Elicited Imitation Test for Brazilian Portuguese

Authors

Jerrett Lever, Brigham Young University
Dr. Deryle Lonsdale, Brigham Young University

Keywords

elicited imitation test, EI, Brazilian Portuguese, language ability and proficiency

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

Abstract

An elicited imitation (EI) test is a simple, indirect method of assessing language ability and proficiency. EI works by having subjects hear a determined item (or sentence) and having them repeat the item back as close as possible to what is heard. The theory of EI proposes that to hear a sentence, process its meaning, and produce an imitation exactly the same in meaning as that given requires the subject (test taker) to have a level of proficiency in the language being tested equal to that which the item is examining (Bley-Vroman and Chaudron 1994). Though EI has been shown to successfully apply to evaluating second language acquisition (SLA) in languages such as English (C. R. Graham 2008), French (Millard 2011), Spanish (Thompson 2013), Japanese (Matsushita and Lonsdale 2012), and Mandarin Chinese (Wu and Ortega 2013); no work has been recorded in the literature for Portuguese.

Recommended Citation

Lever, Jerrett and Lonsdale, Dr. Deryle (2014) "Elicited Imitation Test for Brazilian Portuguese," Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2014: Iss. 1, Article 664.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2014/iss1/664