The Effect Of Recast And Clarification Request On Freshmen’s Learning Of Noun Plural Form As Non-English Majors

The study is designed to investigate Chinese’ college students’ acquisition ofplural nouns on production. Underlying factors are explored for the situation bycomparing impacts of different teachers’ feedback on learners’ plural nouns’acquisition, which will provide empirical evidence for Chinese college oralEnglish instruction and innovation.Since second language acquisition became an independent discipline in the late1950s and early1960s, studies are conducted in every possible detail from allperspectives. In French immersion classroom, Harley(1989)studied perfect andimperfect past tenses; Day/Shapson(1991) studied conditional mood; Lyster(1994)studied second-person pronouns; Harley(1998)studied gender and Lyster(2004)studied gender；Ammar (2003) studied francophone learners’ acquisition of Englishthird person possessive determiners; McDonough (2005) studied English questionsand Sheen (2006) studied English articles. According to Mohamed (2004), Englishplural form is the difficulty for Chinese learners for mother language’s negativetransfer, although we are exposed to English nouns in early times. Noun plural formacquisition is as difficult as tenses and articles. English nouns have not only singularand plural forms but also concepts of singular and plural. There are many difficultiesfor Chinese learners in the learning of English plural form, particular in oralproduction in which there are distinct differences in the ways of expressing numberbetween Chinese and English.In this thesis, two kinds of teachers’ feedback——recast and clarificationrequest are used to correct freshmen’s erroneous oral noun plural productions. Thereare two research questions:1. Of the two corrective feedback means, which is moreeffective on learning of noun plural form, and how does language proficiencyinfluence their effect?2. As for freshmen’s learning of irregular plural from, whichis more effective, recast or clarification request?In the study, freshmen’s performances of National College Entrance Exam areused as standard of high and intermediate level group. An intact class which consistsof46students is divided into six groups. There are recast group, clarificationrequest group and control group of intermediate learners. High learners are alsodivided into recast group, clarification request group and control group. They alltook Hunan Province NCEE. The study lasts two months which covers pretest, two treatment sessions, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. All cycles are recorded.The performances before and after the treatment and the different effects of differentfeedback on different level learners are analyzed by SPSS13.0.Through the analysis of empirical data, conclusions are formed: recast andclarification request play significant effects on intermediate learners. Recast groupperforms better than clarification request group in intermediate learners’ noun pluralform production. Recast and clarification request are both effective for high learners.Recast is more effective for intermediate students’ learning of irregular noun pluralform.The study provides effective suggestions for oral English teaching. Teachersshould make their corrective feedback types noticeable for learners. Thus, learnerscan compare their interlanguage system with target language to constructinterlanguage system effectively.