Elicited Imitation as a Measure of L2 Implicit Knowledge: An Empirical Validation Study

A key issue in the field of second language acquisition has been the difficulty of specifying accurate measures of implicit language knowledge. This paper describes the development of an elicited imitation test. Its design differs from that of most other elicited imitation tests in that it (a) requires test takers to focus attention first on the meaning of the utterance before repeating it and (b) some of the sentences that test takers are presented with are grammatical and others are ungrammatical. Test takers are asked to repeat sentences in correct English. It is hypothesized that (a) requiring test takers to respond to the meaning of an utterance reduces the likelihood that they will explicitly focus on linguistic form and thus access explicit language knowledge and that (b) spontaneous correction of incorrect sentences is a powerful indication of participants’ constraints on internal grammar (Munnich et al. 1994). The test is trialled on a baseline group of 20 native speakers and a sample of 95 second language learners. Evidence which would suggest that this test is a likely measure of implicit language knowledge is presented.