Ahmed Shakir Mohammed AlKilabi

The present study aims at assessing students' aptitude and ability for simultaneous interpretation (SI) through a number of tests designed to measure a number of essential skills and to elicit students' performance on many important aspects of the interpreting process. The study involved 51 male and female students in their final year in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman. Nine variables (in Arabic and English) were used in the prediction equation. These variables were Listening Comprehension, Shadowing, Oral Cloze Tests, Sight Translation, and Memory Tests (built on the Wechsler memory Tests model). The dependent variable was students’ performance in simultaneous interpretation. The results of the study show that sight translation from Arabic to English was the most significant variable in predicting students’ aptitude for simultaneous interpretation. Other variables such as shadowing in English, shadowing in Arabic and listening comprehension were also entered in the prediction equation and have contributed significantly to the variance in the students' performance on the simultaneous interpreting test.

The present study aims to show the importance of ESL reading ability in acquiring English as a second language. The study involves 92 college students (males and females) from the Department of English at Nizwa College of Applied Sciences, Sultanate of Oman. They represent two groups, the foundation year students and the first year English majors. A number of tests were used to measure students’ overall proficiency in English as well as their reading ability (i.e., the ability to contribute to the main idea of the text, scanning, skimming, to derive word meanings from context, to use a dictionary to find meanings, definitions, to identify prefixes, antonyms and synonyms). Students’ ability to read was correlated to their proficiency level in the second language. It was found in the study that good readers were better users of the dictionary, derived meanings of words from the context and contributed to the main idea of the text better than poor readers did. Good readers were found to be high achievers in the second language.

The present study has two aims. First, it attempts to validate secondary school scores by using data collected from 347 foundation year students’ performance on six different tests in addition to their secondary school scores. The hypothesis underlying this validation was that the secondary school scores were inflated and they did not reflect the real level of students’ proficiency. The Secondary School Scores were found to have moderately high correlation co-efficients with all other six sets of scores. These scores, if proved valid, could be used as indicators of students’ level of performance on any international general proficiency test such as the IELTS. This study also endeavors to predict students’ level of performance by using any one of the seven sets of scores for the sample of the study. A pilot study was conducted involving 35 students who took the IELTS in May 2006. The results of the pilot study showed that the only good predictors of the level of performance on IELTS were a computer-based proficiency test and a May 2006 Achievement test.

The Acquisition of Wh-question Formation: Evidence for Universal Grammar The present study tests the hypothesis that second language development is determined by four factors; the initial state (learners' first language grammar), the target language input, the apparatus of universal grammar and learnability considerations. It also measures the effect of form-focused instruction and corrective feedback (input enhancement) on the course of second language development. Four English stimulus sentences were given to 332 Native Arabic-speaking first year college students who were asked to make questions about these sentences. Students were tested at two points to measure their progress in wh-question formation. The students were pre-tested and post-tested after 5 months. The test instrument was a two-tailed t-test. In the interim, form-focused instruction and corrective feedback (input enhancement) were applied. The initial analysis of the subjects’ responses shows that these responses are informed by each of the above factors.

The present validation study aimed at building a placement test by selecting strong, valid and reliable items from a pool of items that show acceptable levels of discrimination. In order to establish the power of discrimination and item facility of the items, two tests were given to two groups of students in their first year of study in the Applied Science University, Amman, Jordan. The first, and second tests were given to 286 and 272 male and female students respectively. The test items in all tests were validated by the methods of item analysis and item facility, which were carried out to check the discriminatory power as well as the level of easiness (or difficulty) of the items and to establish the internal validity of the tests. The discrimination index was used as a major indicator to make decisions about the retention or deletion of items. The majority of the items in all tests, which were found to have an acceptable level of discrimination and a reasonable item facility index, were retained. Items that were found to show a low discriminatory power and an extremely high or extremely low item facility index were either discarded or modified.

A group of eighty-eight third-year students (males and females) from the English Department, Al-Turath University College, were administered a test of writing proficiency. The objective of the study was to predict EFL college students' writing ability from a number of questions (error-recognition-error-correction questions), word selection, multiple choice and précis writing) that were included in the test. The analytic method was used in scoring both the essay and précis writing questions. Two questions were predictors of students' writing ability; i.e., error-recognition-error-correction questions and précis writing. Although the other two questions (word selection and multiple choice) contributed significantly to the variance in students' writing ability, they failed to contribute to the prediction of that ability.