On The Nature Of Elicited Imitation And Its Role In Language Assessment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the research which has been done regarding the nature of elicited imitation in an effort to determine the role of language tests which employ it as an assessment procedure. Elicited imitation tests are based on two assumptions: (1) imitation, comprehension, and production are closely related language skills; and, (2) elicited imitations accurately reflect spontaneous productive ability. A review of the literature concerning these assumptions about the nature of elicited imitation is presented. An examination of the studies reveals that there are many variables which influence the nature of elicited imitations. Among these variables are length, syntactic complexity, surface complexity, content words, word position and stress of the model utterance; memory span and linguistic knowledge of the imitator; and presence of non-linguistic contextual cues. However, the interaction of these variables has not yet been fully determined. For this reason, the results of elicited imitation testing are difficult to interpret. The conclusion is drawn that these elicited imitation tests provide useful and valuable information about an individual's language; however, they should be used in conjunction with, and, interpreted in the context of results from other assessment procedures.

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