Elicited imitation in second language learners.

DOCUMENT RESUME FL 007 481 Hamayan, Else; And Others Elicited Imitation in Second Language Learners. Working Papers on Bilingualism, No. 6. Ontario Inst. for Studies in Education, Toronto. Bilingual Education Project. May 75 25p.; For related documents, see FL 007 480-484 Bilingual Education Project, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6 (as long as supply lasts) MF-$0.83 HC-$1.67 Plus Postage. Adults; Children; *English (Second language); *Imitation; Language Ability; *Language Development; Language Instruction; Language Learning Levels; *Language Research; *Language Skills; learning Characteristics; Linguistic Difficulty (Inherent); *Second Language Learning; Second Languages Three groups of subjects were tested in an elicited imitation study. These were 8-year-old, 11-year-old and adult native speakers of Arabic who were learning English as a second language. The subjects were asked to repeat sentences of seven different grammatical structure types. Previous research with 4-year-old native speakers of English (Smith, 1973) has found that three of the structures were easy to repeat (Type A structures) while four were difficult to repeat (Type B structures). In the present study, a similar difference in the repeatability of A and B structures was found for the youngest subjects, but there was no such difference for the adults and only a moderate difference for the intermediate group. The pattern of results suggested that this was not a function of differences in the subjects' English-language backgrounds, but represents a developmental difference in the ability of second-language learners to repeat certain grammatical structures. The theoretical reasons for the variability in repetition difficulty for the different structure types were considered. (Author)