The Effects of Different Types of Oral Corrective Feedback on the Development of Explicit/Implicit L2 Knowledge of English Articles

Abstract

The role of oral corrective feedback (CF) in second language (L2) learning has been extensively investigated. However, little attention has been given to the relationship between different types of CF and explicit/implicit L2 knowledge. For this reason, the present study explored the effects of recasts and metalinguistic feedback on the development of explicit and implicit knowledge of the English articles. Sixty-three university students enrolled in intermediate Communication English classes participated, and they were assigned into a metalinguistic group, a recast group, and a control group. While the students engaged in meaning-based activities (i.e., retelling stories), the feedback groups received respective CF on the errors of English articles and the control group did not receive any feedback. Untimed grammatical judgement tests were employed to measure the students’ improvement of explicit knowledge and elicitation oral imitation tests were used to examine their gains of implicit knowledge. The study found that both recasts and metalinguistic feedback equally facilitated the development of explicit knowledge over time. However, they were not as effective as in the improvement of implicit knowledge, showing a short-term effect on the development.