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.

The present study was designed to understand the retrospective account of the learning experience of four successful learners of Russian who made substantial oral gains as measured by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) during a semester study abroad (SA) program in Moscow, Russia. Each participant made as much as two sublevels' improvement on the ACTFL scale, even those who began with Advanced level proficiency. Specifically, the study examines what students believe, how they exercise their agency, cope with constraints, and take advantage of affordances in out-of-class contexts. The qualitative data includes semi-structured interviews while quantitative data consists of pre- and post-program OPI scores. This research addresses the question of second language learning in a foreign language immersion program through thick description and through cross-case analyses. Findings were interpreted in relation to van Lier's theory of the ecology of language learning (2004) and the notion of affordances which suggests that if learners are proactive and outgoing (or initiate interactions) they will perceive language affordances as valuable and will use them. This theoretical approach provides a means to understand how most students were able to improve in oral performance while lacking meaningful contact with native speakers (NSs) or struggling to make friends with them. Regardless of the difficulties encountered during their time in Russia, students exercised their agency through participating in more self-initiated non-interactive activities without being directed by others. Each of the students perceived the meaning of his or her learning experience in a different way, demonstrating how the SA experience is highly individualized. This study argues that regardless of students' individual differences, they have one key principle in common: autonomous behavior. Further research is needed to investigate what fosters learners' autonomy and contributes to learners' self-efficacy.

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Orientador: Matilde Virginia Ricardi Scaramucci / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T08:02:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sakamori_Lieko_M.pdf: 4652152 bytes, checksum: 01ece6f13ebe9edd19d0975b09271a35 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: A confiabilidade é um aspecto fundamental da avaliação. Um teste é considerado confiável quando não há variáveis que possam afetar a avaliação do desempenho do candidato. Elas podem estar relacionadas às condições de aplicação do teste, ou à atuação dos entrevistadores. No entanto, no caso das avaliações orais como as interações face a face, em que o candidato interage com o entrevistador, o controle da confiabilidade se torna mais difícil, já que as interações envolvem inúmeras variáveis. Para controlar essas variáveis, formam-se entrevistadores e elaboram-se procedimentos, regras e critérios de avaliação. Mesmo assim, podem existir variáveis que não foram previstas em relação às interações. O objetivo deste trabalho é fazer uma análise da atuação dos entrevistadores na interação face a face do exame Celpe-Bras (Certificado de Proficiência em Língua Portuguesa para Estrangeiros). Esse exame, desenvolvido pelo Ministério da Educação do Brasil e em uso desde 1998, certifica os candidatos estrangeiros em quatro níveis: Intermediário, Intermediário Superior, Avançado e Avançado Superior. Ele é composto de duas partes, uma prova escrita e outra oral. A avaliação oral é uma interação face a face, com duração de 20 minutos. O candidato é avaliado por um entrevistador e um observador. Os resultados do estudo mostraram que houve variações em relação à atuação dos entrevistadores, podendo ser consideradas colaborativas e/ou não colaborativas. Espera-se que este trabalho possa contribuir para um maior entendimento das avaliações orais em geral, e mais especificamente, servir de subsídio para o aprimoramento do Manual do Entrevistador do exame Celpe-Bras / Abstract: Reliability is a fundamental concept in assessment. A test is considered to be reliable when there are no variables that can affect the candidate¿s performance assessment. They can be related to the conditions of test application or interviewer¿s performance. However, in the case of oral assessments such as face to face interactions, in which the candidate interacts with an interviewer, the control of reliability becomes more difficult, since the interactions will involve many variables. In order to control those variables, interviewers are trained and test procedures, rules and criteria are elaborated. Even though, there can be variables that were not predicted to the interactions. The aim of this work is to analyze interviewers¿ performance in face to face interaction of Celpe-Bras examination (Proficiency in Portuguese as a Foreign Language). This examination, developed by the Ministry of Brazilian Education and in use since 1998, certifies foreign candidates in four levels: Intermediate, High Intermediate, Advanced and High Advanced. It has two parts, a writing test and a speaking one. The oral test is a 20 minutes face to face interaction. The candidate is evaluated by an interviewer and an observer. The results of this study pointed that there were variations concerning interviewers¿ performance, which could be considered collaborative and/or non-collaborative. It is expected that this work can contribute to a better understanding of oral evaluations in general, and more specifically, to serve as subsidy to the improvement of Interviewer¿s Manual of Celpe-Bras examination / Mestrado / Lingua Estrangeira / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada

<p>Despite an emphasis on oral communication in most foreign language classrooms, the resource-intensive nature (i.e. time and manpower) of speaking tests hinder regular oral assessments. A possible solution is the development of a (semi-) automated scoring system. When it is used in conjunction with human raters, the consistency of computers can complement human raters’ comprehensive judgments and increase efficiency in scoring (e.g., Enright & Quinlan, 2010). In search of objective and quantifiable variables that are strongly correlated with overall oral proficiency, a number of studies have reported that some utterance fluency variables (e.g., speech rate and mean length of run) might be strong predictors for L2 learners’ speaking ability (e.g., Ginther et al., 2010; Hirotani et al., 2017). However, these findings are difficult to generalize due to small sample sizes, narrow ranges of proficiency levels, and/or a lack of data from languages other than English. The current study analyzed spontaneous speech samples collected from 170 Japanese learners at a wide range of proficiency levels determined by a well-established speaking test, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Prior to analysis, 48 <i>Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency</i> (CAF) measures (with a focus on fluency variables) were calculated from the speech samples. First, the study examined the relationships among the CAF measures and learner oral proficiency assessed by the ACTFL OPI. Then, using an empirically-based approach, a feasibility of using a composite measure to predict L2 oral proficiency was investigated. The results revealed that <i>Speech Speed</i> and <i>Complexity</i> variables demonstrated strong correlation to the OPI levels, and moderately strong correlations were found for the variables in the following categories: <i>Speech Quantity, Pause</i>, <i>Pause Location</i> (i.e., Silent pause ratio within AS-unit), <i>Dysfluency</i> (i.e., Repeat ratio), and <i>Accuracy.</i> Then, a series of multiple regression analyses revealed that a combination of five CAF measures (i.e., Effective articulation rate, Silent pause ratio, Repeat ratio, Syntactic complexity, and Error-free AS-unit ratio) can predict 72.3% of the variance of the OPI levels. This regression model includes variables that correspond to Skehan’s (2009) proposed three categories of fluency (speed, breakdown, and repair) and variables that represent CAF, supporting the literature (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 1978, Skehan, 1996).</p>