| Corrective feedback(CF)plays an important role in second language(L2)learning.Therefore,improving the accuracy of language output for second language learners,from all kinds of CF(such as recast,repetition,prompt,etc.)in second language learning,have attracted many researchers’ attention at home and abroad.Under this background,the present study chooses middle school students as participants,and the third person singular verb as target form,comparing “recast” and “prompt” of those two kinds of CFs on improving the accuracy in using the third person singular verb in oral task for junior school students.Based on the summary of predecessors’ research and theories of Interaction Hypothesis,Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and the Focus on Form Theory,the research questions in the present study are put forward as follows:1)Which corrective feedback is more effective in improving students’ using of the third person singular verb in oral tasks,recast or prompt?2)For students with different levels of English in each class,which correct feedback is more effective respectively,recast or prompt?The participants are 80 students in two intact classes,Grade 1 in Qin’an Second Junior High School,Gansu,who are chosen as research participants called class 1 and class 2.According to their entrance examination scores,the top 5 students of both classes are regarded as participants with high level of second language,and the last 5 students of both classes as those with low level.The author randomly picked up 8pictures from Charles M.Schulz’ series cartoon titled Peanuts: 4 for the pre-test and 4 for the post-test.Then the students are given 5 minutes to describe one of the 4 pictures and all the utterances were recorded on the tapes(Liu Xuehui,Zhu Qing 2010).That would be the post-test.After the post-test,the mistake correction will proceed during classroom instruction,and the teacher only corrects students’ mistakes of the third person singular verb in oral tasks but ignores other mistakes in both classes.In class 1,the teacher applies the recast to correct the mistakes and promptly to correct mistakes in class 2.The instruction lasts for 4 weeks;after that,the students will pass through the post-test which is concerned with the last 4pictures and the dates will be analyzed by SPSS.The results of the research are as follows:(1)The effect of prompt is better than the recast in improving the accuracy in using the third person singular verb for students’ language output.(2)In recast-only group,the recast is effective for both high and low level students in improving the accuracy in using the third person singular verb in oral tasks.In prompt-only class,the prompt is more effective for low level students than high level ones in improving the accuracy in using the third person singular verb in oral.Therefore,the present study still has its own limitations:(1)The results only apply to grade1 in middle school;(2)The times of the experiments and the number of the participants are limited;(3)The Switching Replications design should be adopted in the experiment which is more fair for the participants and the results of the study more scientific;and(4)There is not any control group.The present study only compares the recast-only class with the prompt-only class but there is not any control Class.If the the control class is compared with those classes before,the results of the present study will be more accurate and reliable.So,the present study is significant for teachers’ corrective feedback in the class and it may help the further study. |
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