Recasts in classroom interaction: A teacher's intention, learners' attention, and second language learning

Abstract

This thesis investigates the nature, roles and effects of a native speaker teacher's recasts in relation to adult learners' second language (L2) learning. The recast's role as linguistic corrective feedback is controversial in second language acquisition (SLA) research: although experimental studies found recasts effective for facilitating L2 learning (e.g., Mackey & Philp, 1998), classroom-based SLA studies suggested that the learner did not react to the teacher recasts (e.g., Lyster, 1998b). The present small-scale study investigates the recast in the interaction occurring in a theme-based communicative L2 classroom, focusing on the teacher's intentions for providing, and the Japanese college students' attention to, recasts. The data are composed of videotaped classroom observations, stimulated recall interviews, the students' uptake claim surveys, results of customized grammaticality judgment tests based on the classroom discourse, and two stimulated recall interviews with the teacher. Recast episodes identified in the classroom discourse were then related to the students' recalls of their attention and to their grammaticality judgment test results. The teacher's recalls were also coded in relation to the types of recast episodes. The data analyses were conducted and reported in two different theoretical frameworks: cognitive-interactionist and sociocultural. In contrast to the findings from other recast studies, the teacher in this study provided feedback less frequently. The students were found more attentive to the recasts in group than in teacher-fronted contexts. The effect of recasts for L2 learning in the cognitive-interactionist SLA framework was mixed. However, in the sociocultural approach to examining the relationships among the feedback types, the students' attention, and their test results, the teacher's and students' agency in their L2 teaching and learning manifested itself. It was not the linguistic input (i.e., recasts) that facilitated L2 learning; it was rather the interaction between the teacher and learners using mediational means that was important. This thesis raises problems with the cognitive-interactionist approach to SLA focusing exclusively on the linguistic environment in contrast to the sociocultural approach focusing on human agency using language. Further, the teacher's conscious feedback in response to the learner's needs is suggested as one of the pedagogical implications of this research.