The present volume has explored a very wide range of topics within the field of foreign language aptitude with sections covering aptitude test batteries, the testing of diverse groups, innovative perspectives, and pedagogic implications. Each chapter has made a considerable contribution to updating the topic of aptitude. Inevitably, though, the chapters have explored areas that transcend the different heading sections, making new connections and even announcing new areas for aptitude research. The present chapter highlights all of these insights and weaves them into the discussion of a series of themes which emerge, some traditional from established aptitude work and some reflecting the changes we have seen in recent years.

The editors of this volume have issued a full-throated call for a paradigm shift in language aptitude research from its predominant focus on test construction for the purpose of predicting success to theory construction that would enable diagnosis and explanation of second language learning processes and outcomes, as well as tailored teaching of foreign languages. The paradigm shift called for is, indeed, timely and of paramount importance. This epilogue revisits the origins of foreign language aptitude testing and the intended purposes of the original language aptitude batteries, especially the MLAT. The approach in this epilogue is to introduce and discuss questions that are key to the paradigm shift from the Carroll era of test construction to contemporary efforts to develop a comprehensive theory of language learning. Overall, it argues that individual chapters of this volume have contributed to demonstrating how the potential links between language aptitude testers and language teachers (the practitioners) can be built through joint efforts to illuminate the underlying processes and outcomes of foreign/second language learning.

Argued December 14, 1970.Decided March 8, 1971.

Justices Angela ONWUACHI-WILLIG and David SIMSON delivered the opinion of the Court.1

This case presents the first opportunity for this Court to interpret the provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the context of race discrimination. As the Act grew out of, and was meant to help resolve, a period of massive contestation over the possibility, and terms, of racial progress in the United States – a contestation that continues – our task is of the utmost importance. In this case, a group of black employees argues that the practice of their employer, respondent Duke Power Company (“Duke” or “the company”), to require a high school education or satisfactory scores on two standardized general ability tests as a prerequisite for transfer and promotion discriminates against them on the basis of race in violation of Title VII.