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EFFECTS OF FORM-FOCUSED PRACTICE AND FEEDBACK ON CHINESE EFL LEARNERS’ ACQUISITION OF REGULAR AND IRREGULAR PAST TENSE FORMS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2010

Yingli Yang  and
Roy Lyster
Yingli Yang*
Affiliation:
University of International Business and Economics
Roy Lyster*
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
*Address correspondence to: Yingli Yang, University of International Business and Economics, Room 1312, Chengxin Building, No. 10, Huixin Dongjie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China, 100029; e-mail: yyingliuibe@gmail.com; or Roy Lyster, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, 3700 McTavish St., Montreal, QC, H3A 1Y2, Canada; e-mail: roy.lyster@mcgill.ca.
*Address correspondence to: Yingli Yang, University of International Business and Economics, Room 1312, Chengxin Building, No. 10, Huixin Dongjie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China, 100029; e-mail: yyingliuibe@gmail.com; or Roy Lyster, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, 3700 McTavish St., Montreal, QC, H3A 1Y2, Canada; e-mail: roy.lyster@mcgill.ca.
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Abstract

Conducted in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms at the university level in China, this quasi-experimental study compared the effects of three different corrective feedback treatments on 72 Chinese learners’ use of regular and irregular English past tense. Three classes were randomly assigned to a prompt group, a recast group, or a control group and then participated in form-focused production activities that elicited the target forms. In the two feedback groups, teachers consistently provided one type of feedback (i.e., either recasts or prompts) in response to learners’ errors during the activities, whereas in the control group, the teacher provided feedback only on content. Pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests administered 2 weeks after the treatment assessed participants’ acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms in both oral and written production. Comparisons of group means across testing sessions using a repeated-measures ANOVA consistently revealed large effects for time. Post hoc within-group analyses of the eight immediate- and delayed-posttest measures revealed significant gains by the prompt group on all eight measures, the recast group on four, and the control group on three. The effects of prompts were larger than those of recasts for increasing accuracy in the use of regular past tense forms, whereas prompts and recasts had similar effects on improving accuracy in the use of irregular past tense forms.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 32 , Special Issue 2: The Role of Oral and Written Corrective Feedback in SLA , June 2010 , pp. 235 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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