Comparison of undergraduate students' (N=42) processing of equal- and unequal-length sentences with passive and active voices and positive and negative forms revealed a significant active-passive main effect when sentences were of unequal length. An active-passive difference for positive, but not negative, sentences was also shown. (Author/CB)

Analyzed Francophone university students' (N=182) performance on eight English-As-a-Second-Language cloze tests (in terms of cloze-taking ability, language knowledge, content domain, and knowledge of contextual constraints). Results revealed that cloze performance was dependent on language factors and nonlinguistic-specific knowledge related to…

Comparison of the reading comprehension processes used by Hebrew-speaking students of French in both their native and second languages found that there was a transfer of strategies from the native to the second language, although in the second language, students used more strategies that did not lead to the selection of a correct response than in…

Styles of thinking and learning are relevant for understanding and testing foreign-language aptitude. This article emphasizes one particular theory of styles, the theory of self-government, and discusses the nature of styles, gives some history of the concept of styles, describes styles in theory, describes measures of styles, and discusses the…

Reviews factors influencing reversals of expectations for language-learning outcomes. This article touches on psychological and neurological data regarding individual differences in language-learning mechanisms and focuses on cross-linguistic psycholinguistic analysis that indicates that different target languages offer a wide variety of learning…

Discusses attempts made in the United States and elsewhere to develop prognostic tests that would justify decisions to exclude unqualified students from high school foreign-language classes. After the Second World War, U.S. government language programs supported research in the assessment of language aptitude to improve selection techniques. (36…

A conceptualization of test theory is discussed that addresses issues of weight and coverage of evidence for statements framed in recent educational/psychological paradigms. Implications for language assessment built around the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' guidelines are considered. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Discusses the question of aptitude from within an information-processing perspective, examines how aptitude is conceptualized in this framework, and discusses one possible component of L2 aptitude: working memory. (56 references) (Author/CK)