The Effectiveness Of Recasts

In recent years, a majority of studies have already proved that although recast is regarded as a type of implicit feedback, it is the most common way in classroom discourse and plays a facilitative role in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Therefore, the effectiveness of recasts has already become an extremely hot topic in Second Language Acquisition (SLA).In order to further explore the effectiveness of recasts, especially in Chinese classroom discourse, the present study investigates three different types of recasts on Chinese Middle School students in a middle school in application of past tense based on Doughty and Varela’s (1998) categories and Sheen and other researchers (2006) studies on characteristics of recasts. The study mainly tries to find a much more appropriate type of recasts from Doughty and Varela’s categories based on learners’errors and the effects of different types of recasts on learners’specific (medium) English proficiency. According to previous studies and related theories, the present study is mainly investigated from the following three aspects:1. Whether Learners receiving recasts and successful uptake get improvement generally in Second Language Acquisition or not, especially in grammar learning.2. The effects of each type of recasts to learners in application of past tense:corrective recasts, repeated recasts and combination recasts.3. Among three types of recasts, the most effective for medium Chinese middle school learners in application of past tense:Corrective recasts, repeated recasts, or combination recasts.In order to answer these questions, the author selects 80 middle school students (second year) from four classes in Santun Middle School and conducted 8-week experiment. All subjects are in the same level-medium based on questionnaires and several exams’ average grades. Then 80 subjects are divided into four groups randomly and each group contains 20 students. Four groups include three empirical groups and one control group. By comparison with average grades among four groups in pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest, the study explores the effectiveness of different types of recasts to the same level students. Then based on class transcript and camera video, the following conclusions are presented as follows using SPSS 16.0:1. Generally speaking, compared with the control group, recasts play a facilitative role in improvement of grades as a kind of corrective feedback in Second Language Acquisition, especially in past tense learning for medium students in middle school.2. By comparison of pretest and posttest grades of each empirical group, three types of recasts had a positive effect on subjects in application of past tense.3. From Learners’ successful uptake and immediate posttest grades perspectives of three empirical groups and comparison among three types in application of past tense, repeated recast is the most effective type for the effectiveness is the most obvious, corrective recast is the second, and combination recast is the least.As mentioned above, these results may have a positive influence on foreign language teaching, especially in middle school for Middle School is the critical period to learn some basic grammar points. Based on the study, the author suggests that teachers can adopt an appropriate type of recasts in grammar teaching to learners based on students’ English proficiency level.Furthermore, some future orientations are put forward in further studies so that teachers can make full use of recasts in classroom discourse and promote English grammar teaching development effectively.