Year

2007

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Faculty of Education

Abstract

The role of implicit negative feedback such as recasts is significant in terms of eliciting learners' ability to attend to form in second language learning. This study examines the relationship between the nature of different types of recasts and learner uptake in response to those recasts within Korean college students' dyadic interactions while learning English as a foreign language. The two types of dyadic pairings consisted of NNS learner - NNS learner and NNS teacher - NNS learner. The study explores the differences between recasts provided by the learners and those provided by the teacher in response to their interlocutors' non-target-like utterances. Also, the relationship between those recasts and learner uptake in the two different dyadic interactions is examined.

Eighteen students who enrolled in an English conversation course at a university in South Korea and the researcher as a teacher took part in the study. During regular class time, learners formed pairs and worked on four information gap activities. The collaborative work in all dyads was audio tape-recorded, transcribed and coded for the types of students' uptake following various types of recasts provided by NNS interlocutors in response to different types of partners' non-target-like utterances.

The findings show that NNS interlocutors used and provided three types of recasts: 'Reformulation', 'Repetition followed by Reformulation', and 'Overlap Reformulation' in both teacher - learner (T - L) and learner - learner (L - L) interactions. 'Reformulation' recast type was more frequently used in response to learners' non-target-like forms in both interactional contexts. Recasts by the teacher and by peer interlocutors were mainly directed to negotiation of morpho-syntactic linguistic features. Unlike their interactions with the teacher, peer interlocutors in L - L interactions reacted with more frequent recasts in response to inaccurate lexical utterances. Learner uptake varied depending on recasts provided by the teacher and by peers and the types of recasts in terms of immediate incorporation. The nature of learner uptake appeared to be influenced by the nature of the recasts according to the frequency, the length and the saliency of recasts.

02Chapter1.pdf (3853 kB)
03Chapter 2.pdf (5916 kB)
04Chapter3.pdf (4123 kB)
05Chapter4.pdf (5252 kB)
06Chapter5.pdf (4612 kB)
07References.pdf (1448 kB)

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Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.