Elicited imitation:a brief overview

Abstract

This article considers the key concepts of elicited imitation (EI), with the aim of contributing to the understanding of this technique for language testing. EI has been widely debated and often criticized, but there seems now to be an agreement as to its usefulness, as long as it is applied with great care. The article reviews the literature on EI and suggests some issues for discussion, such as the process of imitating, the length and structure of the stimulus, contextual support, whether the test evaluates comprehension or production skills, whether it assesses imitative or spontaneous language capacity, and how scoring is carried out. Although the focus is on foreign language acquisition (FLA), studies about EI within other areas have been included where this is considered useful for the understanding of the technique.

Distributionally constrained items in child language: the acquisition of superweak NPI shenme ‘a/some’ in Mandarin Chinese

“…I therefore followed van der Wal (1996) in using this experimental method. In an elicited imitation task, children are required to listen carefully to pre-recorded stimuli first, and then to repeat the stimuli as precisely as they can (Lust et al 1996;Vinther 2002;Eisenbeiss 2010; among others). When repeating a stimulus, children are claimed to make use of the grammatical rules they have established so far to reconstruct their own mental representation of the stimulus before "repeating" it (Chomsky 1964;Scholl & Ryan 1980;Keenan & Hawkins 1987;Panitsa 2001;Eisenbeiss 2010).…”

“…When repeating a stimulus, children are claimed to make use of the grammatical rules they have established so far to reconstruct their own mental representation of the stimulus before "repeating" it (Chomsky 1964;Scholl & Ryan 1980;Keenan & Hawkins 1987;Panitsa 2001;Eisenbeiss 2010). If a stimulus is in agreement with the children's own grammar, they repeat the stimulus immediately after hearing it (Scholl & Ryan 1980); if, on the other hand, a stimulus is not compatible with their grasp of the grammar of the target language, they correct it in accordance with their own grammatical system, give an irrelevant response such as I don't know, or do not give a response at all (Keeney & Wolfe 1972;Brown 1973;Panitsa 2001;Vinther 2002). In the current research, this means that children only provide an imitation response if the appearance of shenme in the manipulated context of a stimulus is in agreement with the analysis of shenme that they have established thus far.…”

La interfaz portugués-castellano en Misiones, Argentina: zona de prueba para la alternancia de lenguas

“…Cuando se sobrecarga la memoria operativa, es posible que el participante no repita exactamente lo que escucha sino lo que piensa haber escuchado, es decir, lo que el participante mismo habría dicho (Gullberg, Indefrey y Muysken 2009: 34;Miller y Isard 1963;Marslen-Wilson1985;Vinther 2002). Este procedimiento ofrece una manera indirecta de sondear la competencia gramatical del participante sin pedir juicios explícitos de aceptabilidad, que en el caso de variedades lingüísticas no canónicas y personas de limitada formación escolar no son confiables.…”

Measuring Grammatical Development in Bilingual Mandarin-English Speaking Children with a Sentence Repetition Task

“…This measure is used to ascertain the development of the speaking skills among children and older learners acquiring a second language, as well as to survey the level of bilingual language development and implicit L2 knowledge (e.g. Bley-Vroman & Chaudron, 1994;Vinther, 2002;Erlam, 2006;Graham, Londsdale, Kennington, McGhee, & Johnson, 2008;Weitze, McGhee, Graham, Dewey, & Eggett, 2011;Wong & Teo, 2012).…”