Relation Between Recast and Uptake: A Longitudinal Study in KSL Context

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between NS recasts and learner uptake in relation to the linguistic focus of recasts. The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which learner noticing was affected by the linguistic target of recasts and to investigate whether learner noticing changes over time. The corpus used was oral interaction data between a naive Korean speaker and two KSL learners, which was collected for seven months. The results showed that phonological recasts yielded higher learner uptake and repair than particle-focused recasts, suggesting that the linguistic focus might affect learner noticing. They also demonstrated that learners’ ability to notice particle-focused recasts, not phonological recasts, tended to gradually increase as L2 proficiency increases, meaning that learners’ proficiency might be an important factor to affect learner noticing. These findings were attributed to the length of recasts and learners’ limited attentional resources.