Negative Feedback In Task-based Interactions And Grade 7 English Learners' Acquisition Of English Regular Noun Plural Markings

In second language acquisition (SLA) research, feedback refers to the evaluative information to speakers'utterances that they can use to improve their inter-language (IL), and negative feedback refers to the information suggesting speakers'non-target-like utterances. There are also many researches conducted on the effectiveness of interaction especially that of negative feedback in second language acquisition (SLA). Chinese learners have difficulties in acquiring English regular noun plural markings, so the present study chooses English regular noun plural markings as the focused linguistic form.The present study examines the impact of negative feedback on the output and language development of adolescent (grade 7, aged 13-14) EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. It includes a pre-test, three treatment phases, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test. Specifically, it seeks to address the problem of whether negative feedback received by adolescent EFL learners affecting their performance in oral and written tasks and thus affecting their L2 development. English regular noun plural markings are the target structure through which the sampled adolescent EFL learners'performance is assessed. There will be comparisons for the performance of learners who have received different kinds of negative feedback during task-based interaction.Thirty-two 13-14-year-old grade 7 junior high school students participated in the present study were evenly divided into four groups. In the three treatment sessions, the control group receives no feedback in task-based interaction with the interviewer; while recasts, clarification requests and combination groups receive recasts, clarification requests, and the combination of these two as negative feedback in task-based interaction respectively. The pre-test and the immediate post-test are administered right before and after the treatment sessions. The delayed post-test is administered two weeks after the immediate one. Each of the three tests consists of one oral object-identification task and two written tasks: a binary-choice task and a picture-based text-completion task. The test scores are coded and input into SPSS 17.0 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Descriptive analysis, One-way ANOVA analysis and Bivariate Correlate analysis are operated to these collected data.The major findings of the present study include: (a) Negative feedback in task-based interaction could bring out L2 learners'noticing and thus, correction of their non-target-like forms– misuse of English regular noun plural markings. (b) Negative feedback (recasts, clarification requests, and these two in combination) in task-based interaction and task-based interaction alone is facilitative to L2 learners'development of target language structure– English regular noun plural markings; (c) Except learners from clarification requests group, L2 learners'repair resulting from the mentioned four treatment conditions reveals no significant correlation with their L2 development.It is concluded that task-based interaction and negative feedback like recasts, clarification requests, and these two in combination entailed in such interaction are important facilitator to EFL learners'L2 development. Limitations and implications of the present study as well as suggestions for future studies are discussed in the last chapter.