Learner Awareness of Recasts in Classroom Interaction: A Case Study of an Adult EFL Student's Second Language Learning

This case study is about an adult Japanese learner's second language learning through her teacher's recasts in an EFL classroom in Japan. We first examined by videotaping the class how recasts were provided in the theme-based EFL classroom. Then we investigated the relationship between the student's awareness of recast feedback and her L2 learning. Stimulated recall interviews were used to elicit the student's awareness of the feedback, and grammaticality judgement tests of the actual sentences uttered by the teacher and students in the classroom were used for measuring learning. The findings suggest that recasting is a complex verbal behaviour influenced by the teaching environment, the interaction context, and the learner's cognitive orientation. The effect of recasts is influenced not only by the linguistic elements (e.g. grammatical vs lexical) of the feedback, but also by paralinguistic elements and the learner's autonomous utilisation of the learning opportunities provided by the feedback.