Effects Of Recasts And Metalinguistic Clues On Learning Pronunciation Of English Noun Plurals By The Learners In Middle School

This study investigates the effects of corrective feedback on low, intermediate and high level English learners in a middle school in northwest China, with an attempt to probe into the roles of recasts and metalinguistic clues on the students’ learning pronunciation of noun plurals in communicative classroom environment. The purpose of this research is to explore the following:1)the effects of recasts and metalinguistic clues on the learners’ learning pronunciation of noun plurals;2) the effects of CF on the learners with different proficiency levels;3) the repairs and uptakes that result from recasts and metalinguistic clues.This study lasted seven weeks, including a pre-test, a treatment session, an immediate and a delayed post-test. The subjects in the present study were135students from Grade7. They were randomly divided into recast, metalinguistic and the control groups. The recasts and metalinguistic clues were provided to learners’ errors in recast and the metalinguistic groups respectively. As to the control group, no feedback was provided. In the treatment sessions, learners’repair and uptake of the teacher’s feedback were measured in these two experimental groups.SPSS19.0was used to analyze the data. The statistical techniques of Descriptive Statistics, One-Way ANOVA Analysis, Paired-Samples T test, and Independent-Samples T test were employed for analysis as well.On the basis of the qualitative and quantitative analysis, I made the following conclusions:1) The three groups are of no significant difference in the pretest, but the effects of recasts are better than those of metalinguistic clues in the immediate and delayed posttests.2) The scores of intermediate and high level learners are higher than those of low level learners in the immediate and delayed posttests.3) Recasts lead to fewer repairs but more uptakes while metalinguistic clues lead to more repairs but less uptakes.Based on the above research, there are some pedagogical implications of this study. First, English teachers can choose different CF by the type of errors. Second, teachers may give different CF to learners with different proficient levels. Third, teachers should encourage learners to repair more because more repairs can lead to more uptakes.