<p>The present study investigated technical qualities of the elicited imitation (EI) items used by the Assessment of College English – International (ACE-In), a locally developed English language proficiency test used in the undergraduate English Academic Purpose Program at Purdue University. EI is a controversial language assessment tool that has been utilized and examined for decades. The simplicity of the test format and the ease of rating place EI in an advantageous position to be widely implemented in language assessment. On the other hand, EI has received a series of critiques, primarily questioning its validity. To offer insights into the quality of the EI subsection of the ACE-In and to provide guidance for continued test development and revision, the present study examined the measurement qualities of the items by analyzing the pre- and post-test performance of 100 examines on EI. The analyses consist of an item analysis that reports item difficulty, item discrimination, and total score reliability; an examination of pre-post changes in performance that reports a matched pairs t-test and item instructional sensitivity; and an analysis of the correlation patterns between EI scores and TOEFL iBT total and subsection scores.</p><p>The results of the item analysis indicated that the current EI task was slightly easy for the intended population, but test items functioned satisfactorily in terms of separating examinees of higher proficiency from those of lower proficiency. The EI task was also found to have high internal consistency across forms. As for the pre-post changes, a significant pair-wise difference was found between the pre- and post-performance after a semester of instruction. However, the results also reported that over half of the items were relatively insensitive to instruction. The last stage of the analysis indicated that while EI scores had a significant positive correlation with TOEFL iBT total scores and speaking subsection scores, EI scores were negatively correlated with TOEFL iBT reading subsection scores. </p><p>Findings of the present study provided evidence in favor of the use of EI as a measure of L2 proficiency, especially as a viable alternative to free-response items. EI is also argued to provide additional information regarding examinees’ real-time language processing ability that standardized language tests are not intended to measure. Although the EI task used by the ACE-In is generally suitable for the targeted population and testing purposes, it can be further improved if test developers increase the number of difficult items and control the contents and the structures of sentence stimuli. </p><p>Examining the technical qualities of test items is fundamental but insufficient to build a validity argument for the test. The present EI test can benefit from test validation studies that exceed item analysis. Future research that focuses on improving item instructional sensitivity is also recommended.</p>

Testing oral proficiency is an important, but often neglected part of the foreign language classroom. Currently accepted methods in testing oral proficiency are timely and expensive. Some work has been done to test and implement new assessment methods, but have focused primarily on English or Spanish (Graham et al. 2008). In this thesis, I demonstrate that the processes established for English and Spanish elicited imitation (EI) testing are relevant to French EI testing. First, I document the development, implementation and evaluation of an EI test to assess French oral proficiency. I also detail the incorporation of the use of automatic speech recognition to score French EI items. Last, I substantiate with statistical analyses that carefully engineered, automatically scored French EI items correlate to a high degree with French OPI scores.

The Missionary Training Center (MTC), affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needs a reliable and cost effective way to measure the oral language proficiency of missionaries learning Spanish. The MTC needed to measure incoming missionaries' Spanish language proficiency for training and classroom assignment as well as to provide exit measures of institutional progress. Oral proficiency interviews and semi-direct assessments require highly trained raters, which is costly and time-consuming. The Elicited Imitation (EI) test is a computerized, automated test that measures oral language proficiency by having the participant hear and repeat utterances of varying syllable length in the target language. It is economical, simple to administer, and rate. This dissertation outlined the process of creating and scoring an EI test for the MTC. Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to analyze a large bank of EI items. The best performing 43 items comprise the final version MTC Spanish EI test. Questions about what linguistic features (syllable length, grammatical difficulty) contribute to item difficulty were addressed. Regression analysis showed that syllable length predicted item difficulty, whereas grammar difficulty did not.

In this study I addressed three problems related to how sandhi-variation, the adjustments made by speakers to the speech stream, filters comprehension for second language listener processing. The first was the need to better understand proficiency problems encountered by L2 listeners as they decode the speech stream with the phonological features of sandhi-variation, elision and assimilation, by investigating the item difficulty hierarchy of the phenomena. The second was the scarcity of research on aural processing abilities of second language learners in relation to their understanding sandhi-variation in aural texts. The third concerns the lack of research investigating links between learners’ backgrounds and their ability to handle listening texts, especially variations in the speech stream in target aural texts. The purpose of this study was threefold. My first purpose was to investigate the item difficulty hierarchy of sandhi-variation types that learners have in relation to L2 listening proficiency. My second purpose was to evaluate links between aural input containing elision and assimilation and second language aural processing, to provide insight into how learners deal with sandhi-variation as they process such input. My third purpose was to investigate through the use of interviews the aural input that participants have encountered prior to the interventions of this study, to help explain which types of aural input can facilitate intake. Twenty-five first- and second-year Japanese university students participated in the current study. The participants completed a series of instruments, which included (a) a Test of English as a Foreign Language Paper-Based Test (TOEFL PBT), (b) a Listening Vocabulary Levels Test (LVLT), (c) a Modern Language Aptitude Test–Elementary (MLAT-E), (d) a Pre-Listening in English questionnaire, (e) an Elicited Imitation Test (EIT), and (f) a Background and Length of Residency interview. The EIT was used as a sandhi-variation listening test with two component parts (i.e., elision and assimilation) and two sub-component parts (e.g., two different utterance rates), using elicited imitation. Finally, the participants were interviewed about their language backgrounds to gauge their understanding and feelings about English. An empirical item hierarchy for elision and assimilation was investigated, along with the determinants of the hierarchy. Overall, the tendency was for items with elision and assimilation to be more difficult. Results also indicated that the two input rate variables combined with elision and assimilation affected the non-native participants’ listening comprehension. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between two measures of the participants’ language ability, proficiency and aptitude, and their comprehension of items with and without the phonological features of elision and assimilation, were investigated. The results confirmed a positive relationship between language aptitude as measured by the MLAT-E and the comprehension of the phonological features of elision and assimilation. Finally, the results indicated that there were no significant, positive correlations between English language proficiency scores and both the Pre-Listening Questionnaire, which measured the participants’ feelings about second language listening, and the Background and Length of Residency Interview. More research needs to be conducted to determine how learners’ backgrounds are related to listening comprehension in order to better prescribe aural input in second language listening classrooms. / Teaching & Learning