Analysis

6.2.2.4. 1 Classification of Written Recasts

In order to examine the effectiveness of recasts according to types, recasts were categorized as recasts given to learners’: (1) grammatical errors; (2) lexical errors, (3) unsolicited use of Japanese following Lyster and Ranta (1997). Grammatical errors are errors in the use or lack of determiners, particles, verb forms, word order; Lexical errors include inappropriate, imprecise or inaccurate choices of lexical items; unsolicited use of Japanese is an instance where a student writes Japanese instead of English. In addition, recasts given to (4) spelling errors and (5) contents were examined. Content recasts were provided to an expression(s) whose meaning(s) is (are) vague or awkward. The following are examples according to types. Changes were written in bold and will be explained later.

Example (1) Grammatical recast.

S1: It is beautiful. → (written recast) Oh, it was very beautiful.

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Example (2) Lexical recast

S2: In the car I saw a dream. → (written recast) You had a dream in the car?

Example (3) Recast to unsolicited use of L1

S3: We ate a lot of Ika (squid in Japanese) in Hakodate.

→ (written recast) Oh, you ate a lot of squids!

Example (4) Recast to spelling error

S4: I talked with a foreingner →(written recast) You had a talk with a foreigner!

Example (5) Content recast

S5: We lost the games. →(written recast) You lost all of the games?

In only one case was a recast given to grammatical and lexical errors, as the following, and it was excluded in the analysis.

S: It is heavy.→ (written recast) Oh, it was hard.

Recasts were also categorized according to the degree of differences and lengths following the parameters of a previous study (e.g., Philp, 2003; Sato, 2006, 2009a). To examine the effects of the degree of difference between the learner’s initial writing and the written recast, the number of changes was counted and coded following Philp (2003), but for the study, recasts were divided into two categories according to whether the recast had only a single change or more than one change. This decision was made referring to Sato (2006,

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2009) which revealed that recasts with more than one change were less likely to be noticed by the Japanese learners. Conversion of the subject was not counted as a change and inversion counted as one change. Exclamation and interjection were not counted. The following example was counted as one change.

Example (6) Grammatical recast

S6: Kourijima is small island.→ (written recast) Oh, it is a small island.

Examples (1) and (5) were counted as two changes; examples (2) and (3), as one change;

example (4), as four changes.

As for the lengths, written recasts were categorized into long or short ones according to the number of morphemes, based on Philp (2003) and Sato (2006, 2009): recasts with more than five morphemes were coded as long. Example (7) was counted as short, while (8) was counted as long.

Example (7) Short recast (lexical, one change)

S7: I pointed an umbrella. → (written recast) Oh, you opened an umbrella.

Example (8) Long recast (grammatical, four changes) S8: I don’t know what should I teach to child then.

→ (written recast) OK, you didn’t know what you should teach to children.

Students’ oral response to oral feedback is called uptake. Lyster and Ranta (1997) defined uptake as “a student utterance that immediately follows the teacher’s feedback and that constitutes a reaction in some way to the teacher’s intention to draw attention to some aspect

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of the student’s initial utterance” (p. 48). Uptake can be either repair, which is modified output that corrects the initial error, or needs repair, which is modified output that does not correct the initial error (Lyster and Ranta, 1997).

There is an argument that uptake is not important because it can be mere parroting of the correct form provided by the teacher (Ostovar, 2010). Ellis and Sheen (2006) pointed out that repair can be an indicator of noticing but noticing can also take place without uptake.

However, it has been argued that modified output plays an important role in the L2 learning process (e.g., McDonough, 2005; Shehadeh, 2002; Swain, 1985, 1995, 1998). Swain’s (1995) Output Hypothesis insists on learners’ production of the correct form because: it helps learners move somewhat beyond learners’ current ability; and it helps teachers make sure that their correction has been noticed by the student. Some studies also have found that uptake is one of the crucial indicators of students’ L2 learning (e.g., Loewen, 2004). Drawing on previous studies that insist on the importance of modified output in L2 learning (e.g., Gass, 2003; Izumi, 2002; McDonough, 2005; Shehadeh, 2002; Swain, 1985, 1995, 1998; Loewen, 2004), students’ correct written repair was measured in the study. When students’ errors, mistakes or inappropriate expressions to which recasts were given, were corrected in the revision, it was counted as successful (repair) and rewarded one point. If they failed to make the revision, it was counted as failed and a point was not given. We computed success rates. In the situation when students decided not to use original utterances to which recasts were given, it was excluded in calculating the success rates. The following are examples of a successful revision, a failed revision and one excluded in calculating the success rates.

Example (9) Successful

S9: I thought it was neccessary. → (written recast) Yes. It was necessary.

(Student’s revision) →I thought it was necessary.

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Example (10) Failed.

S10: I was belonged to the club. → (written recast) Oh, you belonged to the team.

(Student’s revision)→I was belonged to the team.

Example (11) Excluded

S11: I saw their swimming in the sea.→ (written recast) You saw them swimming in the sea?

(Student’s revision)→My friends began swim in the sea.

In example 11, the student produced ill-formed output. However, it was not counted as failed but excluded, because whether he noticed the recast or not is unclear as he did not use the same structure in the revision.

I conducted classification and categorization of written recasts. A week after the first classification, I conducted it again. This method of classification follows Alderson et al.

(1995), which explains that multiple rating sessions increases the reliability of the rating.

Where there were discrepancies between the two ratings (4 cases), a second rater was invited to rate them. After discussion, the disagreement was resolved.

6.2.2.4.2 Writing Accuracy, Fluency and Complexity

Though there seems to be many measures to quantify accuracy, the proportion of the number of T-units without lexical and grammatical errors in the total number of T-units in the writing was calculated. This means that the denominator was the number of T-units and the numerator was the number of T-units which did not include lexical and grammatical errors.

This measure was taken in accordance with previous studies (e.g., Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, &

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Kim, 1998), and it was felt that this would give us reliable results. We decided not to count errors related to the usage of articles as they present difficulties even for proficient learners. In measuring fluency, the number of words written in the essay was counted for the current study, as is rationalized in Wolfe-Quintero et al (1998). Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) mention that counting production rate is the measurement to be applied to writing. As for measuring complexity, though it has been defined many ways, it was decided to measure the mean length of T-unit by calculating the average number of words per T-unit following previous studies such as Ortega (2003) and Wolfe-Quintero et al (1998). In the relation of the three aspects, it was decided to examine whether or not there are trade-offs between accuracy and fluency in writing referring to Ellis (2003) and Sato (2008).

6.2.2.4.3 Questionnaire Results and Students’ Writing Performance

In the questionnaire, the following five questions were asked (see Appendix D):

Q. (1) Do you think written feedback from the teacher is important?

Q. (2) Did you refer to the written feedback in revising the text?

Q. (3) Do you want to be given written feedback from the teacher?

Q. (4) Did you understand the written feedback given to your essay??

Q. (5) Write freely about written feedback.

They were asked to write a number from 1 (most strongly disagree) to five (most strongly agree) for questions (1) to (4). In cases when they wrote either 1 or 5, students were asked to write a reason. Directions were written in Japanese and comments were given in Japanese on question (5). The numbers chosen by the students were counted as their scores. Correlations of success rates with scores of Q (1), Q (2), Q (3) and Q (4) each respectively were examined.