Abstract Corrective feedback is vital for second language development; however, its effectiveness in promoting immediate uptake versus long-term gains remains debated. This study employed a quasi-experimental design to compare the effects of prompts and recasts on the development of conditional sentences and relative clauses among 132 intermediate-level Arab EFL learners at four Jordanian universities. Participants were assigned to four groups, and their performance was measured via a pretest, an immediate posttest and a four-week delayed posttest. Data were analysed using paired and independent samples t-tests to evaluate accuracy gains, alongside Pearson correlation coefficients to examine the relationship between interactional responses and posttest scores. Findings indicated that prompts led to significantly higher rates of immediate uptake (86.1%) than recasts (43.7%). However, both feedback types produced comparable, moderate improvements in accuracy (dz ≈ 0.40–0.44) over the four-week period, with no statistically significant between-group differences. Correlation analyses revealed that higher uptake did not predict greater posttest gains. These findings demonstrate a dissociation between immediate interactional responses and durable grammatical development: while prompts effectively engage learners and elicit uptake, both prompts and recasts yielded broadly comparable accuracy gains over the four-week period in this context.
Safi Eldeen Alzi’abi (Mon,) studied this question.