Development of SPOT for the purpose of Placing Japanese Language Students

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When organizing a language course, it is necessary to determine the general language proficiency level of the students and place them in the appropriate class. We have invented SPOT (Simple Performance-Oriented Test) as a new device that allows learners at various levels to be placed simply, swiftly and accurately. The results of the research suggest that SPOT is a sufficiently accurate means to place students.SPOT consists of an audio taped recording of a native speaker reading a series of complete sentences, to which the testee listens while reading the same sentences in Japanese script on the answer sheet. Each sentence on the answer sheet contains a blank which the testee must fill in based on the tape. Each blank consists of a single hiragana character which represents all or part of a grammatical item.This research project has elucidated the follwings.1) The results of trials at several institutions (both in Japan and foreign countries) under different circumstances has been analyzed and the results show the score of the SPOT is highly reliable.2) The SPOT does not seem suitable for testing each discrete point of language knowledge, but is effective for testing intergrated proficiency.3) The phonetic variations (duration, pitch contour, devoicing or weakening of vowels or consonants) of the sentences read in the SPOT have strong relation with the score.4) The research suggests that SPOT ranks Japanese learners by measuring their automatic processing ability.5) The SPOT would be a good instrument to investigate the process and outcome of grammar acquisition by Japanese Language lerarners.