A Study Of The Effects Of Recasts And Clarification Requests On The Acquisition Of English Passive Voice

In the recent two decades, corrective feedback（CF）has been a hotly discussed topicin the field of second language acquisition (SLA). However, due to some factors, theresults of both the theoretical and empirical studies on the relative efficacy of differenttypes of CF are still inconsistent. Based on the Noticing Hypothesis, the Output Hypothesisand the Interaction Hypothesis, the present study adopts an empirical approach toinvestigate the relative efficacy of recasts and clarification requests on the learning ofPassive Voice of Simple Past Tense (PVSPaT). Additionally, this study explores therelationship between students’ language proficiency and the effects of recasts andclarification requests. The research questions are as follows: First, is there significantdifference between recasts and clarification requests on the acquisition of PVSPaT?Second, what’s the relationship between learners’ language proficiency and the effects ofrecasts and clarification requests?This study adopts pretest and posttests design. The subjects in the present study are60students from Yingcai senior high school in Tengzhou, including30high-level studentsand30low-level students. They are divided into three equal groups: a recast group, aclarification request group and a no feedback group (control group), with each groupincluding20students. During the treatment sessions, the recast group does the tasks andreceives recasts; a clarification request group does the tasks and receives clarificationrequests; and the control group does tasks but does not receive any corrective feedback.The quantitative data are analyzed with Descriptive Statistics, One-way ANOVA Analysis,Post-hoc Analysis, the major findings are summarized as the following: First, both recastsand clarification requests have positive effect on the development of learners’ knowledgeof the target structure. But there is no significant difference between the two feedbacktechniques. Second, the potential benefits of recasts and clarification requests to PVSPaTlearning are independent of learners’ language proficiency.The study provides positive guiding significance for English teaching in Chinesecontext. Teachers should provide the same feedback to all the students, leave them enoughtime to reflect their grammar mistakes and give them the opportunity to modify their previous output.