, working memory, semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and metacognitive reading skills. A pseudowords identification task programmed by the DMDX computer software, a revised version of Daneman & Carpenter’s (1980) sentence reading span working memory test, Meara & Milton’s (2002) Yes/No vocabulary tests, the syntactic test used in Shiotsu & Weir’s (2007) study, Abeywickrama’s (2007) discourse knowledge test, and a revised version of Phakiti’s (2008) strategy use questionnaire were utilized to measure these six observed variables. A total of 181 Chinese undergraduates participated in the study. With a baseline confirmatory factor model of reading ability and the CET scores, a structural model was analyzed. The results indicated that the path from reading ability to test performance was .75 and the squared regression coefficient of test performance was .56, which implied that participants’ test performance was strongly underlined by their actual reading ability. Therefore, the scores on the CET reading section are largely justifiable for use in drawing inferences about participants’ reading ability. Implications for validation research and reading instruction were also explored. / text

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of two different school language programs at the end of third grade, Follow Through (FT) and Non Follow Through (NFT), on the development of children's oral and written language on measures of complexity of structure and diversity of meaning. Linguistic complexity was studied by use of the T-unit and percentage of complex T-unit measures, while linguistic complexity was examined through use of the type-token ratio. The two language programs studied were FT, the Tucson Early Education Model (TEEM), an innovative language experience program, and NFT, a traditional approach. Subjects used for the study were 70 children continuously enrolled in FT (n = 34) and NFT (n = 36) classrooms since kindergarten or first grade, allowing for examination of program effects at the end of the third grade. One oral and two written language samples were obtained for each of the 70 subjects. Collection of the language took place within the classroom context, emphasizing sampling of children's natural language abilities. Instruments used for the collection, coding, and scoring of oral and written variables were the Children's Language Assessment-Situation Tasks (CLA-ST), developed by TEEM at the University of Arizona, and the Productive Language Assessment Tasks (PLAT), developed at the High Scope Education Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Using a posttest only control group design, two separate analysis procedures were performed. A two-way analysis of variance with repeated measures were used to determine the program impact on the linguistic complexity and diversity measures in the oral and written language of FT and NFT children. A correlational analysis was also performed to determine the relationship between the oral and written language patterns for both the control and experimental groups. Study results indicated no significant differences between the two groups, FT and NFT, on the measures of linguistic complexity, T-units, and percentage of T-units. On the type-token ratio measure, the differences between the FT and NFT groups were not significant, but greater differences were shown than between the two groups on the complexity measures. When examining the mean scores for the type-token ratio, the FT children consistently scored higher. These differences indicate a trend toward higher scores on this measure for the FT group even though the differences were not significant. Significant differences were found, however, between oral and written language for the subjects of both groups. Correlational procedures used to examine the relationship between oral and written language resulted in low to insignificant relationships. This is consistent with the analysis of variance finding of significant differences between oral and written language. Linguistic measures in oral language were found to be relatively independent of the same measures in written language. Competencies in oral language did not predict competence in use of written language for this age and group of children. Results indicate that children at this age are aware of the different functions and use of oral and written language. Trends found favoring the FT group indicate possible program effects. Further longitudinal investigations of the complexities and interrelationships of children's developing productive language abilities within the context of different classroom language programs are recommended.

Three studies were conducted in which Quebec French, first grade children's ability to categorize vowels was examined. The children were tested on several aspects of vowel phoneme representation before they had any literacy skills, at the beginning of the school year, and again sis months later, after they had learned all of the spelling-sound correspondences for vowels. In Study 1, the focus was on children's phonemic and orthographic representation of nasal vowels. Performance on an AXB categorization task revealed that six-year-olds have considerable difficulty in discriminating the nasal feature on minimal and near-minimal oral-nasal vowel pairs. This ability did not improve after six months of schooling. In contrast to their performance on AXB, these same children performed very well on nasal vowel spellings. These results suggest that perceptually-based categorization ability and the ability to represent nasal vowels in spelling develop independently of each other. Study 2 examined children's categorization of self-generated productions of front-unrounded, nasal, and, back-nonhigh vowels. The influence of a number of variables on vocalic representation, such as articulatory complexity, spectral proximity, and syllable structure, was also examined. The children's performance on this explicit task varied as a function of the vowel set. Specifically, whereas articulatory complexity did not have a negative effect on categorization ability, spectral proximity of vowels did appear to hinder performance; syllable structure negatively affected oral but not nasal vowel categorization performance. Schooling, and exposure to literacy evidently had a strong impact on this type of phoneme categorization/representation ability as children's overall performance improved significantly from the first to the second testing period. In Study 3, children's ability to categorize vowel allophones which were spoken in two dialects was examined. Again, performance varied by the typ

Focus has turned from emphasis on phonetic sound errors to phonologic rule systems in the study of articulation disorders. The current theory proposes that the phonological disorders which children experience are controlled by higher levels in the brain than those that control the motor functioning of the brain. The purpose of the present study was to compare the use of phonological processes by a group of school-age children with moderate to severe multiple articulation disorders (MAD) with developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) to the phonological processes used by those without developmental apraxia of speech. For the purposes of this study, those without DAS were classified as functional articulation disorder (FAD).

The questions this study sought to answer were: Do normally developing children exhibit phonological process deviations; what is the frequency of occurrence of each phonological process deviation by age group; and does the number of phonological process deviations and the average total frequency of occurrence of phonological process deviations decrease as age increases?

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of geographical differences on the DSS normative data for children ages 2 6.0 to 6.11, by comparing the original DSS normative data (Koenigsknecht, 1974) with that obtained in Canby, Oregon. A collateral purpose was to develop norms for the geographical area of Canby, Oregon, using the DSS procedure. Forty children, ten within each of the four, three-month age subgroups between 6.0 and 6.11, were chosen. All of the children came from monolingual, middle-class families and had normal hearing, normal receptive vocabulary skills, and no known unusual social, developmental, or behavioral histories. A language sample, from which a corpus of 50 utterances was selected for analysis, was elicited from each child. Each corpus was analyzed according to the DSS procedures recommended by Lee (1974).