The Differential Effects Of Declarative And Interrogative Recast On Learners Of Different Proficiency Levels

Recasts have been the object of both empirical and theoretical inquiry for a long time in the field of second language acquisition.The researches of the effect of recast are fruitful.In recent years,the investigation of recasts has shifted to the features of recast,expanding recast research to the effects of different type of recasts.The present study explored the differential effects of declarative recasts and interrogative recasts for learners of different proficiency levels and in different linguistic domains.With an experiment,the present study addressed two specific questions:1.what differential effects do declarative recasts and interrogative recasts have on learners of different proficiency levels?2.What differential effects do declarative recasts and interrogative recasts have in different linguistic domains?A total of 32 first year non-English major(who have been divided into high declarative group,high interrogative group,and low declarative group,low interrogative group)participated in two output-oriented descriptive tasks.They received either declarative recasts or interrogative recasts in relation to phonological,lexical and grammatical errors.In the treatment activities,the teacher provided declarative recast and interrogative recasts respectively according to the students’ language output errors.To measure the improvement of phonological,lexical and grammatical knowledge,individualize tests were employed.The results showed that declarative recasts were more beneficial for high proficiency learners,while for the low proficiency learners,there was no apparent difference between the two recasts types.This study provided some supports for the fact that interrogative recasts are more effective for phonological learning.From the acquisition of grammatical and lexical knowledge,there was no apparent difference between the two recasts types.The significance of this research lies in two aspects.Theoretically,this study provides some new empirical evidences for the effectiveness of recasts.Pedagogically,it indicated that teachers should pay more attention to the current proficiency level of learners and the linguistic domains under discussion and provide appropriate recasts for them in the teaching process.