I__. - International Military Testing Association

perspective of linguistic analysis with a cognitively oriented analysis of
the language learning process. The interdisciplinary team is expected to
to develop a comprehensive list of abilities involved in learning foreign
language S , including abilities that may be required in some languages but
not all. On the one hand, this involves insuring that the definition of
langugage proficiency is detailed enough that the cognitive abilities
required to develop each category of proficiency can be specified. On the
other hand, it involves reaching a consensus that the list of abilities is
broadly applicable across foreign languages and across diverse training
programs in these foreign languages.
It is anticipated that the team would draft a preliminary taxonomy of
abilities as a baseline list of skills which would be iteratively modified
and improved as attempts were made to apply it to successive individual
languages. At the same time the team would highlight any features of each
successive language that experience had shown were relatively hard or
relatively easy for native English speakers to learn. This process would
serve both to validate the taxonomy and to identify differences between
languages in cognitive abilities required.
In an effort parallel to the validation of