Promoting grammatical development through multimodal digital recasts in video-conferencing tasks

This study investigated the effectiveness of multimodal recasts (the simultaneous presentation of oral and written recasts) relative to oral recasts and written recasts for L2 grammatical development in the context of videoconferencing. We employed a pretest–posttest–delayed posttest design, with 60 Korean learners of English randomly assigned to three experimental groups and a control group: an oral recast group, a written recast group, a multimodal recast group, and a no recast group. Each group completed a series of communicative videoconferencing treatment activities, during which they received recasts according to their respective feedback conditions. The target L2 construction was English wh-question formation. Participants’ gains were assessed using oral, written, and spontaneous oral production tests. We found that the presence of recasts, regardless of modality, facilitated participants’ development in wh-question formation, as reflected in their performance across the three outcome measures. Multimodal recasts, however, proved more effective in promoting gains than their oral and written counterparts.