Paul Pimsleur

Predicting Success in High School Foreign Language Courses

courses, using as predictors specially constructed pure-factor tests.l The results of these efforts were: a) achievement as measured by the Cooperative French Test was predicted to the extent of .65 (after correction for shrinkage) by a battery of six tests; b) achievement in speaking and in listening comprehension were each predicted to the extent of .41 by a battery of five tests; c) the main contributing factors were found to be Verbal Intelligence and Interest (motivation), although Reasoning, Word Fluency, and Pitch Discrimination also helped prediction. The present study attempts similar prediction at the secondary school level, in Spanish as well as in French. The predictive tests found most effective on the college population, plus criterion measures, were administered in the Spring of 1961 to fifty beginning French students and to 174 beginning Spanish students at Culver City Junior High School and Culver City High School. In this school system a student may elect to begin language study in junior high school if his English teacher rates him as having aptitude for such study; otherwise he begins in high school. Teachers have reported

How to Learn a Foreign Language

1. Repetition. Although repetition in learning a foreign language can be boring, it is key to your success. Many studies on language acquisition show that very high numbers of repetition are necessary for a word to become truly owned and in your long term memory. This is why so many language classrooms require choral repetitions. Repetitions can be verbal, aural, read or written. So, when you study, hit the word or verb conjugation as many times as possible.

Modern Greek Self-taught: First Step to a National Library

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses a national problem: the urgent need for self-instructional materials in many of the worlds languages. There exists an urgent national need for self-instructional materials in many of the worlds languages. A national library or repository of such materials must be established. The chapter presents a project that used Modern Greek as a demonstration language and fulfilled several of the necessary conditions to the establishment of such a library. Three kinds of competence are required to program a foreign language. One is that of the teacher–programmer, the second competence is that of the applied linguist, and the third is that of the native speaker. A project must be brought into existence that will devote itself, with all due speed, to producing a library of self-instructional programs in many of the worlds languages. The magnitude of the task urges that it begin without delay.