Table 1. English proficiency and years in an English-speaking country
                       and years of formal English study*
__________________________________________________________________________
                                         Correlation with years in an
                    Test                  English-speaking country
__________________________________________________________________________
                                              r                p
Michigan (Exam. in structure)               0.18            p < 0.05
Composition                                 0.22            p < 0.025
Cloze                                       0.24            p < 0.01

                                          Correlation with reported years
                    Test                      of formal ESL study
                                              r                p
Michigan (Exam. in structure)               0.50            p < 0.001
Composition                                 0.34            p < 0.005
Cloze                                       0.47            p < 0.001
__________________________________________________________________________
* From Krashen, Jones, Zelinski, and Usprich (1978).

Discussion of Literature Survey

The last three studies described above (Krashen and Seliger, 1976; Krashen, Seliger, and Hartnett, 1974; Krashen, Jones, Zelinski, and Usprich, 1978) provide explicit support of hypothesis II. These three studies, however, share a feature that prevents them from being convincing counterexamples to hypothesis I. "Years spent in an English-speaking country" need not be equivalent to time spent in meaningful informal linguistic environment. There is an important difference between the measures used in the Upshur, Mason, and Carroll studies and the measure used in the Krashen et al. series. In the former group of studies, we can be fairly certain that the second language student was involved in real and sustained second language use situations. Upshur and Mason's subjects were university students who were taking courses taught in English. In addition, they were also probably taking part in the social life of their respective schools. Carroll's "year abroad" students were also highly likely to have been engaged in real communicative use of the language, as their primary purpose for going abroad, in most cases, was to have additional opportunities to converse with native speakers of the language they were studying. In the Krashen et al. series, we have much less knowledge of just how much or what percentage of time was spent in

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