The role of implicit and explicit negative feedback in first (Ll) and second (L2) language acquisition is contentious. The L2 studies to date, however, suggest that implicit negative feedback exists, is perceived by learners for what it is (i.e., noticed), and is used for development. As part of one of several continuing lines of research on this issue, two experiments were conducted to assess the relative utility of models and recasts in L2 Japanese and Spanish. Using a pretest, posttest, control group design, each study provided some evidence of the ability of adults to learn from implicit negative feedback, and, in one case, support for the notion that reactive implicit negative feedback (recasts) can be more effective than preemptive positive input (models) in achieving at least short-term improvements on a previously unknown L2 structure.

The role of implicit and explicit negative feedback in first (Ll) and second (L2) language acquisition is contentious. The L2 studies to date, however, suggest that implicit negative feedback exists, is perceived by learners for what it is (i.e., noticed), and is used for development. As part of one of several continuing lines of research on this issue, two experiments were conducted to assess the relative utility of models and recasts in L2 Japanese and Spanish. Using a pretest, posttest, control group design, each study provided some evidence of the ability of adults to learn from implicit negative feedback, and, in one case, support for the notion that reactive implicit negative feedback (recasts) can be more effective than preemptive positive input (models) in achieving at least short-term improvements on a previously unknown L2 structure.

In English, manner-of-motion verbs (walk, run) and directed motion verbs (go) can appear with a prepositional phrase that expresses a goal (goal PP) as in John walked (ran, went) to school. In contrast, Japanese allows only directed motion verbs to occur with a goal PP. Thus, English allows a wider range of motion verbs to occur with goal PPs than Japanese does. Learnability considerations, then, lead me to hypothesize that Japanese learners will learn manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs in English from positive evidence, whereas English learners will have difficulty learning that manner-of-motion verbs with goal PPs are impossible in Japanese because nothing in the input will tell them so. Forty-two intermediate Japanese learners of English and 21 advanced English learners of Japanese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task with pictures. Results support this prediction and provide a new piece of evidence for the previous findings indicating that L1 influence persists when an argument structure in the L2 constitutes a subset of its counterpart in the L1.

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