Second Language Proficiency Essay

Background and Purpose Language proficiency is one of the most frequently discussed constructs in the field of second language acquisition because of the various ways it is investigated in SLA (Kim, Tracy–Ventura & Jung, 2016). Second language proficiency assessment is done for many purposes. Concerning educational settings, assessments are used to make decisions about students, to notify classroom teaching and learning, and to improve, ensure, and indicate the quality of an educational program (Norris, 2013). In regard to SLA research, assessments of L2 proficiency are essentially used for three purposes. First, assessments are employed to choose participants into a study (Norris & Ortega, 2012). Second, it is significant to incorporate a

Delayed elicited imitation was defined by Eugene E. Garcia as “a response similar to a model's demonstration occurring more than 5 secs, but not more than 25 secs, after the model's demonstration” (1976, p. 499). In this study, the same particular EIT designed by Ortega et al. (2002) was adopted. The test consists of 30 sentences of different length (7-19 syllable) and complexity to be repeated by the participants incorporating a 15-second time lag between the end of the aural stimulus and the beginning of the response. Working memory capacity. Working Memory capacity is defined as “The number of concepts being accessible at once” (Nelson Cowan, 2006, p.). In this study, a listening word span task with word recall as described in Cai et al (2015) was used to check the phonological loop and the central executive component of working memory. In this test, learners are asked to make an acceptability judgment on each sentence in a set while at the same time remembering the final word of each. Language proficiency. Hulstijn’s (2007, 2011) definition of proficiency; “learners’ knowledge and automated ability for use of core vocabulary and grammar delivered with reasonably intelligible pronunciation and fluency” (p. 681). In this study, two tests are being adopted to measure learners’ language proficiency the EITs and the TOEFL