Elicited imitation (EI) is a method of assessing oral proficiency in which the examinee listens to a prompt and attempts to repeat it back exactly as it was heard. Research over recent decades has successfully established correlation between EI testing and other oral proficiency tests, such as the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the OPI by computer (OPIc). This paper details the history of oral proficiency assessment as well as that of EI. It then outlines the development process and validation of a Portuguese Elicited Imitation test. The processes of item selection and item validation are detailed followed by the criterion-related validation through a statistical correlation analysis of participants' results on an official American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) OPIc and their predicted OPIc scores which were based on their results of the Portuguese EI calibration test. Results of the statistical analysis revealed a strong correlation between the predicted scores of the EI test and the actual OPIc scores. In order to go beyond previously completed EI research, this paper addresses the issue of face validity which has been a challenge for the proliferation of EI testing. Analysis of a survey administered after participants' completion of the two tests (OPIc and EI) addresses the experiences and reactions of the participants to the two testing formats. Suggestions for future use of EI as well as future research will be presented.

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Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The assessment of oral proficiency forms an important part of learning a second language. However, the manual assessment of oral proficiency is a labour intensive task requiring specific expertise. An automatic assessment system can reduce the cost and workload associated with this task. Although such systems are available, they are typically aimed towards assessing students of American or British English, making them poorly suited for speakers of South African English. Additionally, most research in this field is focussed on the assessment of foreign language students, while we investigate the assessment of second language students. These students can be expected to have more advanced skills in the target language than foreign language speakers. This thesis presents a number of scoring algorithms for the automatic assessment of oral proficiency. Experiments were conducted on a corpus of responses recorded during an automated oral test. These responses were rated for proficiency by a panel of raters based on five different rating scales. Automatic scoring algorithms were subsequently applied to the same utterances and their correlations with the human ratings determined. In contrast to the findings of other researchers, posterior likelihood scores were found to be ineffective as an indicator of proficiency for the corpus used in this study. Four different segmentation based algorithms were shown to be moderately correlated with human ratings, while scores based on the accuracy of a repeated prompt were found to be well correlated with human assessments. Finally, multiple linear regression was used to combine different scoring algorithms to predict human assessments. The correlations between human ratings and these score combinations ranged between 0.52 and 0.90. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die assessering van spraakvaardigheid is ’n belangrike komponent van die aanleer van ’n tweede taal. Die praktiese uitvoer van sodanige assessering is egter ’n arbeids-intensiewe taak wat spesifieke kundigheid vereis. Die gebruik van ’n outomatiese stelsel kan die koste en werkslading verbonde aan die assessering van ’n groot aantal studente drasties verminder. Hoewel sulke stelsels beskikbaar is, is dit tipies gemik op die assessering van studente wat Amerikaanse of Britse Engels wil aanleer, en is dus nie geskik vir sprekers van Suid Afrikaanse Engels nie. Verder is die meerderheid navorsing op hierdie gebied gefokus op die assessering van vreemde-taal sprekers, terwyl hierdie tesis die assessering van tweede-taal sprekers ondersoek. Dit is te wagte dat hierdie sprekers se spraakvaardighede meer gevorderd sal wees as di´e van vreemde-taal sprekers. Hierdie tesis behandel ’n aantal evaluasie-algoritmes vir die outomatiese assessering van spraakvaardighede. Die eksperimente is uitgevoer op ’n stel opnames van studente se antwoorde op ’n outomatiese spraaktoets. ’n Paneel van menslike beoordelaars het hierdie opnames geassesseer deur gebruik te maak van vyf verskillende punteskale. Dieselfde opnames is deur die outomatiese evaluasie-algoritmes verwerk, en die korrelasies tussen die beoordelaars se punte en die outomatiese evaluerings is bepaal. In kontras met die bestaande navorsing, is daar gevind dat posterieure waarskynlikheidsalgoritmes nie ’n goeie aanduiding van spraakvaardighede gee vir ons datastel nie. Vier algoritmes wat van segmentasies gebruik maak, is ook ondersoek. Die evaluerings van hierdie algoritmes het redelike korrelasie getoon met die punte wat deur die beoordelaars toegeken is. Voorts is drie algoritmes ondersoek wat daarop gemik is om die akkuraatheid van herhaalde sinne te bepaal. Die evaluerings van hierdie algoritmes het goed gekorreleer met die punte wat deur die beoordelaars toegeken is. Laastens is liniˆere regressie gebruik om verskillende outomatiese evaluerings te kombineer en sodoende beoordelaars se punte te voorspel. Die korrelasies tussen hierdie kombinasies en die punte wat deur beoordelaars toegeken is, het gewissel tussen 0.52 en 0.90.

Elicited Imitation (EI) is an assessment approach that uses sentence imitation tasks to gauge the oral proficiency level of test takers. EI tests have been created for several of the world's languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, French, and Mandarin. Little research has been conducted for using the EI approach with learners of Russian. This dissertation describes a multi-faceted study that was presented in two journal articles for the creation and analysis of a Russian EI test. The EI test was created for and tested with Russian-speaking missionaries and employees at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, UT. The first article describes the creation of the test and analyzes its ability to predict oral language proficiency by comparing individuals' scores on the EI to their scores on the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The test was found to effectively predict an individual's OPI score (R2 = .86). The second article analyzes the difference in person ability estimates and item difficulty measures between items from a general content bank and a religious content bank. The mean score for the content specific items (x̄ = .51) was significantly higher than the mean score for the general test (x̄ = .44, p < 0.001). Additionally, the item difficulties for the religious items were significantly less than the item difficulties for the general items (p < 0.05).

Student Number: 9109265Y A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Psychology) / The Academic Proficiency Assessment battery evaluates language and study skills. This study focused on the internal consistency reliability and predictive validity of this battery for Information Technology students. In terms of reliability, the Time management, Note-taking skills, and Debilitating stress scale on the achievement anxiety questionnaire were found to be internally consistent. However, the items in the English proficiency, Reading comprehension, Memorisation skills, concentration skills and motivating stress scale on the achievement anxiety questionnaire require modification or replacement. Intercorrelations across questionnaires necessitate further streamlining. In terms of predictive validity, a significant negative relationship was found between Note-taking Skills and academic performance (R2 adj = 8,3%). Matric results remain the best predictor accounting for 11% of the variance in CGPA. Cumulatively, Matric results and Note-taking skills accounted for 13,34% of the variance. None of the biographical variables significantly predicted CGPA. Despite the apparent lack of relationship between individual predictors and the criterion, a discriminant function analysis indicated that all the academic proficiencies, with the exception of English proficiency, correctly predicted pass or failure in 72% of the cases. The lack of relationship between English proficiency and pass/failure can be accounted for in terms of the type of courses studied as part of an Information Technology programme.Overall, the results would suggest that Matric results remain the best predictor of academic performance in Information Technology courses, but at a very low level. Given the lack of reliability in the majority of the subtests of the Academic Proficiency Battery, the use of the APA battery for selection for remedial intervention for Information Technology students is not yet justified.

Orientador: Matilde Virginia Ricardi Scaramucci / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudo da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-12T19:15:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Costa_LenyPereira_M.pdf: 3097039 bytes, checksum: a016ffb55209e74ff7643ab242afcb9b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Tem sido crescente, não só no contexto nacional como em nível mundial, o interesse pelo ensino de línguas estrangeiras, marcadamente o inglês, sendo que o segmento que vem apresentando maior crescimento é o de língua estrangeira para crianças de 6 a 12 anos (REA-DICKENS e RIXON, 1997). No Brasil, apesar de facultativo no Ensino Fundamental I, o ensino de língua inglesa já faz parte do currículo da grande maioria das escolas particulares e algumas públicas, dependendo de iniciativas municipais, não havendo diretrizes oficiais que possam orientá-lo. Observamos que o crescimento, nesse contexto, tem ocorrido de forma desordenada, apresentando problemas de diversas naturezas que contribuem para a comprovada ineficiência desse setor (ROCHA, 2006; COSTA, 2007). Nesse cenário, inúmeras escolas particulares, a título de apresentar referências de progresso de aprendizagem do jovem aprendiz no Ensino Fundamental I, estão fazendo uso de um exame externo de proficiência em língua inglesa, mais especificamente o YLE - Young Learners Exam, elaborado pela Universidade de Cambridge (UCLES - University of Cambridge Local Exams Syndicate). Consideramos que exames não são neutros, tornando-se, dessa forma, fortes instrumentos de política lingüística com influências no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, afetando a vidas das pessoas, determinando e definindo o tipo de conhecimento e comportamento esperado daqueles que o prestam (SCARAMUCCI, 2004; SHOHAMY, 2004). Partindo dessa premissa, realizamos uma análise dos objetivos e do construto norteador do exame YLE, tecendo considerações sobre as possíveis consequências de seu uso como forma de avaliação no Ensino Fundamental I na educação e na sociedade. Constatamos que o exame se mostra inadequado para uso nesse contexto específico por não estar em consonância com as concepções e objetivos conforme referenciais oficialmente estabelecidos para o Ensino Básico, como um todo, e privilegiados, neste estudo, como desejáveis para nortear um processo de ensino e aprendizagem com maiores chances de sucesso. Nessa perspectiva, consideramos que um exame deve orientar-se para a construção de capacidades e conhecimentos específicos na língua-alvo, visando à formação cidadã e protagonista, sob perspectivas socioculturalmente situadas, críticas e transformadoras (ROCHA, 2006, entre outros). Entendemos, portanto, que, uma vez constatado um forte distanciamento entre o construto orientador do exame em questão e as vertentes e objetivos estabelecidos para o ensino e para situações de avaliação em LE para crianças, não consideramos que uso do YLE possa contribuir para que o ensino de língua inglesa apresente resultados mais efetivos no contexto nacional, sob perspectivas da formação integral e crítica do aluno / Abstract: There has been a notable increase in the interest for foreign languages all over the world. The teaching of English as a foreign language to children from 6 to 12 years of age represents the segment that has grown the most in the late years (REA- DICKENS and RIXON, 1997). Even though the teaching of English in the Elementary School in Brazil is not mandatory, most private schools have already included it in their curriculum. Different kinds of problems have contributed to the proven inefficiency of this sector (ROCHA, 2006; COSTA, 2007) which needs urgent measures so as to present more effective results. In this scenario, several private schools are making use of an external examination of proficiency in English, specifically the YLE - Young Learners Exam, developed by the University of Cambridge. Apparently, the results of this exam are being used as reference of the progress obtained by the young students in the first years of the Elementary School. We believe that, in general, examinations are not neutral, and may become powerful instruments influencing linguistic policies, affecting not only the teaching and learning process, but also people's lives, determining and defining the type of knowledge and the expected behavior of those involved in the process (SCARAMUCCI, 2004; SHOHAMY, 2004). Based on this premise, we considered it would be important to conduct an analysis in order to investigate the objectives and construct underlying the YLE exam, considering the possible consequences of its use as a form of assessment in the Elementary School. This study shows that the examination is not adequate to be used in this specific context since it is not in line with the concepts and goals we consider appropriate to guide such process. The theoretical guidelines in which we are based upon are officially established for the Basic Education in Brazil. In this aspect, we assume that both teaching and assessment in the regular school should be based on a socio-interactional perspective, aiming at building abilities and specific knowledge in the target language in a socio-cultural perspective (ROCHA, 2006, among others) so as to contribute to the overall growth of the students through English. Therefore, we consider that the use of the YLE specifically as a means of assessing the students' learning progress in the Elementary Schools in Brazil is inadequate as it would not be able to promote the desired and necessary changes in order to achieve better results in the teaching and learning process in the Elementary Schools / Mestrado / Lingua Estrangeira / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

Orientador: Marilda do Couto Cavalcanti / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T04:05:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bizon_AnaCeciliaCossi_D.pdf: 4408546 bytes, checksum: 431b54c735f9b3e48b07ff30d1e4aca9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: No âmbito universitário, são numerosos os intercâmbios de mobilidade, dada a exigência de internacionalização das instituições, imposta pelo novo cenário mundial. O Programa de Estudantes-Convênio de Graduação (PEC-G), mantido pelo Ministério das Relações Exteriores, atende países em desenvolvimento e é um dos intercâmbios que mais tem crescido, sendo os países africanos seus maiores beneficiários. Oferecendo gratuitamente vagas para cursos de graduação em universidades públicas e privadas no Brasil, o programa estipula um protocolo com regras bastante específicas, dentre as quais a exigência de o estudante custear seus estudos no país e a apresentação do Certificado de Proficiência em Língua Portuguesa para Estrangeiros, o Celpe-Bras. Afiliando-se à Linguística Aplicada Indisciplinar (MOITA LOPES, 2006) em diálogo com posições epistemológicas dos estudos poscolonialistas (BHABHA, 2007/1998; SPIVAK, 2010), esta pesquisa visou investigar como quatro estudantes congoleses, ao longo de dois períodos do desenvolvimento do convênio (a preparação para o Celpe-Bras e quatro anos da graduação), narram o Celpe-Bras e o PEC-G, posicionando-se e sendo posicionados em relação a eles, e como performatizam narrativamente seus processos de des(re)territorialização. Para tanto, analiso um corpus formado por (i) interações em aulas ministradas e gravadas em áudio em 2008, no período de preparação para o Celpe-Bras; (ii) conversas informais realizadas com os estudantes logo após o exame, ainda em 2008, e entre 2010 e 2012, quando cursavam o segundo, o terceiro e o quarto anos de graduação; (iii) conversas informais com responsáveis pelo convênio na universidade e no Ministério das Relações Exteriores; (iv) diário retrospectivo da pesquisadora; (v) textos produzidos pelos estudantes; (vi) troca de e-mails com os estudantes entre 2009 e 2013. A análise, valendo-se dos conceitos de posicionamento (LANGENHOVE & HARRÉ, 1999), performatividade (BUTLER, 2010/1990) e des(re)territorializações (DELEUZE & GUATTARI, 2007/1980a, 2007/1980b, 2007/1980c; HAESBAERT, 2004), além de um quadro de pistas indexicalizadoras propostas por Wortham (2001) e complementadas com categorias construídas com base nos dados, indicou que os estudantes conceberam o exame Celpe-Bras como um importante instrumento de inserção nas relações sociais e acadêmicas, que contribui significativamente para a apropriação de espaços (LEFEBVRE, 1986/1974) e para a construção de multiterritorializações, e o PEC-G preponderantemente como um instrumento que controla e restringe essas apropriações, gerando, muitas vezes, a percepção de territorializações precárias (HAESBAERT, 2004) ou de vivências de situações marcadas por preconceitos, não pertencimento e exclusões. As narrativas apontam para a necessidade de se repensar o funcionamento do programa PEC-G em sua complexa conexão com as embaixadas do Brasil no exterior e com as universidades brasileiras anfitriãs / Abstract: Regarding university sphere, there are a great number of mobility exchange programs due to the increasing demand for the internationalization of institutions imposed by a new global scenario. The Student Program-Undergraduate Agreement known as PEC-G, which is supported by Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is aimed at serving developing countries, and it's been the one that increases the most among other exchange programs. Besides, African countries are known to be the most beneficiaries of PEC-G. The Program offers, under specific protocol, vacancies free of charge for Undergraduate Courses that can be taken at either public or private Brazilian universities. That protocol establishes, for instance, that students who apply for the program are expected to both afford their studies in the country and get their Celpe-Bras Certificate. This research study is affiliated with Interdisciplinary Applied Linguistics (MOITA LOPES, 2006) in dialogue with some epistemological positions from Postcolonial Studies (BHABHA, 2007/1998; SPIVAK, 2010). The aim of this study was to investigate, during the development of PEC-G along two terms (first, the period of preparation for taking Celpe-Bras Exam, and then four years of undergraduate studies), how four Congolese students narrated both Celpe-Bras and PECG experiences, positioning themselves and being positioned regarding both processes, and also how these four students performed their de(re)territorialization processes within the narratives created by themselves. Therefore, it was analyzed a corpus composed of (i) interactions occurred during given classes which were audio-recorded in 2008, while students were preparing themselves for Celpe-Bras; (ii) informal conversations with the four students which happened right after the exam, in 2008, and between 2010 and 2012, while they were taking second, third and fourth years at college as undergraduate students; (iii) informal conversations with those who were responsible for PEC-G Agreement both within the University and within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; (iv) researcher's retrospective diary; (v) texts produced by the four students; (vi) e-mails exchanged with them between 2009 and 2013. In order to perform analysis, a few theoretical concepts were taken into consideration, such as positioning (LANGENHOVE & HARRÉ, 1999), performativity (BUTLER, 2010/1990), de(re)territorialization (DELEUZE & GUATTARI, 2007/1980a, 2007/1980b, 2007/1980c; HAESBAERT, 2004), and the indexical cues chart proposed by Wortham (2001), which was expanded with other categories that came about supported by data analysis. The results of the analysis pointed out that the four students understand Celpe-Bras Exam as an important instrument that can help student inclusion into social and academic relations, and that it can significantly lead to appropriation of space (LEFEBVRE, 1986/1974) and to the construction of multiterritorialization. Concerning PEC-G, it is narrated as an instrument that mainly controls and inhibits appropriation of space, producing very often either the perception of precarious territorialization (HAESBAERT, 2004) or the experience of situations measured by prejudice, not belongingness and exclusion. The analysis of students' narratives also pointed out that it seems necessary to reconsider how PEC-G Program is run, how it works regarding its complex connection with both Brazilian embassies abroad and Brazilian host universities / Doutorado / Multiculturalismo, Plurilinguismo e Educação Bilingue / Doutora em Lingüística Aplicada

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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.