Corrective recasts: what teachers might want to know

Abstract

Teachers, in particular those who operate in communicatively oriented classrooms, frequently use recasts (i.e. reformulations) when interacting with students. Research has nevertheless shown that, as a corrective feedback strategy, recasts are the least effective, particularly in terms of helping students to recover from grammatical errors. One reason for the lack of efficacy is that recasts are sometimes intended to fulfil a corrective function and sometimes a communicative function. In consequence, the corrective function, when intended, is often obscured and hence ignored. This paper garners insights from the existing research, presenting them in the form of five pedagogic strategies buttressed with authentic classroom examples. The goal of these strategies is to increase the saliency of the corrective function of the recasts so that they become more noticeable, and hence more effective in drawing learners' attention to gaps between their interlanguage and the target grammar.