John W. Oller

Consensus and controversy

The word ’consensus’, of course, is spelled with an ’s’ because it is etymologically related to the words ’consent’ and ’sense’ as in agreeing or having a sense of direction rather than ’census’ or ’cents’ as in counting heads or tossing coins. However, in Alan Davies’s review of Issues in language testing research (ILTR; edited by yours truly, published by Newbury House in 1983), the word ‘consensus’ is about as distant from its correct spelling and etymology as the reviewer is from the facts addressed in ILTR. The contrast between the correct etymology and the erroneous one used three times in the review, is roughly parallel to the fundamental difference in Davies’s approach

Background and Culture as Factors in EFL Reading Comprehension.

An experimental comparison was made between two original passages in English written for ESL/EFL consumers. Since the subjects tested were 159 Japanese women, unfamiliar, non-Japanese elements were changed to conform more to the expectations of the readers tested. Only a few terms were changed in each of two passages: e.g. names of persons and places; in one instance kissing was changed to hugging. All subjects completed two cloze tests: one over one of the passages in its original form and the other over the other in the modified form. A possible order effect was controlled by counter balancing, and transfer across tests was minimized both by counterbalancing and by using cloze tests over two distinct passages. The hypothesis that such minor changes in textual elements would result in a significantly better performance on cloze tests based on the modified texts was sustained. It is suggested that teachers and materials producers might want to take such factors into consideration.

Pragmatic versus Morphological/Syntactic Criteria for Language Referrals.

Two methods of identifying language disordered children are examined. Traditional approaches require attention to relatively superficial morphological and surface syntactic criteria, such as, noun-...

Assessing Competence in ESL: Reading*

Results from research with Eye Movement Photography (EMP) are discussed with a view to defining differences between native speakers and non-native reading processes. The greatest contrast is in terms of the duration of eye fixations; non-native speakers at the college level require about as much time for a fixation as an average native speaker at the third grade level. Various tests of reading skill are discussed and correlations with other tests are given. The hypothesis is advanced that high correlations between tests of listening, speaking, reading, and writing are an indication of test validity. Support for tests which can easily be constructed by classroom teachers is provided.

A Cloze Test of English Prepositions.

The cloze technique is explored as a basis for measuring the skill of non-native speakers in handling English prepositions. Three groups of subjects are tested on an English cloze passage in which only prepositions have been deleted: the three groups consist of 19 native speakers of English (G-I), 53 native speakers of Turkish (G-II), and 110 foreign students entering UCLA from a wide variety of language backgrounds (G-III). An item analysis and a response frequency analysis are computed along with various test statistics for each group. The data suggest that a cloze test of prepositions works best with students from a variety of backgrounds (G-III) but is also useful for a group from a homogeneous language background (G-II). The response frequency analysis reveals that certain intralingual confusion occurs regardless of language background; other errors for G-II seem best explained by a contrastive analysis based on translation equivalents.

Methods That Work: Ideas for Literacy and Language Teachers

This completely revised collection of language teaching methods includes rich selections on classic and current methods and shows how to deal with the changing languages and cultures of the 21st century.-- Immersion, bilingual education, and content-based instruction-- Teaching languages and language skills to students with special needs-- Literacy and multicultural settings, schema theory, grammar, cooperative learning, peer teaching, teacher training, and computer-assisted language instruction

Empirical Predictions From a General Theory of Signs

General sign theory (GST) deals with how distinct sign systems are grounded, developed with increasing abstractness over time, and differentiated in efficacies in experience and discourse. GST has 3 components: The theory of true narrative representations (TNR theory) shows that TNRs are unique in being relatively well determined with respect to the real world, well connected to that world and to each other, and generalizable. TNRs provide the essential grounding for the childs first meaningful words. GST also includes a theory of abstraction about how signs of all kinds are vested with content and a theory of systems grammar that incorporates actual bodily referents. GST is compatible with aspects of amodal, indexical, and perceptual symbol theories but predicts certain findings they cannot account for. For example, it differentiates percepts of objects (in their space–time settings) from icons abstracted from those percepts (as in remembering or anticipating the movement of an object) and from fully generalizable concepts (e.g., the unfilled out thought or concept of an as yet unidentified object).

The Antithesis of Entropy: Biosemiotic Communication from Genetics to Human Language with Special Emphasis on the Immune Systems

Entropy can be defined as the antithesis of well-formed true reports that agree with each other and with the material facts accessible through the experience of one or more competent observers. The abstract convergence (strictly formal, logical agreement) of true narrative representations (TNRs)—ordinary valid reports of facts of experience—makes them formally more complete than fictions, errors, lies, and nonsense. A limit of absolute entropy is theoretically reached if all resemblance to a TNR is lost. As argued here, TNRs—formally defined along the lines of Peirces exact logic—provide the necessary foundation for functional human languages and for biosemiotic systems. The theoretical concepts of pragmatic mapping—the fitting of a TNR to whatever facts it represents—and the constructive cycle of abstraction that enables a child to discover the systems underlying such mappings are introduced and illustrated from child development and then shown to apply to the human neuroarchitecture, genetics, fetal development, and our immune systems. It is also argued that biological disorders and disease conditions logically must involve corrupted (damaged, undeveloped, or otherwise incomplete) representations at one or many levels.

Testing Verbal (Language) and Non-Verbal Abilities in Language Minorities: A Socio-Educational Problem in Historical Perspective.

There is a wide-spread socio-educational problem with language testing at its heart: Speakers of minority languages are over-represented in classes for the learning disabled, disordered and educable mentally retarded and under-represented in classes for the gifted. This imbalance is owed to mental measurement practices that involve language tests both directly and indirectly. The source of the problem is a general failure to appreciate the role of language proficiencies in psychological and educational testing. Also the relation between acquired (socially dependent) language proficiencies and so-called non-verbal abilities may be closer than commonly supposed. Among the questions addressed are the following: To what extent is it possible to measure non-verbal abilities without invoking acquired language/dialect proficiencies? Is it possible to get the instructions to non-verbal tasks across to test takers without recourse to one or more particular languages or dialects? Is it possible to make linguistically and culturally unbiased judgements about intellectual abilities (including abnormalities, disorders and giftedness) on the basis of ‘non-verbal’ tasks?

Investigating the Interobserver Reliability of a Direct Observational Language Assessment Technique

An observational language assessment procedure, Systematic Observation of Communicative Interaction, is described and the importance of interob-server reliability is discussed. Based on a study of 30 school-age children, the interobserver reliability for this descriptive language assessment tool was investigated. Results indicate strong reliability indices for this assessment procedure. Discussion of how test design can be used to enhance reliability is provided.