Weekly Reflection (W7) by Sorin

On Tuesday, we started with small group discussions over (1) two points that we either agreed with the article or thought to be important or valuable points from the article, (2) two points that we disagreed with or had reservations about, and (3) 2 points that were beyond the review (which they missed or couldn’t see in 2001, when the article was published).

(1) Agreed or Important/Valuable points
The first group pointed out that the effectiveness of recasts is affected by the target structure of the study in relation to the developmental readiness of learners. In other words, whether learners are ready to acquire the target structure or not will affect the effectiveness of recasts. The second point was made on the types of recasts. Recasts can vary; it can be either explicit/ implicit and provided with or without emphasis utilizing nonlinguistic cues (as Chaudron suggested). These differences can definitely have an impact on the students’ noticing of recasts and consequently the effectiveness of recasts. The third point made was that investigating “private speech” as an indicator of students’ noticing of recasts (Ohta, 2000) was interesting. It could be an interesting measurement of students’ noticing of recasts, however, no research has investigated private speech since Ohta.

Prompted by the third point, we started to discuss the ways of assessing the effectiveness of recasts (or in other words, success or impact of recasts). We’ve looked at the definition of “uptake” made by Lyster & Ranta (1997) on page 739, and found that uptake can be a very slippery term since it covers a range of students’ responses from a simple acknowledgement of recasts to a repetition of recasts (which is called as “echo”) and students’ self repair. Then we moved to the measures used in L1 studies (on page 750). In early L1 studies, children’s imitation of the adult’s recasts was often sought as an evidence of the effectiveness of recasts. However, later on researchers started to investigate emersion of targeted structure in children’s subsequent utterances. On the other hand, in L2 reserach, various measures were used, as follows:

- Interlanguage change: It was investigated mostly in laboratory studies, at least in short term period, through pretest and posttest design (sometimes with delayed posttest).

- Immediate reactions to recasts: uptake, repair, etc.

- Private speech: It was used only in Ohta’s study (2000), in whihc students were more likely to react to recasts when it was addressed to another learner or to class than to them.

- Learners’ perception: Learner’s perception of recasts was investigated through stimulated recall (Mackey, Gass, & McDonough, 2000).

- Primed production: Primed production is learner’s production of a new utterance using the target structure in a few turns after recasts, and was first investigated by McDonough & Mackey (2006). In their study, learner’s production within six turns after recasts was examined.

Another important point made in class was that the effectiveness of recasts can vary depending on the setting of the study as follows:

- Intensive vs. Extensive: Regarding the density of feedback provision (how many errors were corrected and how often those errors were corrected)

- Specific vs. Broad: Regarding the range of forms corrected (whether only errors on particular structures were corrected (Doughty & Varela, 1998; Ortega & Long, 1997) or a broad range of errors were corrected (Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Oliver, 1995))

- Proactive vs. Reactive: Regarding the existence of pre-selected target structures in studies (whether there was specific target structure to teach or no particular structure was pre-selected and thus correction was incidental to learner errors)

- Communicative vs. Formal (overall context): Regarding the nature of classroom setting (whether the nature of classroom is communicative, content-based (immersion), or formal; whether it is in foreign language context or second language context, etc.)

- Relational feedback by teacher vs. Detached or predominantly cognitive feedback: Regarding personal, affective, and social factors affecting the dynamics of interaction (whether fine-tuned feedback was provided in consideration of the socioclutural factors of the preexisting relationships or predominantly cognitive feedback was provided disregarding these factors, most likely among the participants with no prior relationships)

What constitutes positive evidence and negative evidence was the last important point made in class. Even though several studies (Iwashita, 2003; Leeman, 2003; Long et al, 1998; McDonough & Mackey, 2006) tapped into this issue, no study has provided a review of this line of research. It seemed like that recasts provide both negative evidence and positive evidence at the same time but recasts make positive evidence more salient according to Ortega. In addition, the effectiveness of recasts comes from both positive and negative evidence.

(2) Disagreement or Criticism
The first point addressed was that there was disagreement in the definition of recasts, which inevitably caused comparability problem among the recasts studies. Also, the findings of L1 studies cannot be compared to the results of L2 studies (Sangki). In addition, no study has ever paid attention to paralinguistic cues provided with recasts. Second, the narrative literature review of this article seemed to be limited in synthesizing the findings of the previous studies, even though it was well written and helpful. This article can be regarded as authoritative review which was written by renowned scholars. Yukiko suggested to read the last chapter of Mackey’s forthcoming book, and we will read *Russell & Spada (2006) as well. Kevin also mentioned that it seemed that there are more similarities in L2 studies than L1 studies in recasts disagreeing with what the authors suggested in the article.

(3) Beyond the review
No study in recasts has investigated paralinguistic cues provided with recasts except Sheen (2006?), and thus we need to take into consideration the paralinguistic cues as well in our studies by analyzing oral or audio-visual data. In addition, the effect of students’ familiarity with teacher’s teaching style on recasts was not much considered in previous studies. Chaudron's dissertation was the only study showing that teachers less corrected learner errors at the end of semester than the beginning of the semester, and some studies on motivation have shown that there was fluctuation of motivation during a semester. Thus, it would be interesting to see how various aspects of recasts change as relational aspects of classroom setting change. Third, L1 studies showed that as children grow older (in other words, as their proficiency developed), the provision of recasts was decreased. Thus, it would be worth collecting classroom observation data across entire curriculum and investigating how the amount of recasts changes as students’ proficiency develops. Another point made by Myunghee was that since most of the studies in recasts have looked at NS-NNS interaction, it would be interesting to examine NNS-NNS interaction.


*Russell, J., & Spada, N. (2006). The effectiveness of corrective feedback for the acquisition of L2 grammar: A meta-analysis of the research. In J. M. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (pp. 133-164). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.


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Ellis, R., & Sheen, Y. (2006). Reexamining the role of recasts in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28, 575-600.

Iwashita, N. (2003). Negative feedback and positive evidence in task-based interaction: Differential effects on L2 development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 1-36.

On Thursday, we started with a small group discussion on two things that were already brought up in Nicholas et al. (2001) and two things that were forward-looking agendas in Ellis & Sheen (2006). After a group discussion, we had a whole class discussion. Then, Noriko Iwashita came in and told us about her study (Iwashita, 2003) and her experience of conducting studies in error correction: difficulties, concerns, and helpful tips.

(1) Issues already brought up
The first issue pointed out in both articles was that recasts are ambiguous since they are not always noticed by learners as corrective feedback and thus they are considered to be less effective compared to other types of feedback moves. However, the next question raised by Ortega was that the fact that learners miss the corrective function of recasts (i.e. not perceiving them as corrective) does really mean that they do not perceive it? Ellis and Sheen claimed that “whether recasts afford positive or negative evidence is tied up with how learners interpret their illocutionary force” (p. 585). Put another way, if learners do not interpret recasts as corrective, then recasts only serve as positive evidence. On the other hand, if learners perceive them as corrective, then they provide negative evidence. We agreed that overall learner’s orientation toward interaction is important. However, our conclusion was that recasts do not necessarily need to be perceived as didactic to be regarded as a source of negative evidence. Definitional differences in recasts studies were also addressed in both articles. Not only definitional differences but a variety of recasts (different types of recasts) was also mentioned, although Ellis & Sheen provided more expanded discussion on this issue. Besides, the two articles dealt with the role of uptake; uptake cannot be an evidence of acquisition even though it can be an evidence of noticing.

(2) Forward-looking agendas
How to define implicit or explicit recasts and how to operationalize the degree of explicitness was the first agenda pointed out. Ellis & Sheen pushed this issue forward by discussing different types of recasts. Second, Ellis & Sheen elaborated the importance of sociocognitive perspective, which was also discussed in Nicholas et al. We will read some of the chapters, on this issue, from Hyland & Hyland book (2006) later on. Third, they further expanded the argument about the effectiveness of recasts on acquisition and suggested that we should consider not only whether recasts facilitate acquisition but also when and how they do so. Adding to this claim, Ortega proposed that we should also compare the effect of recasts with other types of feedback moves in pursuing this issue of not only “whether” but also “how” and “when”. There are variations in each corrective feedback moves, and it could be the case that types of feedback do not really matter. What really matters and what requires further investigation can be some other level of abstraction, such as the degree of explicitness, cutting across different moves instead of classifying different moves. Forth, Ellis and Sheen seemed to conclude that explicit correction is more effective than recasts and the more explicit a correction move can be, the better it is. With this claim, Yundeok raised a question; if explicit correction only leads to building explicit knowledge, what about implicit knowledge? Ellis, however, didn’t really mention this issue in the article, and he seemed to be just concerned with acquisition benefit of recasts in general sense. Fifth, learner’s orientation to discourse (whether learners see language as an object or as a tool to convey meaning) was more elaborated in Ellis & Sheen. It is possible that, if learner’s orientation is toward accuracy, then they will perceive recasts as corrective, even though the context is communicative as Lyster (2006, 2007) suggested.

In addition to these agendas, several important and interesting issues were discussed. With regard to target structures, Nicholas et al. concluded that recasts are more effective with already known forms (p. 730, 752). On the other hand, Lyster hypothesized that recasts are more effective with new forms which haven’t learned, and prompts (or models?) are more effective with already learned forms. Thus, further investigating this issue, confirming any of the hypothesis, would be worthwhile. Another interesting claim Kevin brought up was that fewer recasts can make it more salient, which was also suggested in Nicholas et al (p.743, p.728). In L1 child acquisition, parents rarely recast their children’s utterances thus making recasts easy to notice for children. However, in L2 classrooms, recasts are too frequently offered and thus making them less “marked” instead of being salient Furthermore, parents recast incorrect utterances more frequently than repeat correct utterance, and children repeat corrective recasts more than mere confirmation of their utterances (Nicholas et al., p. 726, 729, 740, 751). Therefore, it would be interesting to examine the frequency issue as well as uptake after corrective utterances versus non-corrective utterances. As last issue, Yundeok pointed out that studies haven’t really looked at teacher’s perception of recasts but only learner’s perception, except Nabei & Swain (2002), which we will read later on. Adding to this comment, Ortega suggested that it would be best to include pre-posttest gain, learner’s (and possibly teacher’s) perception, and discourse data in recasts studies. Up to now, studies have examined only one of them in isolation, except the only exception of Iwashita (2003): she included pre-posttest gain and discourse data. Besides, Ortega mentioned that primed production as shown in excerpt 1 (p. 576) would be new benefit of recasts, what researchers were looking for.

(3) Noriko Iwashita
The hardest part of conducing studies in error correction for her was to code and to analyze data, particularly positive and negative evidence, reaching high intercoder reliability. In her study, she defined positive evidence as instances that NS initially use target structures or vocabulary followed by a NNS’s targetlike or incomplete utterance providing a target model of structures in focus. Selecting appropriate target structure for beginning JSL learners was difficult as well; she was looking for a new structure, however, the learners already had learned most of the structures, even though they were in the second semester of learning Japanese (less than 20 weeks of instruction in pseudo-communicative classrooms). She also faced a problem with developmental readiness with the progressive –te verb form. While some of the students understood it as a structure, other students learned it as words (like chunks), which brought another problem when she coded the data. She also advised us to consider what kind of statistics to use for data analysis in advance and to report individual data in our studies as well.

In order to help your understanding, the followings are a brief summary of her study. In an experimental study, she investigated the role of task-based conversation in the development of two Japanese structures (locative initial construction and a progressive verb form) by 55 L2 learners of Japanese, focusing on positive evidence and negative feedback. What made her study special was that she did not only examine pretest and posttest gain but also analyzed interaction data. Analyzing the interaction data enabled her to identify three types of positive evidence (completion, translation, and simple model) and two types of negative feedback (recasts and negotiation) provided by NS interlocutors during interaction. Among the moves, models were the most frequently provided one followed by recasts. Task-based conversation was proved to be effective for the JSL learners learning the two target structures. However, mixed results were found regarding the effectiveness of positive evidence and negative feedback. Models (positive evidence) were found to be effective on locative construction only for the learners with above-average scores on pretest (at the threshold level of proficiency) while recasts were effective on the progressive –te verb form regardless of learners’ current mastery of target structures.