This quasi-experimental study investigated the potential benefits of
two corrective feedback techniques (recasts and prompts) for learners of
different proficiency levels. Sixty-four students in three intact grade 6
intensive English as a second language classes in the Montreal area were
assigned to the two experimental conditions—one received corrective
feedback in the form of recasts and the other in the form of
prompts—and a control group. The instructional intervention, which
was spread over a period of 4 weeks, targeted third-person possessive
determiners his and her, a difficult aspect of English
grammar for these Francophone learners of English. Participants'
knowledge of the target structure was tested immediately before the
experimental intervention, once immediately after it ended, and again 4
weeks later through written and oral tasks. All three groups benefited
from the instructional intervention, with both experimental groups
benefiting the most. Results also indicated that, overall, prompts were
more effective than recasts and that the effectiveness of recasts depended
on the learners' proficiency. In particular, high-proficiency
learners benefited equally from both prompts and recasts, whereas
low-proficiency learners benefited significantly more from prompts than
recasts.This study is based on the first
author's Ph.D. research (Ammar, 2003). We
gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the participating teachers and
students. We thank Patsy Lightbown, Roy Lyster, Pavel Trofimovich, and the
anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable input and feedback on
earlier versions of this paper.