表題番号:2012A-918 日付:2013/04/17
研究課題Study of effects of recasts as reflected in uptake and priming in the EFL classroom in Japan
研究者所属(当時) 資格 氏名
(代表者) 国際学術院 助手 浅利 庸子
研究成果概要
It has been noted that learners improve their interlanguage (IL) through conversational interaction for the following reasons: 1) Interaction increases the opportunity for learners to receive corrective feedback (CF), 2) learners’ production of uptake triggered by CF allows opportunities for hypothesis testing and strengthens existing linguistic knowledge, and 3) this repetitive feedback-modification pattern contributes to automatization. The present study was conducted to testify whether the above theory applies for recasts. Specifically, the experimental classroom research examined the immediate benefits of recasting on learners’ accuracy in question formation in the context of L2 interaction. Two classes of Japanese high school EFL students (n= 72) in Saitama participated in the study. Students enrolled in the experimental class was told to respond whenever they felt that they had been corrected by the teacher, while students enrolled in the controlled class was not told to do so. Each of the 30-minute treatments over a period of six weeks was audiotaped, videotaped and transcribed. Recast sequences involving students’ uptake were then categorized using the framework used by Lyster and Ranta (1997) in order to investigate whether there was a correlation between students’ immediate uptake and their test scores. The results revealed that both groups significantly increased their scores from the pre-test to the post-test; however, there was by contrast no significant difference in gains in accuracy between the two groups even though learners in the former group produced a greater amount of uptake. When the learners’ test scores and transcripts were examined individually, a logistic regression analysis revealed that learners’ advancement to a higher stage in the developmental sequence for question formation was limited to those who had produced ‘repair’ and/or ‘needs-repair modified’. This finding indicates how that only certain uptake moves, namely those involving the production of modified output involving developmentally advanced question forms, was the only type of uptake that acted as a significant predictor of language development. Current classification of learners’ modification following corrective feedback (CF) uses terms such as ‘repair’ and ‘modified output’ interchangeably; this result suggests a necessity for development of a coding scheme that reflects the reality more accurately. Moreover, learners’ ability to actively respond to recasts for production and/or recognition of a higher stage form was constrained by their developmental readiness. Learners who produced a relatively large number of roughly, if not accurately, targetlike question forms in the pretest tended to score higher than others in the posttest. In order for learners to benefit from recasts, the target structure should be learnable – not too complex but a little beyond their knowledge so that they can go through IL restructuring via ‘noticing the gap’ that triggers reformulation. The results of the study served to provide the following evidences: 1) recasts are effective in strengthening already existing forms, 2) developmentally ready learners tend to benefit more from recasts as they are able to produce reformulation in the form of modified output following teachers’ provision of recasts, and 3) modified output (‘repair’ and ‘needs-repair modified’) are significantly related to L2 development.