News & Events

The 2026 SLATE Research Symposium  will be held on May 7, 2025 (Reading Day), College of Education, Room 22 

The Symposium will run from 10am to 2pm, including a poster session for student research (11:30-1:00) and boxed lunches for all attendees.

POSTER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION -- NOW OPEN! 

DEADLINE: APRIL 10, 2026

Submission Process:

  1. Email <kiel@illinois.edu> with your poster abstract: 500-word limit
    1. Include: Name & Email, Department, & Advisor Name 
  2. Indicate whether your poster will be a traditional printed poster or computer-poster
    1. If Traditional, we will print your poster for you!
  3. Professor Christianson will inform you whether or not your abstract is suitable for the symposium.
  4. Deadline for emailing Professor Christianson the final poster for printing: 5pm, April 30, 2026
  5. ALL PRESENTERS must REGISTER for the Symposium. (Registration form will be emailed to all SLATE Student listserv members in April.)

Schedule:

10:00 -- Welcome

10:15 -- Dr. Giuli Dussias's talk

11:15 -- set-up for poster session (posters will be hung up already)/lunch

11:30 -- Lunch/Poster Session

1:00 -- Dr. Xun Yan's Talk

2:00 -- Closing Remarks

Speakers:

Our invited speaker this year is Dr. Paola (Giuli) Dussias, Distinguished Professor of Spanish, Linguistics, and Psychology, Pennsylvania State University 

TITLE: TBA

ABSTRACT: TBA

Our Illinois speaker this year will be Dr. Xun Yan,  Professor of Linguistics

TITLE: What does elicited imitation measure? A synthesis of psychometric, corpus, and psycholinguistic evidences

Abstract: Elicited imitation (EI) is considered as a type of general language proficiency task, and yet its use as a measure of second language (L2) proficiency is controversial with a unique trajectory of popularity over the past 50 years. This talk is a reflection of EI-related research and practice across four historical stages, from (1) the initial adaptation from first language acquisition research, through (2) the debate on construct validity, to (3) the loss of popularity to communicative movement, until (4) the recent resurgence of interest in the technology-advanced era. I will first synthesize research findings on some critical questions raised on the nature of EI as a proficiency measure across different stages. Next, I will discuss implications of this measure in other fields of applied linguistics, propose new lines of research, and illustrate the potential of this method of assessment through some of my recent work. In the end, I will extrapolate beyond EI to share some personal views on the use of psycholinguistic vs. communicative tasks in measuring language proficiency in applied linguistics. By combining historical review and empirical research, I hope that the talk will provide a comprehensive account on the “seasonality” of attention on such a resilient measure of L2 proficiency. Through decades of EI research, while answers to some lingering questions remain inconclusive, advancements in cognitive psychology and technology have also broaden the scope and reshaped the foci of research around this method of assessment.