Part III In The Classroom

In this section we present six papers of particular interest to teachers. In recent years the plight of the college-age learning-disabled has, for the first time, been addressed. Much that has been written on this topic focuses on untimed testing and assignment modifications. Richard Sparks, Leonore Ganschow, and Jane Pohlman address the issue of foreign language requirements in "Linguistic Coding Deficits in Foreign Language Learners." From their studies of students referred for evaluation because of difficulty in learning foreign languages, they hypothesize that these students have identifiable coding problems involving phonology, syntax, and semantics. They call for empirical studies to test this hypothesis. William R. Kitz and Sara G. Tarver found that dyslexic college students, irrespective of prior remediation and present level of achievement, had significant deficits in their ability to process phonological information. They conclude that those adult dyslexics who lack this ability require instruction in decoding and encoding to the level of automaticity. Another study of college-age dyslexics, this by Noel Gregg and Patricia McAlexander, is "The Relation Between Sense of Audience and Specific Learning Disabilities: An Exploration." They present two cases of students with different presenting defidts, both of whose writing was affected by the learning disabilities. They examine the writing of these students with respect to a series of interrelated social cognitive skills and suggest that, for each audience, awareness relates to their learning disabilities profile. "Prediction: A Six-Year Follow-Up" reports on the prereading and reading performance of bilingual (mostly Hispanic) children in New York City. Jeannette Jefferson Jansky, Martin J. Hoffman, Joan Layton, Francee Sugar, and Mark Davies compare the predictive validity of current research with that of a prior study. They find that while the Screening Index identifies future good readers quite well, it misclassifies

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many future poor-to-average readers. First grade predictor tests tend to correlate with reading performance at all levels. The authors emphasize the importance of determining how accurately tests predict future performance for children from different cultures and socioeconomic strata. Sherry Ogden, Suzanne Hindman, and Susan Douglas Turner report on a longitudinal study of the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum in Hillsborough County, Florida in "Multisensory Programs in the Public Schools: A Brighter Future for LD Children." Over a three-year period, most learning-disabled children who participated in this program showed measurable gains. Classroom teachers demonstrated deeper understanding of the needs of these students in the language skills area and greater skill in meeting these needs. For most dyslexics, spelling remains a life-long obstacle. Eileen Stifling, in "The Adolescent Dyslexic and Spelling," suggests that students can learn the logic in English spelling and with this knowledge they can function independently, even though they may never achieve full accuracy.

Linguistic Coding Deficits in Foreign Language Learners Richard Sparks

College of Mt. St. Joseph on the Ohio Cincinnati, Ohio

Leonore Ganschow Miami University Oxford, Ohio

Jane Pohlman Olympus Center Cincinnati, Ohio

As increasing numbers of colleges and universities require a foreign language for graduation in at least one of their degree programs, reports of students with difficulties in learning a second language are multiplying. Until recently, little research has been conducted to identify the nature of this problem. Recent attempts by the authors have focused upon subtle but ongoing language difficulties in these individuals as the source of their struggle to learn a foreign language. The present paper attempts to expand upon this concept by outlining a theoretical framework based upon a linguistic coding model that hypothesizes deficits in the processing of phonological, syntactic, and~or semantic informaThe authors contributed equally to the preparation of this manuscript. Annals of Dyslexia, Vol. 39, 1989. Copyright © 1989 by The Orton Dyslexia Society ISSN 0474-7534

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IN THE CLASSROOM tion. Traditional psychoeducational assessment batteries of standardized intelligence and achievement tests generally are not sensitive to these linguistic coding deficits unless closely analyzed or, more often, used in conjunction with a more comprehensive language assessment battery. Students who have been waived from a foreign language requirement and their proposed type(s) of linguistic coding deficits are profiled. Tentative conclusions about the nature of these foreign language learning deficits are presented along with specific suggestions for tests to be used in psychoeducational evaluations.

Introduction The contention in this paper is that students who have marked difficulties learning a foreign language have in common a disability in linguistic coding. There are three types of linguistic coding deficits: phonological, syntactic, and semantic (Vellutino 1987). Our purpose here is to describe these linguistic coding deficits as they affect the foreign language learning of students who have been waived from the foreign langnage requirement because of a diagnosed learning disability. All of the students in our observations were referred for testing because of inability to learn a foreign language. Each manifests his/her own unique foreign language learning "disability." However, common to all of them is a pronounced difficulty with tasks involving one or a combination of the three types of linguistic coding. We begin by providing an historical background on the foreign language/learning disability literature, thereby establishing a rationale for the importance of investigating this new line of research. We then define linguistic coding and describe our observations of linguistic coding difficulties among a body of students referred to us for psychoeducational testing. Sample case studies are used to illustrate the different linguistic coding problems and their suggested effects upon learning a foreign language. Finally, we make recommendations about tests/tasks which might be used to diagnose these difficulties and suggest instructional implications.

Studies on Foreign Language Learning among Students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) There is a small but emerging body of literature on the foreign language learning difficulties of SLD students. The first reference to foreign language problems of suspected SLD students appeared in 1971 in a chapter of a book on Harvard University students (Dinklage 1971).

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Here the author described cases of foreign language problem learners he had seen at Harvard's counseling center over 20 years. Dinklage postulated that there were three types of foreign language problem learners, all of whom exhibited problems similar to those described in the dyslexia/learning disabilities literature. His three subtypes indude& strephosymbolics, i.e., students who exhibited histories of difficulties learning to read and spell, right/left confusions and letter/syllable reversals, and family histories of similar learning problems; students with audiolingual deficits, i.e., difficulties with the auditory discrimination of sounds, syllables, and words in the foreign language; and students with auditory memory problems, which, according to Dinklage, generally overlapped with audiolingual problems.

Anecdotal~survey evidence for foreign language learning difficulties. As colleges and universities developed specialized programs and services for college SLD students in the 1980s, anecdotal reports about their foreign language learning difficulties began to surface in books and journals (see, e.g., Cohen 1983; Fisher 1986; Geschwind 1985; Lefebvre 1984; Levine 1987). These reports all indicated a high incidence of inordinate problems learning a second language among SLD adolescents/young adults. At several universities, informal, reports showed that substantial numbers (in several cases, 50 percent or more) of students were being referred for suspected learning disabilities after college entry because of inability to master the foreign language required (Pompian 1986; Ganschow and Sparks 1987; Gajar 1987; Lefebvre 1984). Surveys indicate a growing concern among college and university personnel about the foreign language difficulties of SLD learners. The first survey of college personnel about policies and procedures for foreign language requirements and waiver/course substitutions for handicapped populations was conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Keeney and Smith 1984). Out of 59 responding institutions of higher learning, 53 (90 percent) indicated they require a foreign language in at least one of their degree programs. A more extensive national survey was conducted in 1987 (Ganschow, Myer, and Roeger in press). Responses were received from 166 institutions, though not all reported on each question. These responses showed that 60 percent require a foreign language in one program area or more, 75 percent have either a formal or informal policy for substitution of the requirement, and 95 percent either require or recommend the identification of as specific learning disability before permitting students to substitute the requirement. A survey of SLD college personnel about their attitudes towards academic adjustments for SLD students was conducted (Goodin 1985). In response to a question on the desirability

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of alternate course work for students who were unable to master the foreign language, the 255 respondents gave a rating of 4.21 (1= low; 5 =high). These anecdotal accounts and surveys demonstrate the need for addressing the foreign language requirement as it relates to SLD students who plan to attend college. There is also a small body of research literature suggesting connections between foreign language learning and underlying language difficulties. Evidence for underlying language difficulties. Recent preliminary investigations suggest that SLD foreign language learners have in common difficulties with various aspects of language functioning which may affect their ability to learn a second language. Until recently, however, this proposed connection had not been studied empirically. The first research on the problem was conducted at Penn State University with a group of identified SLD students and a control foreign language-enrolled population (Gajar 1987). In this study the two groups were compared on their aptitude for learning a foreign language, as measured by the Modern Language Aptitude Test or MLAT (Carroll and Sapon 1959). The MLAT uses a make-believe language to measure five aspects of oral and/or written language: auditory comprehension in a listening memory task, sound-symbol association ability, vocabulary knowledge, sensitivity to grammatical structure, and visual rote memory for words. Gajar found that SLD students performed significantly more poorly than foreign language-enrolled students on all five subtests. Ganschow and Sparks (1986) described case studies of four college students who were unable to fulfill the foreign language requirement. The four students all had difficulties with sustained listening and did poorly on the Listening/Grammar subtest of the Test of Adolescent Language or TOAL (Hammill et al. 1980). The authors concluded that an audiolingual approach to a foreign language where oral communication is stressed would be particularly difficult for these students. In another empirical study, the language skills of foreign language-enrolled students and students who had received petitions for substitution of the foreign language requirement because of a diagnosed learning disability were compared (Ganschow, Sparks, and Javorsky 1989). The MLAT was used as a measure of foreign language aptitude and the TOAL for oral and written expressive/receptive language. Between-group differences were seen on all five subtests of the MLAT. On the TOAL, significant differences were seen in the overall Adolescent Language Quotient and in subtests involving Listening/ Grammar, Reading/Grammar and overall Litening, Speaking, and Reading. The authors concluded that petitioning students exhibited

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particular deficits in the sustained listening, phonological coding, and grammatical areas of language function. What these studies suggest, then, is that among students who are unable to fulfill a foreign language requirement as adolescents/adults, there may be underlying language problems• Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that problem foreign language learners probably had early histories of language problems which either went unrecognized or were compensated for early in their schooling. Levine (1987) provides an explanation for this perhaps surprising phenomenon when he says: • . . some children with relatively mild or subclinical language disabilities may ultimately have learned to comprehend and express themselves in their native language because they have been so overexposed to i t . . . Ultimatel~ however, they encounter difficulties when they attempt to master a second language (p. 378). Kirk and Gallagher (1986) make a distinction between "developmental" and "academic" learning disabilities. Developmental learning disabilities, they sa}~ are characterized by difficulties with attention, memory, perception, thinking, and language. Unlike "academic" learning disabilities, the student with "developmental" learning disabilities may not necessarily manifest overt difficulties in school learning. Dinklage in a recent report to the University Health Services at Harvard (Dinklage 1987), describes early language difficulties among Harvard's foreign language waiver students: We found in these students that this was not the first time they had difficulty learning a language. They had experienced difficulty learning English in the early grades. Some had not really learned to read until late in elementary school; others might have repeated second or third grade; some simply reported having been in the "dumb" reading section. One Harvard student could not remember any particular reading problems, but did report that his first grade teacher told his parents that he was retarded--a conclusion most likely drawn from trouble learning to read. All these students by virtue of their high IQ and remedial help eventually became good readers, in fact, good enough to get into Harvard. The four students in Ganschow and Sparks' (1986) study each alluded to early learning difficulties related to language learning disabilities. None of these students had been diagnosed as learning disabled,

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nor had their disability surfaced formally until their referral for inability to complete the foreign language requirement. One described having had articulation difficulties in early elementary school. A second described a family history of dyslexia and said she had to write everything down in order to remember. A third reported being terrible in English grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. The fourth student said he hated reading and never read as a child, was late in learning to talk, and received speech therapy throughout elementary school. What we are finding, then, is that a "latent" disability is surfacing in some of our college-bound and college-enrolled students at the point at which they meet failure in the mastery of the foreign language requirement.

Purpose What, then, is the nature of this language disability that manifests itself in foreign language problems? Based on diagnostic inferences of case studies of almost two dozen college and college-bound learners who have been referred to us for testing because of inability to learn a foreign language, we propose to demonstrate in this paper that a typical psychoeducational evaluation will not provide clearcut evidence for a specific learning disability among these learners but that there is a common thread among these students--a disability in linguistic coding.

Definition of Linguistic Coding Linguistic coding consists of three components: the phonological, which includes tasks involving processing the phonetic sound/symbol elements of a language system; the syntactic, which involves understanding and then applying the concepts of grammatical and structural form of a language system; and the semantic, which involves understanding word meanings and relationships between language and the concept expressed through a language system. Phonological and syntactic tasks are intrinsic to acquiring language in its earliest stages. Semantic tasks are dependent upon the conceptual understanding of the messages or thoughts conveyed through language units. In the remainder of this paper we examine difficulties with current assessment procedures for diagnosing the problem foreign language learner, describe the linguistic coding deficiences we have found among foreign language petition students, with sample cases to illustrate both unique and overlapping types of linguistic coding difficulties, and make diagnostic inferences and implications.

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Discussion Insufficiency of Evidence from a Typical Psychoeducational Battery The subjects w h o formed the basis for our discussion were 22 college-bound or college-enrolled students w h o had received permission from their respective institutions either to waive or substitute the foreign language requirement. We first looked at IQ scores and then standardized educational assessments for commonalifies among students' full scale or subtest scores. IQ. Full scale IQ scores ranged from 90 to 123, with a mean IQ of 107. Verbal IQs ranged from 84 to 124 with a mean of 108; performance IQ's, 86 to 123 with a mean of 105. Of the 22 students, eight (or 36 percent) had statistically significant discrepancies between their Verbal and Performance IQ's. (Twelve or more points between these scores is considered statistically significant.) Of these, six (or 75 percent) had a Verbal score greater than Performance and two (or 25 percent) had a Performance score greater than Verbal. The presence of subtest variability (subtests having 3 or more scaled score points higher or lower than the student's own mean) was evident but there was no observable pattern of similarity among the students. Thus, the intellectual assessment, while a necessary diagnostic component, was not an instrument which provided support for a common diagnosis of a foreign language disability. Educational Assessment. An examination of achievement/potential discrepancies among full-test or cluster scores of typical test instruments used to screen for and identify specific learning disabilities was likewise unfruitful, both in terms of yielding commonalities of learning difficulties among the students and in obtaining similar performance/ potential discrepancies among full-test or cluster scores. Typical test instruments included the Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Test Battery Part I: Tests of Cognitive Ability and Part II: Tests of Achievement (Woodcock and Johnson 1977) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (Jastak and Wilkinson 1984). What we did find were the following: substantial variation in discrepancies ranging from I standard deviation to over 4 standard deviations; sizeable differences in what constituted these discrepancies (reading, written language, math, and processing areas such as perceptual speed, memory, etc.); and, in a number of cases, splinter skill strengths and deficits not revealed by full-test or cluster scores. We also discovered that there were certain tests and subtests in the language areas, i.e., phonological, syntactic, and semantic coding, which appeared to be related to the difficulty these students were having learning a foreign language. Some examples will help to illustrate the kinds of problems we are talking about.

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Case Studies of Students with Linguistic Coding Difficulties Marilyn appeared to have linguistic coding deficits in the area of phonology. She reported having a history of problems with reading, spelling, and written language. She had received speech therapy for several years in elementary school. Marilyn said she thought her reading and writing problems were due to her inability to figure out how to read/spell the words. She described herself as an "oral learner" who "learns by listening" and is a "whiz in math." Testing bore out this description, as Marilyn performed average to above-average on tasks involving listening and math. However, both reading and spelling skills were on a sixth grade level, with severe deficits noted in phonetic analysis. For example, she was unable to give the sounds for short vowels or vowel digraphs and diphthongs and was unable to spell even easy two-syllable words. There were no apparent problems with oral comprehension or expression, and, except for spelling, her written language composition was intact. Marilyn's IQ was in the average range. David's linguistic coding deficit was in the area of syntax. At the time of his referral for a suspected learning disability for learning a foreign language, he was a second semester senior majoring in Public Administration and had completed all graduation requirements with the exception of the final three semesters of foreign language. He had barely managed to pass first semester Spanish and had withdrawn from the second semester course. When David was questioned about his foreign language learning problems, he recalled that his difficulties had started in junior high school when he struggled with French and got C's and D's. Because of these earlier difficulties, he did not take a foreign language in high school but had to meet the requirement in college. He therefore enrolled in first semester Spanish. Problems began immediately in the first semester, but he survived with a D because of tutoring and hard work. David said that he could not make sense of the sentence structure of the language. Subsequent testing showed that David, whose overall IQ was in the Superior range, had severe deficits in the "Grammar" subtests of the Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery and the Test of Adolescent Language. No difficulties were found in overall spelling, arithmetic, or general knowledge. Sam had primary difficulties in the linguistic coding areas of syntax and semantics, but not phonology. He was a physics major who had gotten through two semesters of German with a C but had given up on third semester German after several attempts and an average of "20 hours per week" of study in the language. In contrast to Marilyn, Sam spoke of the difficulty he had with the lecture method and the fast presentation of material in German, as well as other courses. Testing showed that Sam, whose overall IQ was in the High Average range,

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had a 21 point discrepancy between Verbal and Performance IQ (favoring verbal), which the psychologist reported was due primarily to slow completion of the timed Performance subtests. Testing also showed superior performance on math and general knowledge, average performance on spelling and phonetic analysis, and below-average performance in subtests involving capitalization and punctuation, reading grammar, and reading comprehension. As we examined the self-reports and test profiles of these petition students, it became apparent that all of them could be classified as having one or more problems in the phonological, syntactic, or semantic areas of language. This one commonality seemed to hold, despite individual clusters of strengths and weaknesses ranging from difficulties with math to problems with the listening aspects of language. These three specific linguistic coding tasks not only constituted a pattern of definable problems, but they appeared to be bound closely to the nature and demands of language learning, native as well as foreign language. In the next section we describe findings with respect to our categorization of the 22 students into the three linguistic coding areas and the impact of this categorization on their ability to complete the foreign language requirement.

Linguistic Coding Composite Profiles among Foreign Language Petition Students Table I presents a breakdown of the incidence of linguistic coding problems by category or category cluster for our 22 students. As this table shows, we identified 32 percent (7) students as having learning problems in just one of the three areas (9 percent phonological only, 9 percent semantic only, and 14 percent syntactic only). The majorit~ 68 percent (15), were found to have problems in phonological/syntactic (27 percent), phonological/syntactic/semantic (27 percent), or syntactic/ semantic (14 percent) areas. When the individual student's course failure history was compared to that individual's problem profile perhaps the most significant data emerged to explain why and when students might experience specific learning problems with reference to foreign language learning. Table II presents incidence of category/categories of problems among the 22 students and their corresponding level of course failures. There emerged a pattern which suggests that a specific learning problem in phonological processing has an immediate and significant impact upon a student's ability to manage the study of a foreign language. All but one student out of the 14 who evidenced phonological problems were unable to pass at the second (102) level, and half of these (seven) were

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Table I Incidence of Linguistic Coding Problems by Category or Category/Cluster

Category/Cluster

Number of Students (N = 22)

Percent of Students

Phonological Phonological/Syntactic Phonological/Syntactic/Semantic Syntactic Syntactic/Semantic Semantic

XX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXX XXX XX

9% 27% 27% 14% 14% 9%

unable to get through the first (101) level. Students with syntactic and/ or semantic difficulties seemed to fare better in terms of completing at least a portion of the language requirement. Among the 8 students with syntactic and/or semantic difficulties without accompanying phonological difficulties, all were able to get through the first (101) level and 7 of the 8, the second (102) level. The two students who had only semantic difficulties were able to complete the first two levels of the language before failing at the third (201) level. What these findings showed then, is that those students who had both phonological and syntactic learning problems or problems in all three areas--phonological, syntactic, and semantic--met failure by the 102 (second) course level, and 50 percent (7/14) were unable to cornTable II Categories of Linguistic Coding Problems and Level of Course Failures Category of Linguistic Coding Problems Phonological Phonological/Syntactic Phonological/Syntactic/Semantic Syntactic Syntactic/Semantic Semantic X = IndividualStudent (N = 21)

Foreign Language Failure Level 101 X XXX XX

102 X X XXXX X

201 + X XX XXX XX

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plete even the 101 (first) course. Only one student who had phonological difficulties (combined with syntactic) made it through two semesters of the language. If, however, students' problems centered in the areas of syntactic and/or semantic coding with intact phonological skills, they appeared to be able to make it to the 201 level before meeting failure. Only one student out of 8 failed at the 102 level. It appears, then, that when the emphasis in foreign language study shifts to translation tasks--reading and written composition--at which point the semantic and syntactic elements become paramount, students with syntactic/semantic difficulties are no longer able to perform at these higher levels of expectation• Impact on test performance.

Our findings indicate that the problems petitioning students experience with a foreign language have a correlate in their management of the English language. Results of psychoeducational testing potentially can reflect these deficiencies. Thus, the student with phonological problems in foreign language may very well have significant spelling problems in English. For example, the following are sample responses from one phonologically disabled student's performance on the WRAT spelling subtest: illogical/eUogical, equipment/equpiment, opportu-

nity/opprotunity, decision/decessian. Likewise, if a student does not understand the grammatical and syntactic structure of a language, s/he will have difficulty in managing the structural elements of the language. Concrete documentation of this problem can often be found in his/her written composition. Analysis of writing samples, while not readily available in standardized format, can be done through informal but specific review. College admission criteria frequently stipulate a written composition. The following is a limited sample from a syntactically disabled student's written composition. This student had been asked to write on the need to determine self-values when choosing a profession: • . . that is to sa~fi what makes one feel happy accomplished or successful. Once this is one. Then a career or occupational field must be Found that will Allow one to partake and become involved In the types of activities and functions That make him or herself feel good. When this student was asked if any of his instructors had ever commented about his writing skills on reports or essays, he replied, "No," only that they liked what he had to say. Obviously, ideation is not a problem, nor is command of the language in terms of formulation.

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However, the failure to be able to write his thoughts in sentence units and to use mechanical conventions are significant issues. In foreign language translation, writing in complete sentences and attention to mechanical rules are essential criteria affecting judgments about a student's knowledge and performance abilities. Likewise, students who have difficulty with comprehension because they think in literal terms--one word, one meaning--are likely to have difficulty with idiomatic expressions and implied meanings of words and phrases in a foreign language. These students, who may have intact phonological and grammatical skills, may falter when the language becomes richer and more complex, i.e., in third and fourth semesters of the language. There are both tests and tasks that can assist the diagnostician in pinpointing the types of linguistic coding problems of petition students.

Tests

Our collaborative diagnostic studies and personal experiences with dozens of petition students have enabled us to identify specific tests and tasks which are helpful in probing each of the three areas of linguistic coding. Figure I presents typical linguistic coding problems and tests/tasks which probe these functions in the areas of phonological, syntactic, and semantic coding. These tests/tasks yield standardized norms or objective data which can be used to define the nature and the degree of the student's problems. Because our evaluations have been concerned with identifying a specific learning disability for learning a foreign language, we have had to locate instruments with normative or criterion data which can be used in determining a discrepancy between a student's intellectual potential and his/her academic performance. Thus, the selected tests are published and widely available to educators and psychologists. Our preliminary findings on 22 foreign language petition students suggest that students who self-report early histories or current difficulties in any of the functions described under each coding area should be tested with instruments and tasks appropriate for probing that specialized function. Sometimes individual subtests within these broader tests reveal the particular linguistic coding deficit. In this case, corroboration with a second related subtest should be undertaken. For many published tests, the evaluator is cautioned about assuming the validity of a single subtest performance apart from the other subtests in the cluster. When, however, support can be found in other related tests or subtests, as well as in functional application contexts, there can be greater confidence in identifying and defining a specific skill area as the source or contributing factor to a learning problem.

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Phonological: Problems involving: auditory discrimination of sound elements auditory blending or sound elements memory for sound elements sound/symbol code deficiencies spelling problems auditory distractibility Tests/tasks which probe these functions: Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Auditory Selective Attention Test (Goldman, Fristoe, and Woodcock 1974a) Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Sound-Symbol Tests, subtests 1, 4, 6, 7 (Goldman, Fristoe, and Woodcock 1974b) Modern Language Aptitude Tests, subtests 1, 2 (Carroll and Sapon 1959) Test of Written Spelling-R (Larsen and Hammill, 1986) Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test (Wepman, 1958) Wide Range Achievement Test-R, Spelling (Jastak and Wilkinson 1984) Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery: Part II: Tests of Achievement, word attack subtest (Woodcock and Johnson, 1977) Syntactic: Problems involving: understanding of grammatical rules construction of grammatical sentences, written and oral tenses, appropriate word usage, prefixes, suffixes mechanical rules short-term auditory memory for structured language verbal inflexibility Tests/tasks which probe these functions: analysis of writing samples for grammatical errors and errors of syntax Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (Semel, Wiig and Secord 1987) Modern Language Aptitude Test, subtest 4 (Carroll and Sapon 1959) Test of Adolescent Language, grammar cluster (Hammill et al. 1980) Test of Written Language-2 (Hammill and Larsen 1988) Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery: Part II: Tests of Achievement, proofing subtest (Woodcock and Johnson 1977) continued Figure 1. Phonological, syntactic, and semantic problems and tests~tasks which probe these function.

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Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery: Part I: Tests of Cognitive Ability, memory cluster, (Woodcock and Johnson 1977) Semantic:

Problems involving: vocabulary knowledge, word retrieval semantic referencing (e.g., pronouns, synonyms) understanding of multiple meanings of words inferences understanding and use of cohesive ties management of different language formats (e.g., fiction vs. nonfiction books) Tests/tasks which probe these functions: Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (Semel, Wiig and Secord 1987) Gray Oral Reading Tests-Revised, Task II: Vocabulary and Comprehension (Wiederholt and Bryant 1986) Modern Language Aptitude Test, subtest 3 (Carroll and Sapon 1959) Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (Dunn and Dunn 1981) Test of Adolescent Language, subtest Listening Grammar (Hammill et al. 1980) Woodcock Johnson Psychoeducational Battery: Part h Tests of Cognitive Ability, subtests Picture Vocabulary, Antonyms-Synonyms (Woodcock and Johnson 1977) Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (Woodcock 1987) Figure 1.

continued

Conclusions and Recommendations

From our investigation into the foreign language learning problems of students referred to us for psychoeducational evaluation because of foreign language difficulties, we have suggested that they have in common three identifiable and specific categories of linguistic coding problems: phonological, syntactic, and semantic. We have found that these problems may affect a student's ability to manage the demands of foreign language learning. Among the sample of students we have studied, there appears to be a correspondence between the nature of the student's problem or problems with one or more of the three basic categories of linguistic coding tasks and his/her ability to manage course levels of foreign language study. Phonological problems, especially, seem to have an ira-

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mediate and significant impact as the learner attempts to begin his studies. Students with syntactic problems may be able to pass at least one semester of the language and some, two. Semantic problems have their greatest impact when the need for cognitive and contextual understanding becomes the essential learning task. The students' specific linguistic coding problems are present in their English language performance and may be revealed through careful examination of test performance in the specific areas of phonological, syntactic, and semantic language function. There are tests currently not typically used in psychoeducational evaluations that can tap these difficulties. We suggest that an assessment of foreign language difficulties include these recommended tests, including relevant subtests. Knowledge of appropriate tests for the identification of students with learning disabilities related to foreign language is essential for diagnosticians. This is because of the clear expectation in most colleges and universities that students who are granted petitions for foreign language course substitutions must have substantiated evidence of a learning disability (Ganschow, Myer, and Roeger in press). We recommend that the diagnostic data derived from a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation be applied to more than just the documentation and substantiation of a petition for a foreign language waiver or course substitution plan. If the goals of foreign language learning are for the student to become conversant in the language and literate in managing foreign language texts, the SLD student is in jeopardy of being able to meet these standards under the constraints of the instructional approaches and learning pace required by traditional foreign language instruction. If, however, the goal can be for the student to pursue a cognitive study in order to acquire knowledge about another language system, then the SLD student may be an appropriate learner. In order for this student to pursue such study, data from the comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation can be used to assist in the development of alternative foreign language course instruction where adjustments are made in terms of the methods and strategies for learning, and the time for this instruction is expanded. In this paper we have proposed that foreign language petition students have underlying linguistic coding deficits which negatively affect their ability to learn a foreign language. There is a need to validate this diagnostic hypothesis through empirical studies. We see this as the next step in our exploration of the "foreign" language learning disability and are in the process of designing the necessary experimentation. References Carroll, J. B. and Sapon, S. M. 1959. Modern LanguageAptitude Test. Chicago: The Psychological Corporation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

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