Prompted production

Rebuschat, Patrick Emanuel and Mackey, Alison Jayne (2012) Prompted production. In: Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics :. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405194730

Abstract

Prompted production refers to language use that occurs in tasks which encourage, or “prompt,” participants to produce particular linguistic structures. Prompted production tasks are widely used in language research (including child language development, second language research, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics) and represent a convenient way of collecting linguistic data. In contrast to naturalistic data collection procedures (e.g., classroom observations, diary studies), prompted production tasks are generally designed to elicit particular language structures (for example, English plural ‐s), which greatly facilitates the data collection process. In this entry, we describe four of the most common prompted production procedures, from the more structured to the less structured: elicited imitation, interactive tasks, narratives, and role plays.