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Measuring global oral proficiency in SLA research: A new elicited imitation test of L2 Chinese
Author(s) -
Wu ShuLing,
Ortega Lourdes
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/flan.12063
Subject(s) - imitation , language proficiency , second language acquisition , linguistics , psychology , test (biology) , task (project management) , second language , foreign language , first language , narrative , variety (cybernetics) , computer science , mathematics education , artificial intelligence , social psychology , paleontology , philosophy , management , economics , biology
This article describes a new Chinese Elicited Imitation Test (EIT) and reports on a study that investigated the degree to which it functions as a tool that can be used in second language acquisition research to gauge global second language (L2) oral proficiency. Eighty L2 Chinese learners, sampled from two university curricular levels so as to represent high and low linguistic abilities and including both heritage and foreign language learners, participated in the study by completing the EIT as well as an oral narrative task and a background questionnaire. The results suggest that the new Chinese EIT can help measure overall oral linguistic proficiency in L2 Chinese for a variety of research purposes.