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TASK COMPLEXITY, FOCUS ON FORM, AND SECOND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Andrea Révész
Andrea Révész*
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
*
*Address correspondence to: Andrea Révész, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Bowland College, Lancaster University, LA1 4YT, UK; e-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Tasks have received increased attention in SLA research for the past decade, as has the role of focus on form. However, few empirical studies have investigated the relationship among tasks, focus-on-form techniques, and second language (L2) learning outcomes. To help address this gap, the present study examined how the task variable +/− contextual support combined with the focus-on-form technique known as recasting affects L2 morphosyntactic development. The participants were 90 adult learners of English as a foreign language, randomly assigned to one of five groups: four comparison groups and a control group. The comparison groups differed as to (a) whether they received recasts while describing photos and (b) whether they could see the photos while describing them. The control group only participated in the testing sessions. A pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design was employed to detect any improvement in participants’ ability to use the linguistic target, which was the past progressive form. Results from multifaceted Rasch measurement yielded two main findings. First, learners who received recasts but did not view photos outperformed learners who received recasts while viewing photos. Second, the group that viewed photos but did not receive recasts achieved greater L2 gains than the group who neither viewed photos nor received recasts.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 437 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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