A study of the effectiveness of a language proficiency testing method using partial dictation is reported. The study used 60 undergraduate students at a Mexican university studying English as a second language under a traditional four-skills approach. The partial dictation exam was a combination of dictation and cloze procedure. The entire text is presented in an auditory version, and the printed version presented to students is only partial, with portions to be filled in by students. The decoding and encoding process tested was felt to both give students a feeling of achievement and test their global language proficiency. Grades on the partial dictation exam, final grades, and averages for diagnostic exams were compared statistically, and the method was found to be reliable enough to allow discontinuation of the more unwieldy and costly oral examination. Appendices include examiner instructions, two printed portions of the examination, and items from the diagnostic exams used. (MSE)