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Abstract

Three groups of subjects were tested in an elicited imitation study. These were 8-year-old, 11-year-old and adult native speakers of Arabic who were learning English as a second language. The subjects were asked to repeat sentences of seven different grammatical structure types. Previous research with 4-year-old native speakers of English (Smith, 1973) has found that three of the structures were easy to repeat (Type A structures) while four were difficult to repeat (Type B structures). In the present study, a similar difference in the repeatability of A and B structures was found for the youngest subjects, but there was no such difference for the adults and only a moderate difference for the intermediate group. The pattern of results suggested that this was not a function of differences in the subjects' English-language backgrounds, but represents a developmental difference in the ability of second language learners to repeat certain grammatical structures. The theoretical reasons for the variability in repetition difficulty for the different structure types were considered.

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Elicited Imitation in Second Language Learners

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