Elicited Imitation as a Measure of L2 Implicit Knowledge: An Empirical Validation Study

Does the language we speak influence how we think about the events in our experience? If so, do bilingual speakers construe the same event in different ways, depending on the language they use to verbally encode that event? Or does one of the languages play a more dominant role in influencing event construal? The present study investigates whether bilingual speakers attend to different aspects of a motion event, depending on the language they use to first describe that event. Specifically, we explore whether language-specific verb representations used in encoding motion events influence subsequent performance in a nonlinguistic similarity judgment task in Spanish-English bilinguals.We will begin by looking at different perspectives on whether language influences thought, including views on linguistic relativity and "thinking-for-speaking." Then we will focus on the domain of motion. We will present linguistic accounts of the semantic representations of motion verbs and discuss the crosslinguistic difference between English and Spanish. Next, we will review empirical studies that examine how verbal encodings influence motion event construal in monolinguals. We will also review empirical studies that explore linguistic relativity versus thinking-forspeaking in bilinguals. We then go on describe the current study. In the final section of the chapter, we discuss our findings in light of thinking-for-speaking effects, how events are conceptualized for language production, and the nature of representations in the bilingual mind.

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“…Erlam 2006). The fact that all four studies found the effect of verbal encoding demonstrates the profound impact of such encoding.…”

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confidence: 93%

Verb Representation and Thinking-for-Speaking Effects in Spanish–English Bilinguals

Lai

Narasimhan

2014

Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing

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“…The test of implicit L2 knowledge was an elicited imitation test (R. Ellis, 2006;R. Ellis et al, 2009;Erlam, 2006) comprising 78 sentences, with three grammatical and three ungrammatical sentences targeting each of the 13 grammar points, presented auditorily in a fixed pseudo-random order. Two sentences for each grammar point were adapted directly from Erlam (2006), while the remaining four were constructed to fit the cultural context and world knowledge of the learners.…”

Section: Instruments and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived Learning Difficulty and Actual Performance

Silva

Roehr-Brackin

2015

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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This paper draws on an approach that conceptualizes L2 learning difficulty in terms of implicit and explicit knowledge. In a study with L1 Mexican Spanish university-level learners (n=30), their teachers (n=11) and applied linguistics experts (n=3), we investigated the relationship between (a) these groups' difficulty judgements of 13 selected L2 English structures and (b) perceived learning difficulty and learners' actual performance on measures of implicit and explicit knowledge. Our findings show that experts' learning difficulty judgements did not lead to significant predictions, while the learners' own difficulty rankings correlated significantly with their performance on the measure of explicit knowledge.Although correlations based on teachers' difficulty rankings did not reach statistical significance, the judgements of this group were the only ones which showed trends towards successful prediction of learners' performance on both the implicit and the explicit L2 measures. Thus, the teachers exhibited a trend towards the best overall prediction ability.

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“…The EI test (Erlam 2006) required learners to express their attitudes towards the contents of a sentence presented orally (e.g., A good doctor always listens what patients say, agree or disagree, or uncertain) and then they were asked to repeat it in correct English. It was expected that learners' implicit knowledge would be tapped on this test because their primary attentional focus was on meaning.…”

Section: Untimed Grammaticality Judgementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodological considerations in studying awareness during learning. Part 2: Second Language Acquisition

Nakamura¹

2013

Polish Psychological Bulletin

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This paper considers methodological issues of awareness during adult second language acquisition (SLA). Specifically, the paper deals with (a) the issue of instructional orientations, (b) the issue of biases in knowledge measurement, and (c) the issue of reactivity in the online think-aloud protocol. Detailed reviews of prominent SLA research that has investigated the possibility of implicit SLA reveal (1) that the instruction on implicit learning does not guarantee that learners engage in the implicit learning mode, (2) that the majority of SLA research has employed only tests of “explicit learning” such as untimed grammaticality judgment, and (3) that there is some evidence that the online think-aloud protocol causes negative reactivity particularly when it is metalinguistic in nature.

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Elicited Imitation as a Measure of L2 Implicit Knowledge: An Empirical Validation Study

Cited by 239 publications

References 26 publications

Verb Representation and Thinking-for-Speaking Effects in Spanish–English Bilinguals

Verb Representation and Thinking-for-Speaking Effects in Spanish–English Bilinguals

Perceived Learning Difficulty and Actual Performance

Methodological considerations in studying awareness during learning. Part 2: Second Language Acquisition

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