Evaluation of Ammar and Spada (2006)’ article by Yun Deok Choi

Ammar, A., & Spada, N. (2006). One size fits all? : Recasts, prompts, and L2 learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 543-574.

Based on the previous research findings that corrective feedback (CF) is facilitative for L2 learning, this quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of CF and that of recasts and prompts, respectively, in conjunction with learner proficiency level. Sixty-four francophone students from an intensive ESL program were assigned into a recast, prompt, and control group. The target feature was third-person singular possessive determiners (PDs), namely, his and her, which are known to be difficult for French speaking ESL learners. As for treatment, instructional intervention was implemented, and it consisted of 1 instruction on PDs and 11 practice sessions. Learners’ knowledge of the target feature was measured by pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest that were composed of a passage correction and an oral picture description task. The researchers discovered the followings: utilizing CF during communicative activities was more beneficial for learners than without using it, prompts were more facilitative than recasts for learners with low proficiency, the two CF techniques were more helpful than no CF for learners with low proficiency, prompts were more beneficial than recasts for learners with low proficiency, and learners with high proficiency were able to get equal benefit from both CF techniques. The researchers explained the better efficiency of prompts by addressing their explicitness and numerous opportunities to uptake they provide.

It will be very helpful for my classmates to read this article because it provides concisely summarized information about the previous studies on the effectiveness of corrective feedback on L2 development. That is, if you read it, you will easily understand the core aspects of prior studies in relation to the current topic since it deals with the previous experimental studies as well as descriptive studies related to the topic in depth. In addition, it also offers sufficient details with respect to every section, so you can readily comprehend not only the whole experimental situation but also the subsequent results and explanations for them.

I personally enjoy reading this article very much since I am interested in both the effectiveness of corrective feedback like recasts and prompts in classroom settings and learner proficiency level, which is the topic of the article. In addition, it was written in a very well-organized manner with plenty of detailed explanations. For example, at the end of the article, the researchers posed limitations of the current research that we have to keep in mind when we estimate the research and they also suggested some interesting areas to be dealt with in the future study. This information helps readers to comprehend the whole story more completely. Therefore, I strongly recommend that we should add it to our reading packet.