Wartime Development in Modern-Language Achievement Testing

The “Scientific Linguist” Goes to War

“…31. Spolsky (1994: 234) suggests Kaulfers' (1944) scale as a possible model for the FSI Scale. 122-127), and introduced contemporary culture as a component of 'area studies' .…”

“…(Agard et al 1944: 17) 27. As Spolsky (1995: 329) has pointed out, the invocation of "native speaker" norms and the distinction between the "adult native" and the "educated native" would re-appear in the Foreign Service Institute scale; earlier than that, however, as we will see, Kaulfers' (1944) scale would move in the same direction.…”

“…Two major projects can be mentioned here. First, Walter V. Kaulfers (1904Kaulfers ( -1990 of Stanford University developed performance scales for both aural comprehension and oral fluency (Kaulfers 1944). Kaulfers distinguishes between writing and speaking proficiency, creates a series of 'plateaus' to provide 'ceilings' of oral performance, and treats issues of tester training and the affective factors of examinees.…”

Language Testing in The Modern Language Journal

“…The most interesting discussion of oral language testing arising out of the wartime experience of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP; see Spolsky, 1995b) was a programmatic article in the MLJ by Walter Kaulfers (1944). Kaulfers believed that if the 1925 survey of foreign language teachers (which led to the Coleman report that was published in 1929) were to be repeated in 1944, the majority of teachers would not again put reading as the most important objective.…”

“…In a second example, the examiner would make a statement correctly and incorrectly; the candidate would mark which was the correct version. Kaulfers (1944) proposed a performance scale for measuring aural comprehension, as follows: 0…”