An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Recasts On Vocabulary Acquisition

Recast is an important topic in second language acquisition research.Most domestic research focused on the effects of recasts on English grammatical form and phonology acquisition,but few studies have been conducted on vocabulary acquisition of Chinese university students.This study aims to discuss whether recasts can facilitate Chinese EFL learners' vocabulary acquisition and whether communicative activities can facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary by university students,and to provide insights on classroom interactional instruction.The participants in the present study are 66 sophomore students from a university in Beijing.This study employs two treatments,in which only recast class received recast.The performance of the students' target vocabulary acquisition was examined through pretest,posttest and delayed posttest.In addition,the researcher measured the students' knowledge and preferences of feedback through two questionnaires and interview.The statistical procedure employed for analysis includes descriptive statistics,One-way ANOVA analysis,multiple comparisons.After the two picture description treatments,both the recast class and the communicative class made significant improvement,but not the control class.Based on the quantitative analysis,two conclusions are put forward:1.In the post test,there was no significant difference between the recast class and the communicative activity class,but there was a significant difference between the recast class and the control class.Delayed posttest showed similar results.2.Through interviewing with the participants individually,we get to know that the participants knew little about recast or feedback.However,they agree that recast can facilitate English vocabulary acquisition,and they enjoy acquiring vocabulary in communicative activities,though they were not aware that they were corrected while the teacher was recasting.Based on the above conclusions,although there is no significant difference between recast class and communicative class,but compared with control class,there is significant difference.That means recast still plays an important role over vocabulary acquisition in class settings.