The Impact Of Recast Type On Effectiveness, Learner Uptake And Learners’ Perceptions Of Recasts

This laboratory study attempted to uncover the possible modulating effects of recast type on three aspects of recasts, that is, the effectiveness, learner uptake and learners’perceptions, through exploring and making comparisons between shortened recasts and incorporated recasts in terms of above-mentioned three aspects.52seventh-grade students were involved into the present study and they were divided into SRG (n=13), IRG (n=13) and CG (n=26). During the treatment session, the two experimental groups separately received shortened recasts and incorporated recasts to address their errors arising in the tasks; while, control group received no corrective feedback even if they participated in the same tasks. All the students received pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest (which was conducted4weeks later). For the experimental groups, each learner’s interaction process was video taped for the immediately followed stimulated recall.Scores of the three tests, numbers of learner uptake and quantified stimulated recall comments were analyzed by using SPSS19.0. Major findings of this study are presented as follows.First, recast type can modulate the effectiveness of recasts to some extent. The impact was mainly manifested in the superiority of SRs in long-term effectiveness over IRs.Second, recast type may also have modulating effects on learners’ perceptions. In particular, a significantly greater proportion of SRs than IRs was reported to be perceived as corrective feedback. In contrast, a significantly greater proportion of IRs was reported to be perceived as responses to content.Third, the underlying reason for impacts of recast type on effectiveness and learners’perceptions is that the implicitness of recast varies with its types. What’s more, the relative explicit recasts are proved to be more effective and more likely to be perceived as corrections or linguistic evidence than those are implicit.Fourth, in addition to the varying implicitness of recasts, other factors, such as, learners’personal styles and interaction orientations may constrain the impact of recast type. This can explain why the expected impact of recast type on learner uptake was not found in the present study.The present study provides empirical evidence that recast type may modulate the effectiveness and learners’perceptions of recasts. And, these findings enlighten teachers that recasts as a type of corrective feedback can be effective on promoting learning, but not all types of recasts are of the same quality; therefore, they should try to use the explicit types of recasts, which are proved to be more effective than implicit types, to address errors in classroom interaction activities.