On the Effectiveness of Prompts and Recasts: Structure Development Through Short Stories

The present study investigated the impact of two types of corrective feedback i.e. recast in the form of implicit feedback and prompts as a hybrid of implicit and explicit feedback on the development of learners’ L2 structure knowledge through short stories. The participants of this study, 54 elementary level learners of English, were randomly divided into two experimental groups and one control. The experimental groups completed short stories tasks about the target structure in the case of conditionals. During the interaction via short stories, the learners received implicit corrective feedback in the form of recasts and prompts or an integration of different types of feedbacks except recast when an error was made regarding the conditionals. Control group did not received no feedback on the conditionals. Acquisition was measured by means of meta-linguistic knowledge test. Analysis of the results on the above-mentioned test indicated that the experimental groups who received corrective feedback in the form of prompts and recast differed significantly from each other. The findings indicated corrective feedback in the form of prompt is more effective than corrective feedback in the form of recast and no feedback group in acquiring learners target structure in the case of conditionals through short stories.