From Perceptions to Practice: Factors Affecting Recast

Abstract

This review study was motivated by a debate about the role of recast in L2 learning. Recast is the most frequent type of feedback but probably the least effective one. While some researchers have criticized it as inefficient, others have supported it as an unobtrusive type of feedback especially useful during interactive activities. This review of studies on recast helps pinpoint the factors contributing to the effectiveness of recast. In this regard, two factors were found to have a determining role; saliency and learners' proficiency level. Saliency concerns the noticeability of recast by learners. Different factors affect saliency including shortness of recast, added-stress on the erroneous part, number of corrections, and the focus of recast. On the other hand, the results of studies confirm the role of proficiency. In other words, proficient learners are more likely to notice their errors using recast even when it is insalient. Keywords: Recast, Feedback, Saliency, Proficiency 1. Introduction Recasts as one of the major types of corrective feedback have been under the spotlight in much recent SLA research. Nicholas et al. (2001) defined recasts as "the teachers' correct restatement of learners' incorrectly formed utterance" (p. 720). To put it simply, recasts reformulate a learner's utterance into correct utterance. This feedback type is believed to be conducive to L2 acquisition (e.g., Nassaji, 2009;Sheen, 2006). However, how and under what conditions the most can be obtained from this type of feedback and what characteristics of it work for or against its effectiveness are but a few-not yet conclusively answered-questions in need of further research. This review study is intended to shed some light on these questions and to pinpoint major factors contributing to efficiency of recasts in different instructional and experimental contexts. There are two contrasting views on the effectiveness of recasts. As Ammar and Spada (2006) note, some researchers advocate recast as an effective corrective feedback (CF) technique because they are implicit, unobtrusive, and contingent on the learners' intended meaning (Doughty, 2001;Doughty and Varela, 1998;Leeman, 2003;Long, 1996;Oliver, 1995). On the contrary, some (Truscott, 1999;Truscott and Hsu, 2008) criticize it as ineffective, inefficient and useless. Studies on recast are of two types: observational and experimental. In observational studies, researchers observe a classroom for a period of time and consider learners' errors and language teachers' correction practices accordingly. In these studies, researchers observe and report the effect of different types of feedback on learners' interlanguage development. In experimental studies, on the other hand, the effect of a specific treatment or variable related to feedback on learners' interlanguage development is considered. All the researchers that have conducted their studies using observation (Fanselow, 1977;Lyster, 1998b;Lyster and Ranta, 1997;Panova and Lyster, 2002;Sheen, 2004) have come to the conclusio...