Prognosis and Its Alternatives in Relation to the Guidance of Students

Abstract

A TEST which would predict accurately the achievement of a student in a foreign language would undoubtedly be very helpful to teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents in guiding pupils with respect to foreign language work in school. The many advantageous uses to which an infallible prognostic test could be put have fascinated research workers and teachers of foreign languages for nearly three decades. No phase of foreign language research, with the possible exception of studies in the field of reading and achievement testing, has received attention from so many investigators as the measurement of linguistic aptitude or language talent. Foreign language achievement has been correlated with almost every ability and faculty conceivable to man. A comprehensive survey' reported in 1931 revealed that even seven years ago achievement in foreign language grammar, reading, and vocabulary had already been correlated by 48 investigators with 67 bases, including such factors as ability to think in abstract grammatical terms, memory span for visual and non-visual material, general intelligence, etc. In 1933 a doctor's dissertation completed at Stanford University2 reported the results of one of the most comprehensive and detailed pieces of research in the field of foreign language prognosis. The author selected from the vast number of investigations reported between 1900 and 1933 those bases which seemed to yield the most promising correlations with subsequent success in the several phases of foreign language work, and combined them into a multi-