The Application And Effectiveness Of Recasts In The Elementary Comprehensive Chinese Classroom

The number of both foreign students who choose to learn Chinese in China and teachers who teach Chinese as foreign language is increasing as the "Chinese fever" is heating up. More and more researchers tend to study the behaviors of teachers in Chinese classes. As one of the most important teaching behaviors, corrective feedback raises a lot of concern. However, now the domestic researches are focusing on the simple classroom observation and the fluency of different corrective feedbacks. Therefore, based on the researches abroad, combined with the characteristics of Chinese, this research chooses to study recast, which is the commonest and the most controversial corrective feedback.This study focuses on three contents.1. The application of recasts in elementary comprehensive Chinese class.2. The effectiveness of recasts in elementary comprehensive Chinese class.3. The factors that affect the effectiveness of recasts. Using documentary method, classroom observation method and test, we study 16 elementary comprehensive Chinese classes(400 minutes) of 4 teachers.The basis study mode is:classroom observation and recording-transcription of record-analysis of transcription-preparation of test items-test-analysis of uptake-analysis of test scores-conclusion. This study firstly chooses elementary comprehensive Chinese classes as study subjects, combines classroom observation and test method and studies the effectiveness of recasts from both uptake and test scores, which brings some forth new ideas based on the former studies.The present study finds that in elementary comprehensive Chinese classes, recast is the most fluent corrective feedback. Teachers tend to use recasts more frequently if the student has low Chinese level. Teachers tend to use recasts when it comes to phonetic errors and grammatical errors. When it comes to lexical errors, teachers tend to use the negotiation of form. Different characteristics of recasts do affect the uptake and test scores of students. Although uptake doesn't equal to acquisition, but the present study suggests that successful uptake will promote the acquisition. Stress, declarative intonation, segmentation, one change, shortened length and multiple feedback moves are predictive of successful uptake, whereas multiple feedback moves, stress, segmentation, one change and shortened length are predictive of the accuracy of the test scores.This study suggests that:1. teachers choose corrective feedback properly according to the language level of students.2. teachers pay attention to the importance of uptake and encourage students to repair.3. teachers improve the effectiveness of recasts according to different characteristics.4. universities step up the training to introduce the new research achievements on SLA and make teachers enhance the teaching quality to help students improve acquisition.