SAT Scores and Foreign Language StudySource: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 1983), p. 115Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers AssociationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/328282 .

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Reading Comprehension in German 115

"The author would like to thank Sven Langsjoen and

Vija Leleps, Gustavus Adolphus College, for their coopera- tion.

12American Association of Teachers of German, Interpre- tative Data for the AA TG National Standardized Testing Program Administered injanuary 1981 (Cherry Hill, NJ: AATG, 1981). For students with no German speaking background, this test has a reliability of .95, a mean score of 70.86, a standard deviation of 17.65, and a median score of 73.71. In 1981, the sample size which normed the test was 2,183.

13Aktuelle Texte 2: Lese- und Arbeitsbuch fiir Deutsch als Fremd-

sprache, ed. Richard Schmitt, Erich C. Kleinschmidt & Hilke Dreyer (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981). The two passages adapted for use in this study are found on pages 28 and 31 of this book.

14Renate A. Schulz, "Literature and Readability: Bridg- ing the Gap in Foreign Languge Reading," Modern Lan-

guage Journal, 65 (1981), pp. 43-53. 15Several methods for scoring recall protocols are cur-

rently in use. For the present study, the constituent struc- ture method resulted in the greatest inter-developer con-

sistency. For a complete discussion see Bonnie F. J. Meyer,

The Organization of Prose and Its Effects on Memory (Amster- dam: North Holland, 1975).

16A Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated between each set of protocol scores. For oral readings, the follow-

ing correlations resulted: Raters One and Two, .96, p = .001; Raters One and Three, .95, p = .001; Raters Two and Three, .94, p = .001. For silent readings, the following correlations resulted: Raters One and Two, .70, p = .003; Raters One and Three, .90 p = .001; Raters Two and Three, .89, p = .001. Reliability is reported as the mean of these correlation coefficients.

17Martin Luther, Tischreden (Frankfurt/Main: Heydor & Zimmer, 1854).

8sThese topics have been considered in Shirley J. Adams, "Scripts and the Recognition of Unfamiliar Vocabulary: Enhancing Second Language Reading Skills," Modern Lan- guage Journal, 66 (1982), pp. 155-59; Mark A. Clarke, "Reading in Spanish and English: Evidence from Adult ESL Students," Language Learning, 29 (1979), pp. 121-50; Thom Hudson, "The Effects of Induced Schemata on the 'Short Circuit' in L2 Reading: Non-Decoding Factors in L2 Read- ing Performance," Language Learning, 32 (1982), pp. 1-31.

SAT Scores and Foreign Language Study

PROFILES, COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS, i98i, a sum-

mary of 1981 SAT scores recently published by the Admissions Testing Program at the College Board, reveals data that may interest teachers of languages. These data correlate verbal and math SAT scores with the study of specific sub- jects, including foreign languages.

Of the 922,919 seniors tested in 1981, 13.6% had taken no foreign language courses. For this group, the mean SAT score on the verbal por- tion of the test was 366; on the math portion it was 409. A comparable number of students (13.4%) who had taken only one year of for- eign language study had modestly higher mean SAT scores: 378 on the verbal, 416 on the math. The students who had taken two years of foreign language courses (35.4 %), however, had significantly higher mean SAT scores: 417 on the verbal, 463 on the math--increases of 14% and 13% over the scores of those who had taken no foreign languages. The mean SAT scores for students who had studied foreign lan- guages for three or more years reflect similar increases: three years of foreign language study (20.2%) correlated with a mean verbal score of 450 and a mean math score of 496; four years (13.5%), verbal 479, math 516; and five years (3.8%), verbal 504, math 535. Comparing the mean SAT scores of students who had had no foreign language courses with the scores of

those who had studied foreign languages for five years reveals increases of 37% for the verbal and 31% for the math.

Other subjects for which data were correlated include English, math, biological sciences, physical sciences, and social studies. With the exception of those students who had taken more than two years of a biological science (only 7.7%), all seniors achieved higher verbal and math SAT scores the longer they had studied any of these subjects. The verbal scores of stu- dents who had taken five years of foreign lan- guages were higher, in comparison to those of students who had taken no foreign languages, than the verbal scores of students who had taken five years, versus those who had taken none, of any other subject indexed. Students who had taken four or five years of foreign lan- guage courses also had higher mean verbal SAT scores than had students who had taken four or five years of any other subject. On both the verbal and math portions of the test the mean SAT scores of students who had studied foreign languages for three or more years (37.5% of those tested) were higher than the mean scores for the total population of seniors tested, as were the mean SAT scores of students who had studied a physical science for three or more years (23.5% of the total). [ADFL Updates, 2, i (1983).]

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