An Investigation on Characteristics of Recasts and Learner Repair in Beginning and Advanced ESL Classrooms

An Investigation on Characteristics of Recasts and Learner Repair in Beginning and Advanced ESL Classrooms

  This paper aims to investigate different features of recasts occurring in beginning and advanced ESL classes and learner repairs following the recasts. One beginning and one advanced class were observed for nine hours respectively at a university affiliated language institute. The comparative analysis of characteristics of recasts revealed that there were dissimilarity in terms of linguistic focus and length of recasts in both classes even though the total frequency of recasts was almost same. Recasts at the beginner level tended to target grammatical errors, but in the advanced class, recasts focused more on lexical errors. As for length, recasts were shorter in beginning class. With regard to learner repair, advanced students exhibited higher rates of repair. However, students in both classes were more able to use recasts to correct their errors when recasts were shorter, involved only one change, and were incorporated with other types of feedback. Also, beginners were not likely to correct errors based on recasts when recasts targeted phonological errors and involved more than one error. These findings support other studies suggesting that recasts vary in terms of linguistic target, length, the number of changes made and level of explicitness, and these features are related to the degree of learner repair.