What does it mean to elicit language from a student? “Eliciting (elicitation) is term which describes a range of techniques which enable the teacher to get learners to provide information rather than giving it to them” (Darn & Cetin, n.d., para. 1). Elicitation is considered to be an efficient measure of grammar knowledge (Hesketh, 2004).
Elicitation tasks are those provided to a student by a teacher to assess language skills. Using elicitation assists in developing a more learner centered environment and can make learning more memorable for the student. This type of assessment is simple and designed to elicit a certain response. This might be done regularly if the student has a goal on his or her IEP and requires progress reporting. Structured elicitation is thus targeted and easy to score.
The teacher must provide some input. He or she can target a specific goal by using stimulus or visuals. The student is prompted to supply a reply or to take part in the exercise. It is designed to find out what a child knows rather than to lead them to a conclusion. Below are some examples of elicitation tasks.
Imitation is a widely used elicitation task. The teacher says a sentence and asks the child to repeat it back. The child will repeat back only those grammatical structures they have mastered.
Another elicitation task tests the child’s mastery of the rules of forming words (see Morphology on previous page.) The child is to complete a sentence describing a picture. The teacher uses nonsense words in place of actual words to elicit the correct response.
Another morphological task is to give the student an example using pairs of words such as zip/zipped and tug/tugged. The teacher asks the child to complete a pair and tells the student push/pushed and then asks the student to complete jump/___. “If the child did not respond correctly (jumped), the experimenter explained how push and pushed were alike, and then how jump and jumped were alike the same way” (Kuder, 2017, p. 205).
To elicit responses testing syntax, the teacher will complement the child on an article of clothing they are not wearing such as telling the student what a beautiful coat they are wearing in August. The child should respond with a sentence or a phrase indicating they are not wearing a coat.
A second elicitation task to assess syntax is to hand the child a pencil and say, “Here’s that piece of cake you asked for.” The student will correct the teacher and say it is a pencil not a piece of cake. A creative teacher could make this type of assessment fun for the child by using the child’s interests as the basis for the incorrect sentences.
To assess semantics, the teacher could provide a cloze test that uses the weekly vocabulary words and have students enter the word that makes the sentence correct. Students could also be given a picture with a cloze sentence describing the picture and the child must choose the correct vocabulary word to complete the sentence correctly.
