Intellectually normal young children learn to request absent but needed objects which they are able to name. The primary focus of my study of child language in context was to assess the motivational effect of operation or stimulus preference on Lhe rate of toy request acquisition and the formation of stimulus classes (stimulus equivalences) . Of 13 21- to 37- month-old day-care children screened for generalized request responses (novel requests) , 1 girl and 4 boys participated in the training program because they were unable to request. Two of 4 children who completed training showed some support for the effect of preference for two two-stimulus operations on request response acquisition. All 4 children emitted novel requests to generalization probes following request acquisition criterion for one most and one least preferred stimulus. Preference had no observable effect on generalization of requesting to untrained stimuli. Additionally, I assessed and compared the cognitive-linguistic and adaptive-social maturity of those 5 children who were unable and those 8 who were able to request during preliminary request screening. The trained children tended to have a greater difference between their measured receptive and expressive language skills, and also they tended to have slightly lower scores on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales: Communication, Daily Living Skills, Socialization, and Motor Skills Domains. I also tested the efficacy of a natural language paradigm using a distributed skills trial sequence with interspersed trials of known-items as an extension of Tidwell's (1986) matching-to-sample, errorless learning procedure. Four within-subject replications of successful operation, name, and request acquisition are reported across 8 operations in support of his response chain methodology. I suggest that a battery of most of the developmental measures and request screening and training procedures tested in my study might be used by behavioral interventionists to assess and remediate delayed and/or inappropriate requesting among young normally developing children in a day-care setting.

(in English): This diploma thesis focuses on how spelling is taught as a part of Czech language lessons at primary schools. The thesis aims to describe the level of spelling knowledge in students attending first and lower secondary schools, and it also attempts to compare their performance. Attention is first paid to the essential theoretical framework of the Czech language, its spelling, and teaching in Czech. The possibilities of evaluating spelling knowledge in Czech language lessons are highlighted. For the practical part, a survey was performed at a primary school in Kolín, and a total of 84 pupils attending grades four to eight were selected. The participants were presented with several spelling exercises in three different formats: dictation, gap fills, and error correction. The collected data were analysed and compared. The findings suggest that the pupils' spelling knowledge reaches only an average level, and it is, therefore, necessary to pay more attention to spelling practice. With specific phenomena, better results were recorded in the 7th and 8th grades than with younger pupils.

Researchers have intermittently treated the topic of the language in which reading comprehension test questions should be presented in, or language of assessment (LoA). The overall consensus has been that questions in L1 lead to better scores and that questions in L1 should be used for reading comprehension particularly at the beginning levels. However, minimal research has been conducted at the advanced level, and no research has been found where proficiency items, empirically validated, were utilized in testing instruments. Furthermore, explanatory data from qualitative analysis has been sparse. The present research endeavored to satisfy these areas of needed research. It was found that a group of advanced learners of Russian performed better when MC questions were presented in English. Student attitudes, as revealed by survey items, depicted questions in L2 as more difficult. It was additionally found that vocabulary was one of the major factors in difficulty. Matters pertaining to validity and face validity surfaced and were designated, along with gathering other qualitative data, as the recommended direction of future research.

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In the past, the focus in language testing, teaching and research has largely been on careful reading while expeditious (quick, efficient and selective) reading has been largely ignored. However, some research suggests that careful reading ability alone is inadequate for students to meet the demands of undergraduate academic reading. In the main English for Academic Purposes (EAP), test instruments have been previously based on careful reading models which assume reading to be unicomponential. If this is not the case, the issue for language testing is whether the construct of academic reading can be validly measured by a focus on careful reading alone. The aims of this study were to investigate the types of academic reading required of firstyear undergraduates based on Urquhart and Weir's (1998) four-cell matrix of reading types which also forms an important part of Khalifa and Weir's (2009) reading model. Based on this, a valid academic reading test battery for undergraduate students was developed and used to examine the divisibility of the academic reading construct. The literature review on reading models suggested that current models were nearly all premised on careful reading and expeditious reading had in the main been ignored. The findings of a pilot and main questionnaire survey with undergraduates suggested that both careful and expeditious reading were important in accomplishing academic reading tasks at the undergraduate level. Accordingly, the empirical data generated by these surveys validated Urquhart and Weir's (2009) reading matrix and aspects of the reading model by Khalifa and Weir (2009). Based on this matrix and aspects of the model, a valid reading test was developed and administered to first-year undergraduate students. The performance of undergraduates across the different parts of the reading test confirmed that academic reading was a divisible construct. The findings of this study add to the literature on EAL academic reading by lending empirical support to a componential approach to the teaching and testing of reading. The componential model and the test design methodology employed should help test designers develop valid academic reading tests embracing both careful and expeditious reading types. The results from such tests might usefully inform pedagogical practice leading to more efficient reading practice at undergraduate level.

The present study aimed to establish a test development and validation framework of reading-into-writing tests to improve the accountability of using the integrated task type to assess test takers' ability in Academic English. This study applied Weir's (2005) socio-cognitive framework to collect three components of test validity: context validity, cognitive validity and criterion-related validity of two common types of reading-into-writing test tasks (essay task with multiple verbal inputs and essay task with multiple verbal and non-verbal inputs). Through literature review and a series of pilot, a set of contextual and cognitive parameters that are useful to explicitly describe the features of the target academic writing tasks and the cognitive processes required to complete these tasks successfully was defined at the pilot phase of this study. A mixed-method approach was used in the main study to establish the context, cognitive and criterion-related validity of the reading-into-writing test tasks. First of all, for context validity, expert judgement and automated textual analysis were applied to examine the degree of correspondence of the contextual features (overall task setting and input text features) of the reading-into-writing test tasks to those of the target academic writing tasks. For cognitive validity, a cognitive process questionnaire was developed to assist participants to report the processes they employed on the two reading-into-writing test tasks and two real-life academic tasks. A total of 443 questionnaires from 219 participants were collected. The analysis of the cognitive validity included three stands: 1) the cognitive processes involved in real-life academic writing, 2) the extent to which these processes are elicited by the reading-into-writing test tasks, and 3) the underlying structure of the processes elicited by the reading-into-writing test tasks. A range of descriptive, inferential and factor analyses were performed on the questionnaire data. The participants' scores on these real-life academic and reading-into-writing test tasks were collected for correlational analyses to investigate the criterion-related validity of the test tasks. The findings of the study support the context, cognitive and criterion-related validity of the integrated reading-into-writing task type. In terms of context validity, the two reading-into-writing tasks largely resembled the overall task setting, the input text features and the linguistic complexity of the input texts of the real-life tasks in a number of important ways. Regarding cognitive validity, the results revealed 11 cognitive processes involved in 5 phases of real-life academic writing as well as the extent to which these processes were elicited by the test tasks. Both reading-into-writing test tasks were able to elicit from high-achieving and low-achieving participants most of these cognitive processes to a similar extent as the participants employed the processes on the real-life tasks. The medium-achieving participants tended to employ these processes more on the real-life tasks than on the test tasks. The results of explanatory factor analysis showed that both test tasks were largely able to elicit from the participants the same underlying cognitive processes as the real-life tasks did. Lastly, for criterion-related validity, the correlations between the two reading-into-writing test scores and academic performance reported in this study are apparently better than most previously reported figures in the literature. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, this study is the first study to validate two types of reading-into-writing test tasks in terms of three validity components. The results of the study proved with empirical evidence that reading-into-writing tests can successfully operationalise the appropriate contextual features of academic writing tasks and the cognitive processes required in real-life academic writing under test conditions, and the reading-into-writing test scores demonstrated a promising correlation to the target academic performance. The results have important implications for university admissions officers and other stakeholders; in particular they demonstrate that the integrated reading-into-writing task type is a valid option when considering language teaching and testing for academic purposes. The study also puts forward a test framework with explicit contextual and cognitive parameters for language teachers, test developers and future researchers who intend to develop valid reading-into-writing test tasks for assessing academic writing ability and to conduct validity studies in such integrated task type.

The purpose of this study was to obtain data from the PPVT-R scores of low and middle SES black kindergartners in the Portland area to determine if there is a difference between their scores and the scores reported in the PPVT-R. The primary question to be answered was do the scores of black kindergartners in Portland vary significantly dependent upon SES? The secondary questions this study sought to answer were: what are the means, standard deviations, and ranges of scores for black kindergartners in Portland and what are the means, standard deviations, and ranges for each two-month age group of black kindergartners in Portland?