The Effects Of Recast And Metalinguistic Feedback On Middle School Students’ Acquisition Of Two Different Grammatical Structures

Teaching is a two-way activity of teaching and learning,with emergence of new teaching modes and educational concepts,classroom discourse has gradually become a hot topic,and oral corrective feedback has also become one focus of scholars’ research.Relevant literature review shows many aspects of domestic and foreign research on recast and metalinguistic feedback,but there is little relevant empirical research in the background of junior high school English teaching.In addition,on the one hand,the―there be‖ structure is a kind of basic grammar,but the students in junior and senior high school still can’t use it very well,and as for the college students,the accuracy of existential sentence isn’t high.Thus,it needs second language teachers’ attention.On the other hand,the past tense is a widely used grammar.Students are easy to be influenced by Chinese when they study.They often ignore the changes of predicate verbs in the past tense.In the process of learning,English learners often translate word by word unconsciously.In the process of translation,some mistakes will appear.The comprehension of deep structure is often very difficult for Chinese English learners while the missing of comprehension of deep structure often leads to some mistakes,such as unreasonable sentence structure or inconsistent tense.Thus,this study is to explore the impact of recast and metalinguistic feedback on the two different grammatical structures(past tense and ―there be‖ structure).This study mainly includes the following three questions:(1)Do recast and metalinguistic feedback contribute to students’ learning of these two target structures of the past tense and the ―there be‖ structure?(2)Is there any difference between recast and metalinguistic feedback in students’ learning process of the past tense and the ―there be‖ structure?(3)What is the students’ and teachers’ attitude towards the recast and metalinguistic feedback?In this experiment,60 participants were from the second grade of a junior high school in Ganzhou,Jiangxi Province.The experiment included a pre-test,five days of error correction intervention,an immediate post-test,and a delayed post-test.And after the experiment,the students were asked to finish questionnaires and three teachers were interviewed.And after collecting and analyzing the data,the results are as follows.(1)Both the recast and metalinguistic feedback contribute to students’ learning of these two targets.(2)The students who receive the metalinguistic feedback learn the past tense and the―there be‖ structure better in the immediate post-test;the delayed effects of metalinguistic feedback and recast on the acquisition of the past tense isn’t significant;when the students learn the ―there be‖ structure,the delayed effects will be better if they receive the metalinguistic feedback;although the metalinguistic feedback makes sense in improving the students’ writing,the delayed effect in writing isn’t good.Thus,from the above information,it draws a conclusion that there is some difference between the recast and metalinguistic feedback in students’ learning process of the past tense and the ―there be‖ structure.(3)Teachers and most students hold a positive attitude towards teachers’ oral corrective feedback.Additionally,the students prefer metalinguistic feedback.But some students do not pay enough attention to teachers’ metalinguistic feedback and recast,so it is necessary for teachers to supervise students.This study further explores the effectiveness of teacher’s oral corrective feedback in English teaching.The results of the study have some reference significance for second language teachers’ using the oral corrective feedback in English teaching.At the same time,the author also points out the limitations of this study and the future research direction on feedback.