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The Elicited Imitation Task (EIT), in which language learners hear a series of sentences and attempt to repeat them verbatim, has become a popular approach to the efficient estimation of second language knowledge and proficiency in a variety of languages (Yan et al., 2016). While EITs have been designed to assess distinct language constructs, such as implicit knowledge of specific grammatical rules or ability to distinguish grammatical and ungrammatical constructions (e.g., Erlam, 2006; Spada et al., 2015), the prevailing construct focus in recent years has been on more holistic notions of language proficiency (Wu et al., 2022). The basic design approach to EITs for measuring proficiency is to present initially shorter (e.g., a few syllables) and then increasingly longer (e.g., up to 30 or more syllables) sentences spoken aloud, followed by the opportunity for learners to reproduce orally what they heard. Responses are generally scored for precision of repetition at the word level, that is, the proportion of words accurately repeated from the original sentence (rather than syllables repeated, or idea units, or similar). A key assumption of the EIT is that learners must process the spoken input for both form and meaning to be able to repeat it accurately; the longer the sentences, the more challenging the task of processing the input, and the more difficult the repetition (Davis & Norris, 2021).
EITs have been widely developed and investigated, across numerous languages, and for multiple assessment purposes. A particularly popular application of EITs has been to serve as an indicator of general proficiency, or global oral proficiency, in second language acquisition research (e.g., Bowden, 2016; Gaillard & Tremblay, 2016; Tracy-Ventura et al., 2014; Wu & Ortega, 2013). Recently, EITs have also begun to appear as operational components of commercial, large-scale language tests of speaking proficiency (e.g., Bernstein et al., 2010; Davis & Norris, 2021). The popularity of EITs can be attributed both to their ease of development and delivery, and to their consistently high psychometric qualities (see review of both of these aspects in Wu et al., 2022). Designing EITs is a relatively straightforward endeavor (following Ortega et al., 2002): (a) select a series of sentences that range in syllable length from quite short (usually starting...