Recasts in Language Classroom Discourse: A Comparison between Two Iranian EFL Classrooms

Recasts as a type of implicit feedback have been under the focus of extensive investigation in the field of SLA for many years. Thus far, a large number of studies scrutinized ineffectiveness or benefits of recasts but few of them have attempted to investigate this issue through making a comparison between two language classrooms which differ with respect to the cognitive maturity of learners. Accordingly, this study aims at exploring the distribution and frequency of recasts and their relationship with other Corrective Feedback (CF) techniques as well as students’ uptake and repair in adult and adolescent contexts. Twenty male/female adults and eighteen adolescents at the same level of English language proficiency from two classrooms in a private language institute in Yazd, Iran participated in the research. To collect accurate data, audio-recording was used by the teacher who taught both of English classes. Then, all the recorded data were transcribed and coded for each classroom. The data analysis showed that recasts in comparison to other types of CF were the most frequent technique used by the teacher in both classrooms mostly leading to topic continuation. In adolescent classroom, students’ repair in response to recasts included self-repair and repetition which resembled the patterns found in adult context. However, acknowledgment was regarded as the most favorite technique used by the adolescent learner. Another finding was the teacher’s use of recasts in combination with other CF techniques in both classrooms but the use of the combined forms in adolescent discourse was higher than that of adult classroom

Issues of Corrective Feedback in Second Language Acquisition

For decades now, questions about the role of corrective feedback in second language acquisition (SLA) have been hotly debated, spawning a great deal of theoretical and empirical research. Although the facilitative role of corrective feedback in SLA has received some empirical support, the claims regarding its impact on SLA have yet to be fully or decisively substantiated. In order to move this line of research forward, it is important to examine the issues arising in the SLA literature. To this end, this paper aims to review and discuss the literature throwing light on three major issues: (1) learners’ noticing of feedback, (2) potential mismatches between teachers’ intentions and learners’ interpretations, and (3) the role of different types of implicit corrective feedback

Noticing and Learning: Relationship Patterns

The goal of this study was to empirically investigate the noticeability of three corrective feedback (CF) techniques (recasts, prompts, and a mixture of the two) and to determine whether such noticing predicts second language (L2) development. Four groups of high-beginner college level francophone ESL learners (n = 99) and their teachers participated. Each teacher was assigned to a treatment condition that fit his CF style, and each provided feedback in response to errors with past tense and questions in the past. While the noticing of CF was assessed through immediate recall, learning was measured with picture description and spot-the-differences tasks. Inferential and qualitative analyses of noticing and learning revealed varied conclusions. Statistically, a minimal relationship between noticing and past tense scores was found. However, qualitatively, noticing appeared to predict gains on both targets for some learners, but did not prove to be a universal prerequisite for learning

Facilitating second language acquisition (SLA) through computer-mediated communication (CMC) in an English for Civil Engineering (ECE) environment

This study explores the application of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in an English for Civil Engineering (ECE) learning setting. The aim is to examine the interactional opportunities present in the computer-mediated environment for evidence of conditions deemed facilitative of second language acquisition, based on the tenets prescribed by the Interaction Hypothesis. This theory emphasizes the importance of interaction in language learning and the necessity for learners to have access to meaningful and comprehensible input. It is based on the premise that acquisition will occur through interaction where learners arc provided opportunities to negotiate meaning in order to develop mutual understanding. In tum, this allows for hypothesis testing related to learners\u27 developing interlanguage systems. It also provides opportunities for learners to produce comprehensible output and have access to feedback related to their attempts. All these are regarded as crucial for language acquisition. Most of the studies on interaction work reported in the literature are related to oral interaction. Nevertheless, studies on the use of CMC have reported that this medium can promote meaningful interaction that can foster interlanguage development through meaning negotiation and focus on form. The participants in this study consist of one English language teacher and a group of seventy-three students. The task employed for this study is based on one of the requirements of the ECE program, specifically for the students to engage in a discussion forum on current and relevant social, economic and environmental issues related to the civil engineering field and profession. For a more in-depth and thorough understanding of the entire perspective in the application of CMC in this ECE setting, both qualitative and quantitative procedures are adopted for the purpose of data analysis. The analysis of interactional exchanges reveals that this on-line platform serves as a suitable context and a conducive environment for interlanguage development. Both student-to-teacher and student-to-student interactional exchanges provide evidence of opportunities for modified input, feedback and modified output. The interview responses also provide important insights into the subjective dimension of learning in terms of students\u27 overall opinion and perception of the on-line interactional exchange

Recasts versus clarification requests: the relevance of linguistic target, proficiency, and communicative ability

This paper compares the effects of recasts and clarification requests as two implicit types of corrective feedback (CF) on learning two linguistic structures denoting past aspectual distinction in French, the passé composé and the imparfait. The participants in this classroom-based study are 52 high-school learners of French FL at a pre-intermediate level of proficiency (level B1 of CEFR). A distinctive feature of this study is the use of focused, context constrained communicative tasks in both treatment and tests. The paper specifically highlights the advantages of feedback using recasts for the acquisition of morphosyntactically complex grammatical structures such as is the French passé composé. The study points to the participants’ communicative ability as an essential aspect of language proficiency, which seems to be crucial to bringing about the benefits of recasts. Oral communicative skill in a foreign language classroom is seen as a prerequisite for an appropriate interpretation and recognition of the corrective nature of recasts

Video-based interaction, negotiation for comprehensibility, and second language speech learning: a longitudinal study

The current study examined the impact of video-based conversational interaction on the longitudinal development (one academic semester) of second language (L2) production by college-level Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language learners. Students in the experimental group engaged in weekly, dyadic conversation exchanges with native speakers in the US via telecommunication tools, wherein the native speaking interlocutors were trained to provide interactional feedback in the form of recasts when the non-native speakers’ utterances hindered successful understanding (i.e., negotiation for comprehensibility). The students in the comparison group received regular foreign language instruction without any interaction with native speakers. The video-coded data showed that the experimental students incidentally worked on improving all linguistic domains of language, thanks to their native speaking interlocutors’ interactional feedback (recasts, negotiation) during the treatment. The pre-/post-test data led to significant gains in their comprehensibility, fluency and lexicogrammar, but not in the accentedness and pronunciation dimensions of their spontaneous production abilitie

Corrective Feedback in the EFL Classroom: Grammar Checker vs. Teacher’s Feedback.

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to compare the feedback provided by the teacher to that obtained by the software called Grammar Checker on grammatical errors in the written production of English as a foreign language students. Traditionally, feedback has been considered as one of the three theoretical conditions for language learning (along with input and output) and, for this reason, extensive research has been carried out on who should provide it, when and the level of explicitness. However, there are far fewer studies that analyse the use of e-feedback programs as a complement or alternative to those offered by the teacher. Participants in our study were divided into two experimental groups and one control group, and three grammatical aspects that are usually susceptible to error in English students at B2 level were examined: prepositions, articles, and simple past-present/past perfect dichotomy. All participants had to write four essays. The first experimental group received feedback from the teacher and the second received it through the Grammar Checker program. The control group did not get feedback on the grammatical aspects of the analysis but on other linguistic forms not studied. The results obtained point, first of all, to the fact that the software did not mark grammatical errors in some cases. This means that students were unable to improve their written output in terms of linguistic accuracy after receiving feedback from the program. In contrast, students who received feedback from the teacher did improve, although the difference was not significant. Second, the two experimental groups outperformed the control group in the use of the grammatical forms under analysis. Thirdly, regardless of the feedback offered, the two groups showed improvement in the use of grammatical aspects in the long term, and finally, no differences in attitude towards the feedback received and its impact on the results were found in either of the experimental groups. Our results open up new lines for investigating corrective feedback in the English as a foreign language classroom, since more studies are needed that, on the one hand, influence the improvement of electronic feedback programs by making them more accurate and effective in the detection of errors. On the other hand, software such as Grammar Checker can be a complement to the daily practice of the foreign language teacher, helping in the first instance to correct common and recurring mistakes, even more so when our research has shown that attitudes towards this type of electronic feedback are positive and does not imply an intrusion into the classroom, thus helping in the acquisition of the English language.Programa de Doctorat en Llengües Aplicades, Literatura i Traducci

Effects of the 4/3/2 activity revisited: Extending Boers (2014) and Thai & Boers (2016)

Whereas scholars have extensively researched the pedagogical potential of 4/3/2 activities (i.e. increasing time pressure in task repetition) for enhancing second language (L2) fluency, its impact on L2 accuracy remains unclear. To help L2 learners improve both fluency and accuracy, the present study examined the effects of adding accuracy enhancement (AE) as a form of delayed metalinguistic correction to the 4/3/2 activity on the development of L2 fluency (speed, breakdown, repair) and accuracy (the acquisition of irregular and regular forms of English past tense). A total of 36 university-level students participated in three 20-minute dyadic sessions. They were randomly divided into three groups: Control, 4/3/2 and 4/3/2+AE. Whereas the 4/3/2 group repeated a monologue task three times with increasing time pressure (4 → 3 → 2 minutes), those in the 4/3/2+AE received metalinguistic correction from the researcher during the 4/3/2 activity. According to the results, a combined approach, 4/3/2+AE, simultaneously impacted learners’ overall fluency and accuracy across different topics. However, certain aspects of their fluency and accuracy development, especially those related to linguistic encoding (reduction in pauses within clauses; regular past tense forms), remained unchanged

Noticeability of corrective feedback, L2 development and learner beliefs

Cette étude quasi-expérimentale a pour but de 1) comparer la prise en compte et les effets de trois conditions rétroactives, à savoir la reformulation, l’incitation et un mélange des deux techniques, 2) déterminer le lien entre la prise en compte et l’apprentissage, et 3) identifier l’effet des perceptions des apprenants quant à la rétroaction corrective sur la prise en compte et l’apprentissage. Quatre groupes d’apprenants d’anglais langue seconde ainsi que leurs enseignants provenant d’un CEGEP francophone de l’île de Montréal ont participé à cette étude. Chaque enseignant a été assigné à une condition rétroactive expérimentale qui correspondait le plus à ses pratiques rétroactives habituelles. La chercheure a assuré l’intervention auprès du groupe contrôle. L’utilisation du passé et de la phrase interrogative était ciblée durant l’intervention expérimentale. Des protocoles de pensée à haute voie ainsi qu’un questionnaire ont été utilisés pour mesurer la prise en compte de la rétroaction corrective. Des tâches de description d’images et d’identification des différences entre les images ont été administrées avant l’intervention (pré-test), immédiatement après l’intervention (post-test immédiat) et 8 semaines plus tard (post-test différé) afin d’évaluer les effets des différentes conditions rétroactives sur l’apprentissage des formes cibles. Un questionnaire a été administré pour identifier les perceptions des apprenants quant à la rétroaction corrective. En termes de prise en compte, les résultats indiquent que les participants sont en mesure de remarquer la rétroaction dépendamment de la forme cible (les erreurs dans l’utilisation du passé sont détectées plus que les erreurs d’utilisation de la phrase interrogative) et de la technique rétroactive utilisée (l’incitation et le mélange d’incitation et de reformulations sont plus détectés plus que la reformulation). En ce qui a trait à l’apprentissage, l’utilisation du passé en général est marquée par plus de développement que celle de la phrase interrogative, mais il n'y avait aucune différence entre les groupes. Le lien direct entre la prise en compte et l’apprentissage ne pouvait pas être explicitement établi. Pendant que la statistique inférentielle a suggéré une relation minimale entre la prise en compte du passé et son apprentissage, mais aucune relation entre la prise en compte de la phrase interrogative et son apprentissage, les analyses qualitatives ont montrés à une association entre la prise en compte et l’apprentissage (sur les deux cibles) pour certains étudiants et augmentations sans prise en compte pour d'autres. Finalement, l’analyse factorielle du questionnaire indique la présence de quatre facteurs principaux, à savoir l’importance de la rétroaction corrective, la reformulation, l’incitation et les effets affectifs de la rétroaction. Deux de ces facteurs ont un effet modérateur sur la prise en compte de la rétroaction sans, toutefois, avoir d’impact sur l’apprentissage.This quasi-experimental study sought to investigate the often assumed yet little investigated relationship between noticing of corrective feedback (CF) and L2 development in relation to learner beliefs about error correction. Specifically, it aimed to (1) uncover the noticeability and effectiveness of three CF techniques (namely, recasts, prompts, a combination of the two) (2) to determine a relationship between noticing of CF and learning of the past tense and questions in the past, and (3) to determine whether learner beliefs about CF mediate what is noticed and learned in the language classroom. The participants were four groups of high-beginner college level francophone ESL learners (n = 99) and their teachers. Each teacher was assigned to a treatment condition that fit his CF style, but the researcher taught the controls. CF was provided to learners in response to their production problems with the simple past and questions in the past. While noticing of CF was assessed through immediate recall and questionnaire responses, learning outcomes were measured by way of picture description and spot the differences tasks administered through a pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test design. Learner beliefs about CF were probed by means of a 40-item questionnaire. To elicit the learner and teacher perspectives on the study, semi-structured interviews were held with the three teachers and 20 learners, drawn randomly from the participating classes. The results indicated that the noticeability of CF is dependent on the grammatical target it addresses (i.e., feedback on past tense errors was noticed more) and that the feedback techniques that push learners to self-correct alone or in combination with target exemplars are more effective in bringing out the corrective intent of a feedback move. In relation to the learning outcomes, the overall past tense accuracy increased more than that for questions, but there were no differences between the groups. The direct link between noticing and learning could not be unequivocally established. While the inferential statistics suggested a minimal relationship between noticing and past tense scores, especially if the CF was provided with recasts, but no relationship between noticing and questions scores, the qualitative analyses pointed to an association between noticing and test scores (on both targets) for some learners and gains without noticing for others. Finally, in relation to the beliefs about CF, the participants’ responses centered on four common themes (the importance of oral CF, recasts as CF technique, prompts as CF technique, and affective consequences of CF), two of which mediated the noticeability of the supplied CF, but none impacted the learning outcomes

WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK: EFFECTS OF FOCUSED AND UNFOCUSED GRAMMAR CORRECTION ON THE CASE ACQUISITION IN L2 GERMAN

Thirty-three students of fourth semester German at the University Kansas participated in the study which sought to investigate whether focused written corrective feedback (WCF) promoted the acquisition of the German case morphology over the course of a semester. Participants received teacher WCF on five two-draft essay assignments under three treatment conditions: Group (1) received focused WCF on German case errors; group (2) received unfocused WCF on a variety of German grammar errors; and group (3) did not receive WCF on specific grammar errors. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study found that the focused group improved significantly in the accuracy of case forms while the unfocused and the control group did not make any apparent progress. The results indicate that focused WCF was effective in improving case accuracy in subjects' writings in German as a foreign language (GFL) context. WCF did not negatively affect writing fluency or students' attitude toward writing