| A task feature identified by Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993), 'task-essentialness', is said to promote attention to the target structure given that the target form itself is "the 'essence' of what is to be attended" (p. 139). Although some studies (e.g., Leow, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b6; Rosa & Leow, 2004a; Rosa & O'Neill, 1999; Sanz & Morgan-Short, 2004) have included this feature in their design, none has empirically investigated its advantages. The differential effects between types of feedback (explicit vs. implicit), on the other hand, have been examined in SLA and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) before, albeit with contradictory findings. White some studies found advantages for explicit feedback (Bowles, forthcoming; Carroll & Swain, 1993; Nagata, 1993; Nagata & Swisher, 1995; Rosa, 1999; Rosa & Leow, 2004a), there is also evidence that explicit feedback is as effective as implicit feedback (Camblor-Portilla, 2006; Hsieh, 2007; Sanz & Morgan-Short, 2004).; This study aimed to extend our understanding of how 'task-essentialness' and different types of feedback impact the learning of a Spanish syntactic structure in the context of CALL. Fifty-seven participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups that combined [Mask-essentialness] and [+/- explicit feedback]. Recognition and production tests were administered in a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design. Think-aloud protocols were employed to monitor participants' attention during the treatment and to elicit informative data of their thinking processes during the assessment tests.; The results did not show any significant differences between type of task; a significant main effect was found for type of feedback on the oral delayed posttest, the implicit feedback outperforming the explicit feedback group. Moreover, the explicit feedback group displayed a significant loss between the posttest and the delayed posttest, while those in the implicit feedback group did not. These results seem to point to degree of difficulty of the target structure and learners' proficiency level as predictors for effects of different types of feedback. Explicit feedback seems to be more efficient when low proficiency level participants are learning simple linguistic items. |
