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The Efficacy Of Different Corrective Feedback On Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of Spatial Prepositions

Posted on:2015-01-24Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:M M ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2285330422482552Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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The research on how different types of corrective feedback affect language acquisitionhas been a topic of discussion. Among the available research, the comparison betweendifferent types of computer-delivered feedback has caught much attention. Nevertheless, fewdomestic studies have explored the effects of computer-delivered feedback on learners’acquisition.This study aims to investigate whether computer-delivered implicit feedback and explicitfeedback are effective in learners’ acquisition of spatial prepositions, taking in and over astarget terms.And it attempts to compare the efficacy of these two types of feedback.99non-English major freshmen from three parallel classes participated in the study.Before the experiment, the participants were informed to attend a three-day specialcomputer-mediated course. A pretest was conducted two weeks before the treatment. Then thethree parallel classes were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: the ME Group, the RGroup and the C Group. When the subjects used a wrong preposition in the process ofcompleting the computer-mediated tasks, the ME Group received metalinguistic explanation(i.e., explicit feedback), the R Group received recast (i.e., implicit feedback) and the C Groupreceived no feedback. Afterwards, subjects were tested on their use of the two target spatialprepositions both immediately and one week later.Results from the immediate posttest showed that both implicit and explicit feedback werebeneficial for learners’ acquisition of spatial prepositions. Explicit feedback was significantlymore effective in the acquisition of preposition over but the advantage of explicit feedbackover implicit feedback was slight and not significant in the acquisition of in. Similar resultswere gained from the delayed posttest. These results are discussed based on NoticingHypothesis and Input Enhancement. It is proved that for the preposition in, the spatialsemantics of which is easier to grasp, implicit feedback is enough to trigger acquisition. Butfor preposition over, since its semantics is polysemous, more explicit type of enhancement (i.e.explicit feedback) is better for its acquisition.This study provides empirical evidence that in the computer-mediated context, thecorrective intent of both feedback types becomes obvious and it is more likely to be noticed by learners. Besides, as it is possible to provide written input plus visual aids in thecomputer-assisted learning context, computer-mediated feedback is proved to be beneficialfor spatial preposition acquisition. As for the efficacy of enhancement techniques which variesin explicitness, it is the semantic nature of spatial prepositions that determines whichtechnique is more effective.Therefore, it is necessary to use different enhancement techniquesin the acquisition of different forms. The conclusion of this research might shed light onforeign language teaching.
Keywords/Search Tags:computer-mediated corrective feedback, implicit feedback, recast, explicitfeedback, metalinguistic explanation, spatial preposition
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