Elicited Imitation Research Articles

The influence of pre-task grammar instruction on L2 learning: An experimental study

This article reports a study examining the impact of pre-task explicit instruction on L2 learning outcomes. 72 eighth-grade EFL learners at a Chinese middle school were assigned to three groups: Explicit Instruction + Task (EI), Task Only, and Control. Both experimental groups performed two communicative tasks providing opportunities for the learners’ exposure to and use of the English passive voice―the target structure. The EI group were given a brief grammar lesson on the target structure before performing the tasks, while the Task Only group performed the tasks without receiving the grammar lesson. The control group did not receive any instructional treatment. Learning was measured via an untimed grammaticality judgement test and an elicited imitation test. The results showed that pretask instruction resulted in greater learning gains, but the effects were only evident on the grammaticality judgment test. The results suggest that pretask instruction may facilitate the learning of explicit knowledge but its effects on implicit knowledge remain unclear.

Preserved speed of processing and memory in infants with a history of moderate neonatal encephalopathy treated with therapeutic hypothermia.

Survivors of neonatal encephalopathy (NE) are at risk for impaired cognition. The objective of this study was to assess speed of processing (SOP) and memory in infants with moderate NE. Sample consisted of 17 infants with NE and 23 healthy controls. Visual-evoked potentials (VEP) were assessed at 8 months to assess SOP. Memory was assessed at 12 months using elicited imitation (EI). Memory and SOP had previously been assessed in this cohort in the newborn period. Infants with NE had similar SOP and EI performance as controls. Newborn SOP correlated with 8-month SOP in infants with NE, however, neonatal ERP memory measures were not correlated with EI performance at 12 months. Infants with moderate NE treated with TH show preserved memory and SOP through 12 months. Early behavioral and electrophysiologic assessments of memory and SOP provide insight into developing cognitive functions in this risk group.

Semiotic Processing in Working Memory

AbstractThe hitherto unrecognized task of Empirical Semiotics is to identify particular testing procedures which measure qualitative differences in how representations are processed. Elicited imitation (EI) can indicate the nature of the interpretants which hold between sign and object by tapping how meanings are processed in working memory (WM). The way in which linguistic forms are handled in WM reveals striking distinctions between interpretants which express a proposition, as opposed to those which are simply diagrammatic in nature. EI is the soundest method (compared to natural speech, grammatical judgments) to measure qualitative semiotic advances because it measures meaning changes accorded to the sign in WM. Subjects were instructed to provide word associations after each stimulus (twenty-four sentences) to guard against verbatim recall. Repetitions of the advanced groups more often contained meaningful substitutions (words/inflections), whereas word deletions were more often documented in the beginner groups. Findings indicate the propensity of the more advanced L2s to process signs as meaningful propositions – lower proficiency learners illustrating verbatim repetitions in Secondness (associating more diagrammatic interpretants), while more symbolic meanings surfaced (Thirdness) in advanced groups. The EI procedure constitutes the best method of tapping L2s interpretants which mediate sign–object relations.

Interactions between type of form-focused instruction, type of morphosyntactic form, and type of language knowledge

AbstractAlthough claims about the nature of EFL/ESL learners’ knowledge (i. e., implicit and/or explicit) are essential to many debates in foreign/second language development, few studies have sought to evaluate the effects of linguistic and/or contextual variables on the two knowledge types. This study, accordingly, undertook to examine the effects of different explicit and implicit types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of four easy and difficult forms as assessed by different implicit and explicit outcome measures. The instruments utilized to assess students’ learning were: oral elicited imitation, untimed and timed grammaticality judgment, and metalinguistic knowledge tests. A pretest and two posttests were administered to 150 novice learners immediately after FFI and again after a 4-week delay. Immediate and durable effects of FFI were found for the easy and difficult target forms on both implicit and explicit knowledge measures. Specifically, the study indicated that explicit and implicit types of FFI were significantly more beneficial for explicitly-easy and implicitly-easy language forms respectively. The findings of this study may contribute a different set of insights to our understanding of the efficacy of varying types of FFI on learners’ controlled and/or spontaneous use of easy and difficult structures at early stages of L2 development.

Influence of L1 Properties and Proficiency on the Acquisition of Gender Agreement

This research investigates the influence of L1 properties and proficiency level on the acquisition of the Spanish gender agreement system. French and English-speaking learners of Spanish participated in the study. Subjects were divided into four different groups considering their L1 (French and English) and their proficiency level (intermediate and advanced). Subjects completed three different tasks: an untimed grammaticality judgment (UGJT) to measure learners’ explicit knowledge, an elicited oral imitation (EOI) and an eye-tracking to assess their implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement system. From this multi-tiered methodology, this research project aimed to examine whether L1 properties and proficiency level influence learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge of the Spanish gender agreement. The results from the UGJT suggest that both French and English learners can notice noun-adjective discord. As for the EOI and eye-tracking tasks, only the French advanced learners clearly demonstrated integrated implicit knowledge of gender agreement. Therefore, based on these results, we can imply that implicit knowledge of gender agreement is acquired later and that L1 properties influence this whole process, even at an advanced proficiency level.

Mixed corrective feedback and the acquisition of third person ‘-s’

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of mixed oral corrective feedback (CF) on L2 learners’ oral production accuracy. Twenty-four EFL learners from two intact classes in a Turkish university participated in the study. The two classes were randomly assigned to be an experimental and a control group and completed five communicative tasks. The learners in the experimental group received mixed oral CF in response to their erroneous use of English third person ‘-s’ ending. The CF took the form of prompts and recasts; the latter were applied when the former failed to elicit the correct form, or when prompts were deemed to create awkward interruptions in the flow of conversation. Learners’ oral production accuracy was measured through an elicited imitation (EI) test and an oral narrative task. The results of the immediate and delayed posttests showed that the learners in the experimental group significantly outperformed those in the control group on the oral narrative task, but not on the EI test. The findings suggest that a combined application of prompts and recasts can improve learners’ oral accuracy of partially learned structures.

An elicited imitation test for measuring preschoolers' language development.

The present article describes a new Persian elicited imitation test (EIT) developed for assessing the overall language proficiency of Persian-speaking preschoolers. It reports a study that investigated the power of the EIT in discriminating children's linguistic abilities through having them repeat sentences of varying lengths and morphosyntactic complexity. The study also explored the relationship between children's performance on the EIT and their free speech. A total of 119 three- to- six-year-old Iranian monolingual children participated in the study by completing the EIT and an oral narrative task. Results showed that the new EIT can discriminate children with different levels of language abilities. Moreover, positive correlations were found between children's scores on the EIT and their performance on the oral narrative task. Results suggest that the EIT provides a reliable measure of overall language development, and it can be effectively used to evaluate children's language proficiency in various contexts.

Acquisition of the Dutch NPI Hoeven ‘Need’: From Lexical Frames to Abstract Knowledge

ABSTRACTThis article aims to investigate how Dutch children may eventually converge on a targetlike distribution of hoeven ‘need,’ a modal verbal NPI (Negative Polarity Item), based on its appearance in the scope of merely some but not all of its possible licensers in the language input (i.e., the induction problem). Imitation performance was obtained from 106 monolingual Dutch children (2;09–5;10; mean = 4;04; SD = 8.5 months) using an elicited imitation task. Results suggest that before age 3, children only accept hoeven to appear with either the sentential negation niet ‘not’ or the negative quantifier geen ‘no.’ After age 3, children start developing their knowledge of the licensing of hoeven in other negative expressions as well—namely niemand ‘nobody,’ weinig ‘few,’ and alleen ‘only’—and eventually allow hoeven in the scope of these negative words after age 5. Based on these developmental patterns, we assume that children initially analyze hoeven as bearing a lexical dependency with either niet or geen, represented by two lexical frames [hoef niet] ‘need not’ and [hoef geen] ‘need no’ and that they develop a dependency relationship between the NPI and an abstract negator neg later on, which is realized by an abstract analysis [hoef neg] ‘need neg.’ Adopting a distribution-based learning approach, we show that the two lexical frames are established based on hoeven’s overwhelming occurrence with either niet or geen in the input. As for the development of the abstract analysis, we argue that children’s knowledge of syntactic decomposition of negation is of crucial importance. Since [hoef neg] turns out to be the representation of the NPI in late child grammar, we moreover argue that hoeven is an NPI, due to its lexical dependency with the abstract negator neg

NEW ANALYSES OF LANGUAGE PROCESSING REVEAL THAT SEMANTICS DISSOCIATES FROM SYNTAX IN MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

Semantic memory deficits are evident in MCI. While recent evidence has also shown subtle differences in more complex language production there is little evidence on the mechanisms by which semantics and syntax interact in MCI. In this inter-institutional research, we evaluated the roles of semantics and syntax in MCI, amnestic type (n=21, aged 68–88)) and Healthy Aging (n=25, aged 62–87). Subjects were presented with an Elicited Imitation test, in which they repeated 60 sentences including Relative clauses (RC), Coordinate (CS) and Adverbial subordinate (ASC) sentences. Sentences were controlled for length and lexical frequency and varied by semantic plausibility with half semantically implausible. Subjects were also administered the Addenbrook's Cognitive Estimation Test-Revised (ACE-R) which provides a total score and scores within different cognitive domains. For both groups, there was a significant difference in elicited imitation success favoring semantically plausible sentences, and no significant interaction between semantics and group. Although MCI subjects were significantly less accurate in imitating sentences relative to HA for all sentences types (RC: HA > MCI (p=0.0012, t=3.35); CS: HA > MCI (p=0.0077, t=2.71); ASC: HA > MCI (p=0.0052, t=2.86)), both groups showed the same pattern of sentence success across both semantic conditions. Regression tests of cognitive variables against linguistic performance suggested a significant predictive effect of cognition in HA, but not MCI. Analysis of ACE-R components revealed that phonemic, but not semantic fluency significantly predicted linguistic success in both groups. Findings suggest that in MCI semantic and syntactic deficits are to some degree divorced. A more complete analysis of language is necessary to strengthen neuropsychological profiling in clinical MCI assessment. Findings suggest that a distinction of MCI from HA does not involve cognitive deficit in semantic memory alone. Given that MCI subjects were less successful on this task in both semantic conditions and that general cognition and semantic fluency do not predict sentence production, we suggest that the ability to integrate semantic memory with the syntactic computation necessary for language comprehension and production may explain our results.

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

This paper presents new experimental results obtained from 88 Mandarin speaking children (2; 11 – 4; 09; M = 3; 11; SD = 0; 6; 44 girls) in their acquisition of shenme ‘a/some’, a prototypical superweak Negative Polarity Item (NPI) that survives in nonveridical contexts only (cf. Lin Jing et al. 2014). The existence of NPIs like shenme leads to a learnability problem. Without being confronted with negative evidence, such as corrective feedback or explicit instructions on shenme’s ungrammaticality in contexts that are not nonveridical, how can children detect shenme’s distributional constraint? By analysing children’s performance in an elicited imitation task, this paper investigates the learnability of the superweak NPI in Mandarin Chinese. The results suggest a learning process in which Mandarin children initially analyse shenme as a mere wh-quantifier and reanalyse it as a referentially deficient quantifier later on. The wh-analysis gives rise to a distribution of shenme in wh-questions only, whereas the non-referential analysis generates shenme’s distribution in the whole array of nonveridical contexts. The investigation of the acquisition of the Mandarin NPI shenme shows that children are able to acquire distributionally constrained items in the absence of negative evidence: they start out with a strict assumption (i.e. the wh-analysis) and switch to a less strict and generalising analysis (i.e. the non-referential analysis) later on.

Responses made by late talkers and typically developing toddlers during speech assessments

Purpose: Assessing toddlers’ speech is challenging. We explored responses made by late talkers and their typically developing peers in structured speech sampling contexts and determined if late talker subgroups could be identified.Method: Twenty-six late talkers and 26 age-matched typically developing toddlers participated in an expressive phonology assessment and an elicited non-word imitation test. We quantified the breadth of toddler responses used in a subset of monosyllabic stimuli from the toddler phonology assessment and in the non-word imitation test. Correlational and cluster analyses were conducted.Result: There were six response types: no response, protoword response, different verbal response, correct phoneme, common and uncommon phonological errors. Toddlers’ use of most of the response types correlated across the two sampling contexts. Use of the response types also correlated with several direct and parent-report assessments. There were significant group differences in the use of several response types in both sampling contexts. Five late talker subgroups were identified that presented with differing profiles of responses.Conclusion: Toddlers respond in a variety of ways during structured speech sampling contexts. Responses made by late talkers offer insights about the nature of late talking and their heterogeneity. Implications for research and clinical management of late talkers are discussed.

A Measure of Proficiency or Short‐Term Memory? Validation of an Elicited Imitation Test for SLA Research

Elicited imitation requires listeners to listen and repeat sentences as accurately as possible. In second language acquisition (SLA) research it has been used for a variety of purposes. Recently, versions of the same elicited imitation test (EIT) have been created in 6 languages with the purpose of measuring second language proficiency (Ortega et al., ; Tracy–Ventura et al., 2014; Wu & Ortega, ). The validity of these EITs has been tested, and results are promising. However, questions remain regarding the extent to which EIT performance is mediated by learners’ memory span. The current study validates a new Korean EIT following the Ortega et al. () design and, as part of that, investigates the potential role of phonological short‐term memory in test performance. Korean as a second language learners (N = 66) took the following tests over 2 days: the Korean EIT, the listening section of the standardized Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), a speaking test, and a forward digit span test in their first language. Results indicated significant positive correlations between EIT scores and the various proficiency measures, but a weak and nonsignificant correlation between the EIT and forward digit span scores. Together, these results provide support for this EIT as a valid and reliable proficiency measure for use in SLA research.

Automatization in second language sentence processing: Relationship between elicited imitation and maze tasks

The present study investigates the automatization of second language (L2) sentence processing. It compares the extent to which a mere speedup (faster execution) and restructuring (more stable execution) of sentence processing contribute to L2 oral performance. The maze task is used to measure the speed (reaction time, RT) and processing stability (coefficient of variance, CV) of sentence processing. The elicited imitation (EI) task measures L2 oral proficiency (repetition accuracy and accuracy in plural and third person s). These tasks were performed by 110 English-as-a-foreign-language learners with Japanese as their L1. The results show that only RT, not CV, significantly predicts L2 oral proficiency. Even though a subgroup of learners, who previously stayed in an English-speaking country, demonstrated some indications of automatization, RT was a better predictor of L2 oral proficiency than CV, irrespective of immersion experience. These findings suggest that CV has little practical value in predicting L2 oral proficiency.

Elicited imitation as a measure of second language proficiency: A narrative review and meta-analysis

Elicited imitation (EI) has been widely used to examine second language (L2) proficiency and development and was an especially popular method in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, as the field embraced more communicative approaches to both instruction and assessment, the use of EI diminished, and the construct-related validity of EI scores as a representation of language proficiency was called into question. Current uses of EI, while not discounting the importance of communicative activities and assessments, tend to focus on the importance of processing and automaticity. This study presents a systematic review of EI in an effort to clarify the construct and usefulness of EI tasks in L2 research. The review underwent two phases: a narrative review and a meta-analysis. We surveyed 76 theoretical and empirical studies from 1970 to 2014, to investigate the use of EI in particular with respect to the research/assessment context and task features. The results of the narrative review provided a theoretical basis for the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis utilized 24 independent effect sizes based on 1089 participants obtained from 21 studies. To investigate evidence of construct-related validity for EI, we examined the following: (1) the ability of EI scores to distinguish speakers across proficiency levels; (2) correlations between scores on EI and other measures of language proficiency; and (3) key task features that moderate the sensitivity of EI. Results of the review demonstrate that EI tasks vary greatly in terms of task features; however, EI tasks in general have a strong ability to discriminate between speakers across proficiency levels (Hedges’ g = 1.34). Additionally, construct, sentence length, and scoring method were identified as moderators for the sensitivity of EI. Findings of this study provide supportive construct-related validity evidence for EI as a measure of L2 proficiency and inform appropriate EI task development and administration in L2 research and assessment.

Lexical difficulty – using elicited imitation to study child L2

This paper reports a post-hoc analysis of the influence of lexical difficulty of cue sentences on performance in an elicited imitation (EI) task to assess oral production skills for 645 child L2 English learners in instructional settings. This formed part of a large-scale investigation into effectiveness of foreign language teaching in Polish primary schools. EI item design and scoring, IRT and post-hoc lexical analysis of items is described in detail. The research aim was to resolve how much the lexical complexity of items (lexical density, morphological complexity, function word density, and sentence length) contributed to item difficulty and scores. Sentence length, as number of words, predicted better than number of syllables. Function words also contributed, and their importance to EI item construction is discussed. It is suggested that future research should examine phonological aspects of cue sentences to explain potential sources for variability. EI is shown to be a reliable and robust method for young L2 learners with potential for classroom assessment by teachers for emergent oral production skills.

Unconventional Expressions: Productive syntax in the L2 acquisition of formulaic language

This article presents a generative analysis of the acquisition of formulaic language as an alternative to current usage-based proposals. One influential view of the role of formulaic expressions in second language (L2) development is that they are a bootstrapping mechanism into the L2 grammar; an initial repertoire of constructions allows for statistical induction of abstract grammatical categories, such that formulaic language is the data source from which syntactic rules are derived. This study brings evidence to bear on this debate from three studies of the acquisition of conventional expressions by L2 learners of English. A total of 271 learners and 58 native speakers completed either an oral conversation-simulation task or an aural-written elicited imitation task. The data show that while learners exhibit knowledge of both contextualized use and the lexical core of conventional expressions, production data reflect the morphosyntactic knowledge of learners at particular stages of development. Formulaic language does not drive the acquisition of syntax; rather, the acquisition of syntax as an independent process drives changes in the production of conventional expressions. Their gradual transformations allow for insights not only into the acquisition of syntax, but also into the nature of multi-word expressions in the mental lexicon.

A Longitudinal View of Look at the Effectiveness of Elicited Imitation with Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT)

<p>It is the aim for most EFL learners to have a clear pronunciation in English; however, pronunciation training has always been a challenge for EFL teachers and learners alike. The advent of Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) seems to be the solution to this problem. This longitudinal study adopted a latent growth curve to describe 30 EFL learner’s (N = 30) development of imitated pronunciation in English as well as their satisfaction regarding CAPT. These 30 participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group (N = 18) and control group (N = 12). There were no significant differences among the participants in their pronunciation of English or attitudes toward CAPT at the beginning of this study. After 16 months of training, the growth curve analysis showed that participants in the CAPT group made significantly greater development in English pronunciation, and they were more satisfied with the CAPT. The large effect size indicated that the grouping was the major effect that led to a significant difference in satisfaction. Moreover, the qualitative data derived from focus-group interviews confirmed the benefits of CAPT in participant’s pronunciation training. These findings suggest that EFL learner’s opportunities to conduct elicited imitation with the help of ASR-CAPT will be helpful for their development of imitated pronunciation in English and increase their satisfaction of it, which is a key aspect in the effectiveness of pronunciation training. </p>

Empty Looks or Paying Attention? Exploring Infants' Visual Behavior during Encoding of an Elicited Imitation Task

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the relationship between looking time during encoding and subsequent memory performance in imitation tasks. Hitherto, the results have been inconclusive: one line of research supporting the link between looking time and performance and another line finding no relation. The existing studies may, however, have been restricted by using small samples, limited looking time measures, and short retention intervals. We here examined the relationship between the encoding process by means of looking time as well as pupil dilation (by means of eye‐tracking technology) in sixty‐eight 20‐month‐old infants participating in an elicited imitation task and their subsequent memory performance (at an encoding test and at a 2‐week delayed recall test). Additional twenty‐two infants provided baseline measures. Simple looking time (assessed as fixation duration) did not correlate consistently with subsequent memory measures. In some cases, however, looking time correlated negatively with imitation scores. In contrast, positive correlations were found between pupil dilation and some of the memory measures, suggesting that pupil dilation may be a more sensitive tool compared to looking time measures.

The Effects of the Timing of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of a New Linguistic Structure

The article reports on a study investigating the comparative effects of immediate and delayed corrective feedback in learning the English past passive construction, a linguistic structure of which the learners had little prior knowledge. A total of 120 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from 4 intact classes at a Chinese middle school were randomly assigned to conditions: immediate feedback, delayed feedback, task‐only, and control. The 3 experimental groups attended a 2‐hour treatment session where they performed 2 dictogloss (narrative) tasks in groups, each followed by a reporting phase in which they took turns telling the narrative to the class. The 2 feedback groups received either immediate or delayed corrective feedback in the form of a prompt, followed by recasts of utterances containing errors in their use of the target structure. No effect for the corrective feedback was found on elicited imitation test scores, but both the immediate and delayed feedback resulted in gains in grammaticality judgment test scores, with immediate feedback showing some advantage over delayed feedback. We interpret these results as showing that the feedback only aided the development of declarative/explicit knowledge and that the advantage found for immediate feedback was due to the learners using the feedback progressively in the production of new past passive sentences, whereas this did not occur in the delayed feedback condition.

Task-Based Versus Task-Supported Language Instruction: An Experimental Study

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the effectiveness of task-based and task-supported instruction in the acquisition of the English passive construction—a structure about which learners had limited prior knowledge. A total of 150 Chinese middle school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were randomly assigned to five groups—one control group who only took the pretest and posttests and four experimental groups who attended a 2-hour treatment session where they performed two dictogloss tasks in groups, each including a reporting phase when the learners took turns to tell the narrative. Among the four experimental groups, one just performed the two oral tasks; a second group received explicit instruction before performing the tasks; a third group received within-task feedback but no explicit instruction; and the fourth group received both explicit instruction and within-task feedback. Treatment effects were gauged via a grammaticality judgment test (GJT) and an elicited imitation test (EIT). On the GJT, the conditions with explicit instruction and/or feedback led to significant gains with explicit instruction plus feedback showing the largest effects. On the EIT, there was no effect for any of the three treatment groups when the data were analyzed for the whole cohort. However, when the learners were subdivided into those with zero and some prior knowledge based on their pretest EIT scores, explicit instruction plus within-task feedback was more effective than the other treatment types for the latter.