ERIC Number: EJ1081220
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Oct
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0265-5322
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Reexamining Elicited Imitation as a Measure of Implicit Grammatical Knowledge and Beyond…?
Sarandi, Hedayat
Language Testing, v32 n4 p485-501 Oct 2015
This study examines elicited imitation (EI) both as a measure of implicit grammatical knowledge and more global semantic and syntactic knowledge. It also examines whether length affects the difficulty of EI tests when they contain both grammatical and ungrammatical items. Fifty language learners took an EI test and an oral narrative task. The data were analyzed once for the accuracy of a single target structure, third person "-s", and then for the global semantic and syntactic accuracy. Moderate correlations were recorded between the learners' third person accuracy scores on the oral narrative task and the grammatical and ungrammatical items of the EI test (r?=?0.62 and r?=?0.66 respectively). A moderate correlation was also found between the learners' global semantic and syntactic scores on the EI test and the oral narrative task (r?=?0.51). Furthermore, unlike the grammatical items, no significant correlation was recorded between length and the performance of the learners on the ungrammatical items. The findings underscore the need to validate EI against other tests of productive skills especially when EI is used as a measure of global language proficiency. Suggestion is made to explore structural-specific factors that contribute to difficulty level of EI tests.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, College Students, Imitation, Grammar, Language Tests, Correlation, Accuracy, Semantics, Syntax, Language Proficiency, Oral Language, Morphemes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Turkey
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A