A Study Of The Effects Of Recasts On Learners' L2 Output

Although recasts have been generally proved to be a common corrective feedback strategy in L2classroom interaction both home and abroad, present research has not provided a complete picture of the effects of recasts, particularly that in Chinese EFL setting. This study thus attempts to investigate the impact of recasts on Chinese students' oral L2 output, specifically on subject-predicate agreement in the third person singular simple present tense (briefed as S-V agreement). In addition, the study also examines learners' noticing of their own linguistic problems and teacher's modifications on these problems during the interaction.For this purpose, 38 first year college students of non-English major who participated in the study were divided into 3 different treatment condition groups. The recast group (12 students) produced oral output and received recasts from the teacher;the non-recast group (13 students) produced oral output only;and the control group had no oral output, doing listening exercises instead and served as comparison group for whatever effects observed for the rest two groups. Students received pretest right before the treatment. The treatment was carried out in 5 sessions during 3 weeks, and one immediate posttest and two delayed posttests were administered after that. Quantitative data gathered for the study consists of 3 sources: (1) all groups were scored on their S-V agreement in the 4 tests, (2) the recast group was measured on their successful learner uptake to recasts during the 1^st and the 5^th treatment session, (3) both the recast group and the non-recast group were interviewed after the 1^st and the 5^th treatment session and measured on their noticing of the linguistic problems about the target feature in their output. Questionnaires were also used for all groups to gather information on their own activities and their feelings toward the activities in the experiment.It was found in this study that (a) Recasts have promoted the recast group's correct use of S-V agreement;(b) For both the recast group and the non-recast group, their oral production didn't seem to have helped learners' noticing of the linguistic problems about the target feature in their output;(c) Recasts seemed to have promoted the recast group's noticing of entailed in teacher's recasts the modifications of learner's problematic output.Thus it can be concluded that recasts are a useful and effective corrective feedback tool for L2 development. Recasts serve as positive rather than negative evidence. Learners receiving recasts notice the modifications entailed in the recasts rather than their linguistic problems that the recasts are based on. Additionally, oral production doesn't seem to promote learner's noticing of the problems in their output.