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This study was conducted to evaluate the tests developed by elementary foreign language teachers of French, Japanese, and Spanish in a school district in South Carolina. The tests were designed to determine the level of end-of-year student learning and to provide a basis for evaluating the curriculum of each of the three languages. The French and Spanish tests contained tests of listening and comprehension, vocabulary, and reading, and the Japanese test contained tests of listening, complex listening skills, and vocabulary. The tests were analyzed in terms of item difficulty, high-low discrimination indices, and distributions patterns. The subtests were also analyzed, highlighting the tendency of teacher-made tests toward the measurement of minimal skills. The study provides descriptive statistics for all parts of the tests and the total test results. Analysis indicates that, in general, all three tests had too low a level of difficulty, with few questions to challenge the more able students. These results are a contribution toward the improved design of foreign language tests for elementary school students, for whom foreign language study is still relatively rare. (Contains 9 tables, 30 charts, and 17 references.) (SLD)

With the accelerated globalization, domestic and international communications become more frequent than ever before. As the major media of international communication, languages contact with each other more actively by day. And in the active contact any language would gradually develop and change. Pidgin language is a unique linguistic phenomenon resulted from the frequent language contact. By taking pidgin as an example, this article attempts to shed some light on the language development models in the frequent contact and how one language reacts to its environment, which includes a foreign language, a new culture and new information. With "Chaos Theory" brought to the horizon, this paper figures out three ways, namely, to progress, to decay, and to remain untouched, for any language to choose from when it is in contact with a new environment.

With the accelerated globalization, domestic and international communications become more frequent than ever before. As the major media of international communication, languages contact with each other more actively by day. And in the active contact any language would gradually develop and change. Pidgin language is a unique linguistic phenomenon resulted from the frequent language contact. By taking pidgin as an example, this article attempts to shed some light on the language development models in the frequent contact and how one language reacts to its environment, which includes a foreign language, a new culture and new information. With "Chaos Theory" brought to the horizon, this paper figures out three ways, namely, to progress, to decay, and to remain untouched, for any language to choose from when it is in contact with a new environment.

With the accelerated globalization, domestic and international communications become more frequent than ever before. As the major media of international communication, languages contact with each other more actively by day. And in the active contact any language would gradually develop and change. Pidgin language is a unique linguistic phenomenon resulted from the frequent language contact. By taking pidgin as an example, this article attempts to shed some light on the language development models in the frequent contact and how one language reacts to its environment, which includes a foreign language, a new culture and new information. With "Chaos Theory" brought to the horizon, this paper figures out three ways, namely, to progress, to decay, and to remain untouched, for any language to choose from when it is in contact with a new environment.

Two parallel and complementary studies of Language Modelling and its relation to the development of communicative competence in the young child are reported. Over a 6-month period, Study 1 involved weekly naturalistic observations (in the home) of the nature and quality of the linguistic stimulation offered by mothers to their children between 2 and 4 years of age. The eight homes visited represented black and white families, with high and low incomes, in suburban and inner city settings. The differing maternal language behaviors observed seemed to reflect differing basic premises held by middle and working class mothers about infancy and early childhood. Language usage is one of the areas affected. It is suggested that intervention programs help mothers to learn more about child development and include language programs. Study 2 tested the language usage of 40 preschool children of differing socioeconomic backgrounds in three basic areas of competence: perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic. The results were used to plan training sessions in communication skills appropriate to each child's needs. Pretests and posttests indicate that children benefitted by such training over the short term. Appendixes are included. [Not available in hard copy due to marginal legibility of original document.] (NH)

This scoping review aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of current large language models developed specifically in the healthcare field, focusing on their role in promoting evidence dissemination, and to summarize their datasets, development techniques, evaluation methods, and effect on evidence dissemination.