Ej 944138

Constitution of form-orientation: Contributions of context and explicit
knowledge to learning from recasts
Masatoshi Sato
McGill University
Abstract
This article investigates a language learner‟s cognitive ability (i.e., form-orientation) in
detecting the corrective nature of non-salient feedback, by reviewing the
operationalizations and reported effectiveness of recasts in recent SLA literature. Two
directionalities which seem to have resulted in the divergent findings of recast
effectiveness will be discussed: (a) operationalized (or intact) explicitness or implicitness
of recasts, which designate the level of noticeability (i.e., feedback factors) and (b)
contextual variables, including where a study was conducted and participants‟ learning
background, which ultimately influence the effectiveness of recasts on language
development (i.e., learner factors). To expose learner factors accordingly, learning contexts
and learner‟s explicit knowledge will be discussed as possible variables in forming
cognitive orientation. By taking an interdisciplinary approach to explore the constitution of
the orientation, namely, SLA, psycholinguistic, and sociocultural approaches, this article
concludes that contexts and explicit knowledge interdependently create the cognitive
ability that enhances the efficacy of implicit recasts on second language processing, which
then arguably determines subsequent language development.
Résumé
Cet article porte sur la capacité cognitive de l'apprenant en langue (forme d'orientation)
relativement à la détection de la nature corrective des commentaires non-saillants, en
examinant l'opérationalisation et l'efficacité de la reformulation rapportée dans la littérature
récente de l‟ALS. Deux directionalités qui semblent avoir abouti à des conclusions
divergentes quant à l'efficacité de la reformulation seront abordées: (a) une reformulation
explicite ou implicite qui désigne le niveau de perceptibilité (facteurs de rétroaction) et (b)
les variables contextuelles, y compris le lieu où l‟étude a été réalisée et les antécédents
d'apprentissage des participants, qui finalement influencent l'efficacité de la reformulation
sur le développement du langage (les facteurs de l'apprenant). Conséquemment, pour
exposer les facteurs de l'apprenant, les contextes d'apprentissage et les connaissances
explicites de l‟apprenant seront discutés en tant que variables possibles dans la formulation
d‟une orientation cognitive. En adoptant une approche interdisciplinaire pour étudier la
constitution de l'orientation, à savoir l‟ALS, la psycholinguistique, et les approches
socioculturelles, cet article conclut que les contextes et les connaissances explicites créent
de façon interdépendante la capacité cognitive qui améliore l'efficacité des reformulations
implicites dans le traitement de la langue seconde, qui, par la suite, détermine le
développement ultérieur du langage.
CJAL * RCLA Sato 2
Constitution of form-orientation: Contributions of context and explicit knowledge to

learning from recasts
Introduction
Interaction studies in the field of SLA seem to have reached a mature stage (see
Mackey, 2007), considering the emergence of meta-analysis studies since 2000 (Keck,
Iberri-Shea, Tracy-Ventura, & Wa-Mbaleka, 2006; Li, 2010; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Mackey
& Goo, 2007; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Russell & Spada, 2006; Spada & Tomita, 2010; see
also Spada, 1997) in which researchers seek tendencies in findings of previous studies by
combining and reanalyzing statistical results (Lipsey & Wilson, 2001). These studies have
reported that interaction in general (either conversational or didactic) and corrective
feedback in the paradigm of form-focused instruction (FFI) facilitates second language
(L2) learning. The extent to which these meta-analyses represent findings from the
literature should be open to discussion because, to conduct a meta-analysis, one must
exclude studies that do not conform to the statistical analysis (see Matt & Cook, 1994). For
example, most observational studies are excluded from analysis because they do not
usually report means and standard deviations required to obtain effect sizes. Also, when
compared to meta-analyses in other psychological disciplines, SLA research does not seem
to have produced sufficient number of experimental studies in order to offer generalizable
statements. Nonetheless, SLA meta-analysis studies provide us with insights into the
present discussion: (a) whether explicit or implicit instruction is more effective (see Spada
& Lightbown, 2008); (b) whether contextual factors are a variable affecting L2 learning
behaviours (see Dörnyei, 2006).
In this vein, since FFI has become an area of focus, a vast amount of research has
been undertaken investigating recasts as one type of corrective feedback. This type of
corrective feedback has created much debate among researchers as it can take different
forms—implicit or explicit (Long, 1996; Sheen, 2006), resulting in divergent outcomes in
language development.
In this regard, for many, noticeability is a key construct, as it ultimately reflects a
learner‟s cognitions to detect the corrective nature of a recast (see Doughty, 2001; N. Ellis,
2005; Gass, 2004; Long & Robinson, 1998; Robinson, 1995, 2003; Schmidt, 1990, 1995;
Skehan, 1998, 2002; Tomlin & Villa, 1994; VanPatten, 1996). Whether a learner notices the
corrective nature in given feedback may depend upon its explicitness. This is because
noticing has been claimed to be of “necessity for successful language learning” (Schmidt,
2001, p. 23); that is, feedback must be noticed in order for learners to conduct a cognitive
comparison (R. Ellis, 1994) and to be “engaged in the process of focused input analysis”
(N. Ellis, 2005, p. 328). Therefore, explicitness or saliency of recasts must be carefully
examined, because if saliency is intentionally increased to the extent that a recast
unequivocally functions as negative evidence (i.e., a type of input that provides
information as to what is not grammatically acceptable in the target language) (Pinker,
1984), this then poses the question as to whether the noticed gap is a result of what can be
considered implicit feedback. In other words, without examining how explicit a recast is
made to learners, it is hard to decide whether recasts facilitate L2 acquisition through
positive or negative evidence.
The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

CJAL * RCLA Sato 3
To add to Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada‟s (2001) comprehensive review of

recast studies, and to extend Ellis and Sheen‟s (2006) suggestions for dealing with recast
effectiveness, the current review article explores L2 learners‟ cognitions that may
determine the degree to which recasts benefit L2 development. More specifically, it seeks
L2 learners‟ cognitive ability to notice recasts (i.e., form-orientation), borrowing a claim
that explicit knowledge is a factor that enhances noticing (Robinson, 2003), and a rather
broad claim which draws on a sociocultural approach (Watson-Gegeo, 2004), stating that
language learning behaviors are influenced by individual differences formed by learning
experiences (Dörnyei, 2006). To be clear at the beginning, this article is not intended to
establish arguments that recasts need to be noticed to be conducive to L2 development or
that noticeability is the sole variable that determines corrective feedback effectiveness.
These claims surely need further empirical evidence to be substantiated. Rather, given that
noticing has been found to be facilitative of L2 development, this article contributes to our
understanding of corrective feedback by revealing learners‟ cognition that seems to
increase the chance of noticing. The three questions addressed in this article are: (a) What
roles do contexts play in second or foreign language acquisition research? (b) How does
explicit knowledge affect the noticing of recasts? (c) What type of learners learn the most
from recasts?
Although Segalowitz and Lightbown (1999) rightly addressed the gap between the
SLA community and the L2 psycholinguistic community over ten years ago, it still seems
to exist today. In addition, the gap between SLA and sociocultural approaches to L2
learning still remains to be closed. In the discussion of incommensurability of SLA and
sociocultural theoretical discourses, Dunn and Lantolf (1998) claimed the importance of
coexistence: “[i]t is about nothing less than active and intense dialogic engagement with
these different discourses and world views” (p. 431). The present article takes this stance
claiming that to fully understand the learners‟ cognitions, it is necessary to examine and
interpret language learning phenomena from various perspectives, by inclusively
incorporating and integrating findings using an interdisciplinary approach. This theoretical
approach further adds another dimension to our understanding of corrective feedback
effectiveness and it also bridges the gap between research and classroom practice.
Feedback Factors and Learner Factors on Recast Effectiveness
Drawing on the research of both L1 and L2 acquisition, Nicholas et al. (2001)

explored recasts and claimed that in the domain of SLA “the definition of recasts has
varied considerably” (p. 752) depending on research settings and the researcher‟s
operationalization of recasts. The inconsistent operationalization of recasts largely stems
from how an individual researcher conceptualizes recasts in terms of their explicitness.
Considering the function of recasts that provides learners with corrected or modified
versions of their initial erroneous utterances, recasts surely provide positive evidence to
learners. Recasts can also provide negative evidence as they potentially provide learners
with information about what they cannot say in the target language (Leeman, 2003).
Nevertheless, when it comes to explicitness or implicitness of recasts, the concept
becomes a blur. Following convention that stems from the L1 acquisition research, recasts
are generally categorized as implicit feedback, as seen in Long and Robinson‟s (1998)
categorization of input and Loewen and Nabei‟s (2007) continuum of corrective feedback.

CJAL * RCLA Sato 4
However, it can be also argued that the explicitness of recasts is largely affected by how a
learner interprets the illocutionary force of any given recast. This is because, as Ellis and
Sheen (2006) discussed, the degree of explicitness or implicitness lies in how corrective a
recast is in nature (i.e., how didactic a recast is) and whether a learner treats recasts as
correction (see also Egi, 2007; Kim & Han, 2007; Lyster & Izquierdo, 2009; Ranta, 2008).
That is, the effectiveness of corrective feedback should be interpreted with two
directionalities—one from providers and one from receivers: feedback factors affect the
saliency of feedback and learner factors affect the ultimate effectiveness of feedback. What
remains unanswered in the literature, however, is what are the factors that make recasts
explicit and which variables make learners perceive recasts as negative evidence?
Saliency of Recasts: Feedback Factors
By now, it is evident that recasts function differently depending on where learners‟

spontaneous speech data is collected; that is, classroom or laboratory settings: It has been
revealed that learners tend to notice the corrective force in recasts more in laboratory
settings (Lyster & Izquierdo, 2009; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007). On the
one hand, a number of classroom studies have found that recasts, “reformulation of all or
part of a student‟s utterance, minus the error” (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, p. 48), are less
effective in leading to subsequent students‟ self-corrections of the initial erroneous
utterances (Havranek, 2002; Havranek & Cesnik, 2001; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Panova &
Lyster, 2002). These observational studies sought the noticing of recasts and subsequent L2
learning in the amount of uptake which “constitutes a reaction in some way to the teacher‟s
intention to draw attention to some aspect of the student‟s initial utterance” (Lyster &
Ranta, 1997, p. 49). Though the validity of uptake as a measurement of noticing is
debatable (see Gass, 2003; Lightbown, 1998; Long, 2007; Mackey, 1999; Mackey & Philp,
1998; McDonough, 2005, 2007; McDonough & Mackey, 2000, 2006; Nabei & Swain,
2002), there is also evidence from empirical studies showing that recasts are less noticeable
than other types of corrective feedback (Ammar, 2008; Ammar & Spada, 2006; R. Ellis,
2007; R. Ellis, Basturkmen, & Loewen, 2001; R. Ellis, Loewen, & Erlam, 2006; Lyster,
2004; Sheen, 2007; Yang & Lyster, 2010). These studies compared recasts with other types
of corrective feedback such as prompts that “withhold correct forms (and other signs of
approval) and instead offer learners an opportunity to self-repair by generating their own
modified response” (Lyster, 2004, p. 405), and showed that learners who received recasts
did not improve test scores as much as learners who received prompting types of feedback.
In classroom studies, although frequency of feedback on a particular linguistic
feature can be increased, the nature of corrective feedback is usually not affected by the
experimental design. In Lyster‟s (2004) experiment, teachers were asked to choose an
instructional treatment closest to what they would usually use in their classrooms; thus, the
feedback their students received was similar to what they normally had been given by their
teachers. The same can be said in Ammar (2008) and Ammar and Spada (2006), where the
researcher(s) conducted preliminary observations to assign teachers to treatments, and the
teacher who regularly gave recasts was chosen for the recast group. Therefore, as revealed
by classroom observational studies (e.g., Lyster & Ranta, 1997), recasts in classroom
studies, which are teachers‟ natural didactic discourse, are rather implicit feedback without
prosodic stresses (Lyster, 1998).
CJAL * RCLA Sato 5
On the other hand, a considerable amount of research in laboratory settings has

shown that recasts can be an effective tool in L2 development. This research has reported
that (a) recasts are facilitative in comparison with a situation where learners are given
target forms before making an error (Long, Inagaki, & Ortega, 1998; Ortega & Long,
1997), (b) negotiations that include intensive or target-focused recasts are more effective
than ones without recasts (Han, 2002; Ishida, 2004; Iwashita, 2003; Mackey & Philp,
1998), (c) learners tend to succeed in noticing recasts when they are trained and
encouraged to do so (Philp, 2003), and (d) the degree of noticing recasts varies depending
on their length and the number of changes in a set of conversation (Egi, 2007). It seems
inexpedient, however, to interpret these findings as supportive evidence of recasts because
the designs did not include other types of feedback to compare. That is, they showed that
corrective feedback in general is effective in L2 development and that learners can benefit
from recasts. There are also studies, however, that have reported that recasts were equally
effective when compared to other types of feedback such as (a) explicit correction and
metalinguistic feedback which asked the learners if they were sure about their utterance
(Carroll & Swain, 1993; Kim & Mathes, 2001), (b) clarification request (McDonough,
2007), and (c) prompts (Lyster & Izquierdo, 2009).
Various factors contribute to the divergent findings of recast effectiveness. Lyster
(1998), for example, claimed that recasts in classroom discourse are too ambiguous for
learners to notice and that this ambiguity attributes to lower uptake rates following recasts.
Surely, in classroom dynamics, corrective feedback cannot be controlled as much as in
laboratories (Ammar & Spada, 2006)—in laboratories, the amount of feedback and focus is
controlled in a sealed experimental environment and this may affect the saliency of recasts.
Mackey and Goo (2007), detecting a significant difference between studies conducted in
classrooms and laboratory settings, claimed that the result is the outcome of “the quantity
and quality and often dyadic context for the provision of interactional treatments in
laboratory settings” (p. 443). Nicholas et al. (2001) also claimed that this difference is due
to “the dyadic nature of the laboratory interactions, which may help learners recognize the
interlocutor‟s feedback as corrective” (p. 749). Thus, the nature of feedback in the two
contrasting research settings fundamentally differs. In addition, operationalization of
feedback may have further increased the saliency of recasts. In Carroll and Swain‟s (1993)
study, for instance, learners were first trained to be given feedback and were told that they
would be provided with recasts when making an error. The native-speaking interlocutors in
McDonough‟s (2007) study were trained to give feedback especially on the target structure.
The effect of operationalization of recasts on their saliency can be found in some
classroom studies as well. In Doughty and Varela‟s (1998) quasi-experimental study in
content-based ESL classrooms, the teacher who taught the group that received corrective
recasting first repeated the student utterance to highlight the error through stress and rising
intonation, and when he or she did not self-correct, a recast was provided. Also, students
were encouraged to repeat the given recast. In addition, students had gotten used to
noticing recasts due to other classroom activities: the teacher circled errors and provided
the correct form in learners‟ written production, and the students were shown video
recordings of their own oral reports and instructed to focus on accuracy. Ohta (2000)
observed learners of Japanese in a college foreign language classroom. In this study, a
microphone was attached to the students and the researcher was present in the classroom.
As Russell and Spada (2006) pointed out, these experimental designs might have affected

CJAL * RCLA Sato 6
the extent to which the students were attentive to the corrective intent of feedback and
accuracy of their own utterances. In Ohta‟s (2000) study as well, students had engaged in
grammar activities which might have enhanced noticing recasts. Ohta reported that in the
classroom “a strong focus on form was maintained throughout teaching and learning
activities, with explicit grammar lectures once a week” (p. 55). Therefore, in these studies,
as is the case with the above laboratory studies, the saliency of recasts was increased for
experimental purposes.
Thus, it can be argued, by examining how recasts were operationalized and how
cognitively ready learners were to detect recasts, that the extent to which recasts served to
facilitate L2 development as implicit negative evidence is questionable. That learners
noticed that they were given negative evidence is not surprising since feedback was made
explicit to a great degree and, at the same time, it is clear that the reported effectiveness of
recasts was affected by the experimental designs. That is, the effectiveness of recasts varies
depending on how explicitly they indicate to learners that their utterances are somewhat
problematic and this explicitness can easily be affected by experimental design.
Divergent Findings in Classroom Studies: Learner Factors
To date, classroom studies, regardless of the contexts (i.e., foreign or second

language contexts), generally concluded that prompting types of feedback are more
effective than recasts in leading to more successful learner uptake. Nonetheless, there is
clear evidence that recasts function differently when classroom studies are compared, in
which the saliency of corrective feedback was not experimentally increased (i.e., implicit
recasts); in other words, there is a considerable difference in terms of the degree of recast
noticeability across studies.
Ellis et al.‟s (2001) study conducted at a private language school in New Zealand,
for example, showed that successful uptake following recasts (categorized under direct
feedback) was 76.3%. In a similar context, Loewen (2004) observed classrooms at a
language school in New Zealand. Although he found that prompting types of feedback
were more predictive of successful uptake than were recasts, explicitness of recasts was
eliminated from the statistical analysis—logistic regression—in the process of forward
stepwise procedure. Thus, the extent to which a recast was explicit to learners is unclear.
However, what this study does show is a high rate of successful uptake (73%), including an
indirect type of recast without any prosodic stress, which, again, is inconsistent with the
data from the other contexts. Lochtman (2002), having observed German classrooms at
three Dutch-speaking secondary schools, concluded that recast effectiveness is comparable
to other types of feedback. This claim was based on the finding that, although recasts did
not lead to uptake as much as other prompting types of feedback, recasts resulted in “less
unsuccessful uptake” (p. 281). In other words, when only successful uptake was taken into
account as a sign of learners‟ noticing, recasts in those classrooms were equally as
effective as explicit corrections.
In Asian contexts, a similar tendency in terms of the noticeability of recasts has
been reported. For instance, Sheen (2004) collected data at private language schools in
Korea. In this observational study, 82.5% of recasts were followed by successful uptake.
Having mentioned that the majority of the learners were highly educated, holding
bachelor‟s or master‟s degrees, Sheen suggested that the learners‟ educational backgrounds
CJAL * RCLA Sato 7
made them linguistically more sophisticated and proficient and thus could have been a
variable contributing to the high rate of noticing (however, for opposite findings, see
Sheen, 2007, in which the target linguistic feature was English articles). Yang and Lyster
(2010) have also provided evidence that recasts are comparatively noticeable for some
learners. This quasi-experimental study was conducted in Chinese university language
classrooms, measuring both oral and written test scores of English regular and irregular
past-tense forms. Although, like other classroom studies, Yang and Lyster (2010) found
supportive evidence for prompting feedback over recasts on regular past-tense forms, they
also reported that irregular past-tense forms are “amenable to both recasts and prompts” (p.
28). Drawing on Skehan‟s (1998) model of a dual-mode system, Yang and Lyster attributed
this result to different processing demands depending on linguistic structures: Since
irregular past-tense forms are less structured resulting in the exemplar-based system,
learners can learn forms by being provided correct forms through recasts to a similar extent
to the case where they are pushed to practice through prompting feedback (see, for
neurocognitive perspectives, Hahne, Mueller, & Clahsen, 2006; Ullman, 2001, 2004; van
der Lely & Ullman, 2001).
In summary, recast effectiveness can be enhanced when the corrective nature is
made sufficiently clear for learners to notice it. That is, in both laboratory settings and in
classrooms where saliency of recasts is operationally increased, recasts function as explicit
negative evidence (R. Ellis & Sheen, 2006; see also Kim & Han, 2007). Also, it is clear
that recasts can serve as both positive and negative evidence and their explicitness is
decided by both the provider and the receiver of a recast, which seems to designate the
ultimate effectiveness of corrective feedback. That is, recast effectiveness lies not only in
feedback itself but also in types of learners. This argument does not, however, provide a
good understanding of differential findings from observational classroom studies where
recasts were a more implicit type of feedback (see Table 1 for a summary of studies that
dealt with recasts). Why do learners in some contexts (i.e., Ellis et al., 2001; Lochtman,
2002; Loewen, 2004; Sheen, 2004) repeat recasts and possibly notice their corrective intent
more than do learners in other studies (Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Panova & Lyster, 2002)? In
the following sections, these contrasting findings will be explained in terms of (a) how
learning contexts may construct learners‟ cognitive orientation and (b) how research
contexts misleadingly cause us to overgeneralize findings, especially in relation to
differential amounts of explicit knowledge that each participant holds, which is arguably
developed by his or her learning history prior to participating in a study.

Table 1. Studies Including Recasts and Their Effectiveness
Participants (L1) & Results
Study Research setting Operationalization of recasts
Target language(s) (vs. other types of feedback)
CJAL * RCLA
Lyster & Ranta (1997) Elementary (English) Classroom (Quebec) (Observational) Low uptake rate after recasts
French Immersion
Panova & Lyster (2002) Adult (Frencha) Classroom (Quebec) (Observational) Low uptake rate after recasts
English ESL
Havranek & Cesnik (2001) Varied (German) Classroom (Germany) (Observational) Low uptake rate after recasts
English ESL
Lyster (2004) Elementary (French) Classroom (Quebec) Teachers did what they normally had Recasts < Prompts
French Immersion been doing in their classes.
Ammar & Spada (2006) Elementary (French) Classroom (Quebec) Teachers were chosen according to Recasts < Prompts
English Intensive ESL observation. (for lower proficiency learners)
Ammar (2008) Elementary (French) Classroom (Quebec) Teachers were chosen according to Recasts < Prompts
English Intensive ESL interview and observation.
Long, Inagaki, & Ortega (1998) University (unknown) Laboratory (USA) Researcher gave recasts whenever a Recasts > models
Spanish & Japanese participant made an error.
Ortega & Long (1997) University (unknown) Laboratory (USA) Researcher gave recasts whenever a Recasts > models
Spanish participant made an error.
Mackey & Philp (1998) Adult (mixed) Laboratory (Australia) NSs were trained to provide recasts Recasts > ø
English intensively on any errors.
Iwashita (2003) University (English) Laboratory (Australia) Recasts were elicited by tasks that Recasts > ø
Japanese participants engaged in with NSs.
Han (2002) University (mixed) Laboratory (USA) Researcher gave recasts especially on Recasts > ø
English the target form.
(continue)
Sato 8

Ishida (2004) University (English) Laboratory (USA) Researcher gave intensive recasts. Recasts > ø
Japanese
Carroll & Swain (1993) Adult (Spanish) Laboratory (Canada) Participants were trained to be given Recasts ≈ Prompts
English recasts before the data collection.
CJAL * RCLA
McDonough (2007) University (Thai) Laboratory (Thai) NSs were told to provide recasts on Recasts ≈ Clarification request
English the target structure.
Lyster & Izquierdo (2009) University (English) Laboratory (Quebec) Researcher gave recasts whenever a Recasts ≈ Prompts
French participant made an error.
Doughty & Varela (1998) Middle school (mixed) Classroom (USA) An error was repeated and if not Recasts > ø
English corrected, a recast was provided.
Ohta (2000) University (English) Classroom (USA) (Observational) Recasts > ø

Japanese
Ellis, Basturkmen, & Loewen (2001) Adult (mixed) Classroom (Observational) High uptake rate after recasts
English (New Zealand)
Sheen (2004) Adult (Korean) Classroom (Korea) (Observational) High uptake rate after recasts
English
Lochtman (2002) Middle school (Dutch) Classroom (Belgium) (Observational) Recasts ≈ Explicit corrections
German
Yang & Lyster (2010) University (Chinese) Classroom (China) Teacher was provided a booklet Recasts ≈ Prompts
English explaining recasts.
Loewen & Philp (2006) Adult (mixed) Classroom (Observational) Recasts < Prompts
English (New Zealand)
Sheen (2007) University (mixed) Classroom (USA) Teacher was trained and practiced Recasts < Prompts
Sato 9
English how to provide recasts.

Note. L1 of 20 out of 25 participants was Haitian Creole but French was the language of instruction in their home country.
CJAL * RCLA Sato 10
Contexts and Research Participants
There has been a growing perspective in the field of SLA that argues that social and
contextual factors have been dismissed despite their significant impact on language learning
(Larsen-Freeman, 2007; Swain & Deters, 2007). This argument takes a sociocultural approach
opposing the traditional approach that tries to develop universal cognitive-oriented theories that
apply to any type of learner in any kind of context. For example, a seminal article by Firth and
Wagner (1997) particularly challenged Long‟s (1993) stance that claimed the necessity of
“theory convergence” in SLA by “culling” (p. 235; see also Block, 1996; Watson-Gegeo, 2004).
From a postmodernism position, Rampton (1997) also criticized the traditional SLA‟s pursuit of
“universal, referential above indexical meaning, disembedded cognition, value-free inquiry,
progress as natural condition, and assimilation to the norms of an idealised monolingual U.K. or
U.S. national” (p. 330). As SLA research is rapidly growing worldwide, posing numerous
contextual variables and perspectives to language learning research, the present article
investigates recasts by considering context as a variable that affects L2 learning behaviours. In
explaining the divergent results of recast effectiveness, this position focuses on learner factors
rather than feedback factors (explicit or implicit) because the directionality is from the learner
side, affected by contextual factors.
Contextual Factors in Recast Effectiveness
One of the few studies that addressed differential findings of recasts across contexts is
Lyster and Mori (2006) that compared uptake rates of students of French immersion in Canada
and Japanese immersion in the United States (the original data sets were from Lyster & Ranta,
1997 and Mori, 2002, respectively): They found that students in Japanese immersion showed
repair moves after recasts considerably more than French immersion students did. In other
words, in contrast to the Canadian immersion context where recasts seemed to be too ambiguous
for them to notice (or to show uptake moves), for Japanese immersion students, recasts were
more noticeable (or followed by more uptake).
Lyster and Mori (2006) claimed that the difference might have been due to the classroom
orientation which was revealed by COLT classroom observation (see Spada & Fröhlich, 1995):
they found that Japanese immersion students occasionally engaged in choral repetition activities.
Thus, their immediate responses to recasts might have to do simply with what they were used to
doing: repeating what the teacher said. However, Lyster and Mori also sought reasons in the
linguistic environment where Japanese immersion students did not have access to the target
language. They discussed that the structural and typological differences between the L1s and
target languages might have affected the result as well: since Japanese is more different from
English than is French, Japanese immersion students noticed the corrective feature of recasts
more. Combining these variables, they attributed the supportive evidence of recasts to the
learners‟ form-orientation that was developed by the instructional context. They proposed the
Counterbalance Hypothesis, which states that instruction that counters a classroom‟s
instructional communicative orientation will be facilitative of learning, to explain why form-
oriented learners were able to benefit from otherwise meaning-oriented feedback (i.e., recasts).
Lyster (2007) argued, “it may be the case, therefore, that prompts are more effective than recasts
in a given instructional setting, because of the immediate repair they encourage. Recasts,

CJAL * RCLA Sato 11
however, might prove equally effective in another instructional setting where they too lead to
immediate repair” (pp. 129-130).
The other study that took a look at contextual factors in relation to recast effectiveness is
Sheen‟s (2004) comparative study. She reanalyzed the data from three descriptive studies with
her own collected in conversation schools in Korea: Lyster and Ranta (1997), Panova and Lyster
(2002), and Ellis et al. (2001). These studies were conducted in immersion classrooms in
Canada, ESL classrooms in Canada, and intensive ESL classrooms in New Zealand, respectively.
Descriptive analyses of the proportions of interactional moves among four sets of data revealed
that, first, the uptake rates of students in the two Canadian contexts (Lyster & Ranta: 54.8%;
Panova & Lyster: 46.6%) were significantly lower than the ones in New Zealand (80.4%) and
Korea (82.3%). This was the case for successful uptake as well. Second, the same tendency was
found for the relationship between uptake and recasts by analyzing types of feedback followed
by uptake: Students in Korean and New Zealand contexts responded significantly more to recasts
(82.5% and 72.9%, respectively) than did ESL students in Canada (39.8%) and immersion
students (30.7%).
Sheen interpreted the results as the outcome of different proficiency levels: discussing
Korean and Canadian ESL data, she stated that, since students in the Korean context had a higher
educational background and English proficiency than Canadian students, they perceived
teachers‟ feedback more. She also discussed that students‟ orientations differed across the
contexts, arguing that educational contexts in Korea and New Zealand encouraged them to attend
to feedback more, since they “had had years of formal instruction” (p. 291). Interestingly, she
also reported that the feedback given in Korean classrooms is explicit to the degree that “the
illocutionary force is more or less the same as explicit correction” (p. 293). This argument
coincides with Lochtman‟s (2002) interpretation for less unsuccessful uptake following recasts in
German classrooms. Lochtman emphasized, borrowing Stern‟s (1990) term, that the participants
had highly analytic orientation due to the foreign language pedagogy in Belgium, resulting in
higher noticing rates.
Lyster and Mori (2006) and Sheen (2004) descriptively provided us with a new
perspective; that is, implicit feedback in the form of recasts functions considerably differently
depending on context. Looking at the studies, learners who detect recasts more seem to be found
in language schools where learners are keen on learning language forms and thereby tending to
repeat recasts more. Also, in foreign language contexts, recasts seem to be noticed relatively
more. Therefore, contexts are surely a variable affecting recast effectiveness. The words context,
foreign language, and second language, however, require careful interpretation because
misinterpretation can result in overgeneralization of learners.
Learning Contexts and Research Participants
The word context has been used quite differently by many researchers (see Berns,
1990). Just to list a few usages, the word can be used to refer to social circumstances affecting
language usages (Sociolinguistics—e.g., Gibbons, 2003; Tarone, 2007; Tarone & Liu, 1995),
conditions of language processing (Psycholinguistics—e.g., Batstone, 2002; Gass, 2004), foci of
language teachers‟ feedback (Instructed SLA—e.g, Egi, 2007; Oliver & Mackey, 2003), and
discrepancies between target language cultures and cultures where languages are taught (Foreign
Language Pedagogy—e.g., Kramsch, 1993). The present article investigates learners‟ cognitions
in relation to noticing of recasts, which vary across different classroom settings. Henceforth, the

CJAL * RCLA Sato 12
word context is defined as a research setting where a study is conducted, which entails official
status of the language, geographical places, and institution types.
In the comparison of foreign and second language contexts as a variable in recast
effectiveness, Mackey and Goo‟s (2007) meta-analysis detected a significant difference.
Although they seemingly provide evidence that L2 learning behaviours differ depending on
contexts, their selection criteria do not explain how they divided studies into the two contexts. In
contrast, Lyster and Saito (2010) did not detect any significant differences between second and
foreign language classroom settings. In their study, decision was made according to official or
recognized status of the target language following Stern‟s (1983) definition. However, this way
of distinction imposes a problem because a research context does not represent learning history
of each research participant necessarily. In other words, it is highly possible that participants in a
study had distinguishable educational backgrounds that may have developed differential
cognitive processes.
In the SLA arena, second language is usually characterized by the extent to which
learners are surrounded by the target language. That is, if the target language, including a third or
fourth, is not his or her native language or mother tongue, it is called a second language (Gass &
Selinker, 2001). On the other hand, foreign languages are defined by Mitchell and Myles (2004)
as languages that “have no immediately local uses or speakers.” They went on and said “[w]e
believe it is sensible to include „foreign‟ languages under our more general term of „second‟
languages, because we believe that the underlying learning processes are essentially the same for
more local and for more remote target languages” (pp. 1-2). When it comes to research
participants in classroom studies who are categorized as second or foreign language learners,
however, we need to interpret the results carefully: even if foreign and second language contexts
in general are supposedly distinguishable based on the sociolinguistic status of the target
language, these labels can often be misrepresentative of participants in an SLA study. For
instance, a 21-year-old Korean learner of English staying in Australia for three months as an
exchange student would be described as a second language learner and so would a 21-year-old
francophone Canadian learner of English studying at a Canadian university. Also, both a 17 -year-
old Japanese learner of English studying in Japan and a 17-year-old American learner of
Japanese in an immersion program in the United States would be categorized as foreign language
learners. That is, learners who have a foreign language learning background can be easily found
in a study conducted in a second language context. This is exactly when a context does not match
learners‟ educational backgrounds and where the word context causes us to overlook variations in
research participants.
In fact, a majority of the participants in the studies conducted in New Zealand, who
were labeled second language learners, were from Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
and China (Ellis et al., 2001: 71%; Loewen, 2003, 2004; Loewen & Philp, 2006: 76.2%). In
these countries where the target language (English) is more precisely a foreign language, English
is a compulsory subject (except for Japan) and grammar-translation methods are still
predominant methods of instruction (see evidence in Adamson, 2004 for China; Butler, 2004;
2005 for South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan; O‟Donnell, 2005; Robinson, Sawyer, & Ross, 2001
for Japan). It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that the learning experiences of the
learners in the New Zealand classrooms are similar to the ones in the studies conducted in Asian
countries (i.e., Sheen, 2004; Yang & Lyster, 2010), who also noticed recasts relatively more than
learners in Canadian contexts.
In summary, context does play a role in some cases in determining types of linguistic

CJAL * RCLA Sato 13
skills and awareness a learner develops. For instance, learners in immersion programs where
they are surrounded by the target language inside and outside classrooms generally develop a
meaning-focused orientation, in which primary attention is given to communication, not to
accuracy of production (see Harley, Cummins, Swain, & Allen, 1990; Lyster & Mori, 2006). On
the other hand, learners who are learning in a grammar-oriented program tend to become analytic
learners (see Bialystok, 2001). In the case of the learners in the studies conducted in New
Zealand, however, context does not tell us much about the participant‟s L2 processing patterns
due to the mismatch between research contexts and learning experiences of each participant.
The remaining question concerning the noticeability of recasts is why do some learners
tend to notice recasts more when compared to others? What kinds of cognitive processes do they
go through when given truly implicit feedback? Ultimately, what constitutes form-orientation in
a cognitive sense? As Nicholas et al. (2001) suggested, an “issue that is not resolved by the
research to date is what constitutes evidence for the effectiveness of recasts” (p. 750). In the
following section, this article discusses the relationship between explicit knowledge and noticing
from a psycholinguistic point of view, based on an assumption that learners who tended to
respond to recasts had learned grammar rules explicitly prior to participating in the studies.
Explicit Knowledge and Noticing
Hulstijn (2005) claimed that investigation of explicit knowledge and its relation to L2
learning has good theoretical and educational value, since explicit knowledge is one of the keys
to a successful learning process. He warned, however, that dealing with the construct is a
challenge and an investigation requires careful operationalization as, in addition to inconsistent
usage of the term, it entails a theoretical complex: namely, “learners‟ individual differences in
knowledge, skills, and information processing styles, which might be beneficial or detrimental to
discovering underlying regularities” (p. 130; see also N. Ellis, 1994). This claim suggests that an
amount of explicit knowledge can be indicative of noticeability of recasts. Explicit knowledge,
defined by R. Ellis (2004) as “the conscious awareness of what a language or language in general
consists of and/or of the roles that it plays in human life” (p. 229), is learnable and can grow “as
the learner accumulates more declarative facts about the language” (p. 237). In this sense, the
terms metalinguistic knowledge and explicit knowledge are interchangeable, as Ranta (2008)
defined metalinguistic knowledge as “the mental representations that underlie the ability to
perform metalinguistic tasks” (p. 205). Hence, in the current article, explicit knowledge
specifically refers to a type of knowledge entailing a language skill to describe, correct, and
explain grammatical errors (Green & Hecht, 1992), which was developed by explicit teaching.
For a long time, there has been a considerable amount of theoretical debate as to how
explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge are related (or unrelated), the latter of which is
considered as the ultimate type of knowledge because it requires automatic retrieval from
memory when producing the target language—a kind of knowledge that native speakers possess
and utilize (see Paradis, 2009; Skehan, 1998; White & Ranta, 2002, for discussion of different
interface positions). At the same time, however, there seems to be a consensus that explicit
knowledge is facilitative of language learning, as shown by studies that investigated skill
acquisition theory proposed by Anderson (1983, 1990; see also DeKeyser, 1997, 1998, 2003,
2007). Nonetheless, the relationship between explicit knowledge and noticing is yet
uninvestigated, mainly due to the complex construct of explicit knowledge (N. Ellis, 2005) and
subsequent difficulty in measuring it (R. Ellis, 2005; 2006). That is, although there is much

CJAL * RCLA Sato 14
research that seems to have dealt with the relationship, the explicit knowledge variable was not
isolated; rather, it was buried under other constructs such as individual differences and
proficiency.
Individual Differences or Explicit Knowledge?
There is a body of research that has investigated a noticing variable, one component of
which is seemingly identical with explicit knowledge: analytic(al) ability in the paradigm of
individual differences. Robinson (1995) claimed that “individual differences in memory and
attentional capacity both affect the extent of noticing, thereby directly influencing SLA” (p. 284).
Theorizing individual differences, especially foreign language aptitude, Skehan (2002) also
emphasized that individual capacity to infer rules of language and to make linguistic
generalizations has significant effects on differential learning processes and outcomes. Findings
from this research generally confirm that the higher the scores of individual difference tests, the
better the learner‟s noticing ability of recasts.
Among different components of individual differences, Mackey, Philp, Egi, Fujii, and
Tatsumi (2002), for example, focused on working memory and found that it was positively
related to noticing of recasts and consequent L2 development, concluding that “learners with
high WM [working memory] capacities are more efficient at processing input they receive” (p.
204). Another study that investigated individual differences in relation to recast effectiveness is
Trofimovich, Ammar, and Gatbonton (2007). Following Skehan‟s (2002) framework of
individual differences (i.e., working memory, phonological memory, attention control, and
analytical ability), they tested how these individual differences affect the extent to which recasts
improve noticeability and oral production skills. They found that (a) after the recast sessions, the
participants showed significant improvement on the target features (including grammatical and
lexical) and the effect was sustained until the delayed posttest, indicating the effectiveness of
recasts, and (b) accuracy in oral production skills was positively correlated with individual
difference scores, meaning those who had higher scores benefited more from recasts (see also
Mackey, Adams, Stafford, & Winke, 2010).
Indeed, research on individual differences is relevant to the investigation into recast
effectiveness and individual differences are a significant learner factor. Ammar and Sato (2010)
discussed that individual differences may have a comparable effect to feedback types on the
effectiveness of corrective feedback. It is also true that some key features of explicit knowledge
and analytical abilities correspond to each other; namely, they both entail an ability to describe
and detect grammar rules. However, explicit knowledge is not identical to the construct of
analytical abilities. Ranta (2002), when discussing language aptitude, sees metalinguistic skills
and analytic abilities in the same paradigm. In her theoretical view, while aptitude is viewed as a
stable individual difference, metalinguistic skills refer to a range of skills which are affected by a
learner‟s development, and they “are two sides of the same coin” (p. 163). Consequently, in her
study and Trofimovich et al. (2007) as well, analytic ability was measured by a written L1 error
detection and correction task. Therefore, research on analytical abilities does not provide clues
for the relationship between recast effectiveness and explicit knowledge that a learner has been
taught in the framework of instructed SLA.

CJAL * RCLA Sato 15
Proficiency or Explicit Knowledge?
Proficiency is another construct that has been claimed to have positive effect on recast
effectiveness. There does not seem to be much disagreement that measuring proficiency is not a
simple task, and that standardized tests such as the TOEFL do not necessarily represent a
learner‟s proficiency accurately (see Shin, 2005). Consequently, proficiency has been
operationalized differently yet it has been commonly reported by many studies that learners with
higher proficiency tend to benefit more from recasts.
For instance, Lin and Hedgcock (1996) divided participants into high- and low-
proficiency groups based on their levels of speech judged holistically by trained raters, in
addition to the length of residence in the L2 environment and their formal education of the target
language. In Mackey and Philp‟s (1998) study, two groups were identified (readies and
unreadies) based on the developmental stages of question forms (see Pienemann & Johnston,
1987). The same method was employed by Philp (2003) and the learners were labeled as high,
intermediate, and low learners. Havranek and Cesnik (2001) identified verbal intelligence and
relative English fluency as variables that positively affected the effectiveness of corrective
feedback. Verbal intelligence was not clearly defined, and relative English fluency was measured
by combining the school-administered English final exam scores and C-test scores (a type of
cloze test). Finally, in Ammar and Spada‟s (2006) experimental study, participants were assigned
to low and high proficiency groups based on the pretest scores of the passage-correction task and
picture-description task.
What these studies have revealed in general is that developmental readiness is a key to
noticing recasts (Ellis & Sheen, 2006). That is, “recasts can be effective if the learner has already
begun to use a particular linguistic feature and is in a position to choose between linguistic
alternatives” (Nicholas et al., 2001, p. 752; see also Saxton, 1997 for a discussion of L1
acquisition). It is important to mention that although some parts of the proficiency measurements
entailed explicit knowledge, none of these studies measured explicit knowledge separately as an
independent variable affecting noticing. If proficiency was measured by different language
abilities, it is difficult to interpret the findings and premature to claim that explicit knowledge
affects noticing.
In the line of recast research, Bigelow, delMas, Hansen and Tarone (2006) conducted a
groundbreaking study that investigated literacy as a variable on recast effectiveness. What is
particular in this study is that the participants were Somali immigrants whose literacy levels were
comparatively low due to their educational background. Based on their L1 and L2 literacy levels,
the participants were divided into two groups. Analyses of the interaction data with one of the
researchers revealed that those who were with higher literacy level recalled given recasts
accurately more than did the ones in the low-literacy group. They also found that recall of
complex recasts (those including 2 or more changes to the original utterance) was significantly
related to literacy level. Drawing on Olson‟s (2002) view of literacy and metalinguistic
knowledge, Bigelow et al. attributed the result to metalinguistic knowledge that more literate
participants held.
What this finding tells us is the possible contribution of a specific type of knowledge to
L2 acquisition especially through the means of recasts. Tarone and Bigelow (2005) argued that
literacy is directly linked to metalinguistic knowledge. They stated that becoming literate is “to
develop an explicit and analytical awareness of language itself. With that awareness comes
increasing cognitive control” (p. 85). In the sense of cognitive development, this claim seems to

CJAL * RCLA Sato 16
synchronize with foreign language learning that usually begins with studying grammar rules and
eventually challenges to acquire more implicit type of knowledge that can equip the learners to
produce the target language in a spontaneous manner.
Explicit Knowledge and Noticing of Recasts
In the investigation of explicit and implicit knowledge and their differential

contributions to the effectiveness of corrective feedback, Ellis et al. (2006) measured the two
types of knowledge separately and investigated the effectiveness of two types of feedback,
recasts and metalinguistic explanation, the latter of which served as a prompting type of
feedback. In this classroom study, explicit knowledge was measured by an untimed
grammaticality judgment test that asked participants to identify ungrammatical sentences and to
indicate their certainty without time constraint, as well as by a metalinguistic test in which they
corrected grammatical mistakes and verbally explained the reason (see, for details, R. Ellis,
2005; Erlam, 2006). Not surprisingly, the learners‟ scores of the tests were already almost perfect
at the onset as 77% of the participants were from East Asian countries where, predictably, they
had received grammar-based instruction. Most of them had spent less than a year in New
Zealand and the average length of formal English education was 7 years, indicating that the
explicit knowledge that the participants held was from their previous learning experiences.
The comparison between the two types of feedback showed strong supportive evidence
for metalinguistic explanation in terms of the development of implicit knowledge measured by
spontaneous oral production skills with the use of oral imitation tests. Notably, however, recasts
also positively served in developing implicit knowledge over time: learners who received recasts
improved more than did the ones in the control group. That corrective feedback including recasts
facilitated learning in a limited amount of instruction (30 minutes) with this type of learners
indicates that “explicit L2 knowledge can enhance the processes involved in the development of
implicit knowledge” (R. Ellis, 2006, p. 364). With the same measurement tools and participants,
R. Ellis (2007) reported effects of types of feedback on two grammatical elements: past tense (-
ed) and comparative (-er). The results support the contribution of explicit knowledge to learning
from implicit feedback: having found differential effects of metalinguistic feedback depending
on the target morphemes (the effect was delayed on past-tense forms but immediate on
comparative forms), Ellis claimed that acquisition processes differ depending on “how well-
formed learners‟ explicit knowledge of a structure is” (p. 359). He argued that corrective
feedback helps the transition from explicit knowledge to implicit knowledge (i.e.,
proceduralization) and this is more so for prompting feedback.
Loewen and Nabei (2007) conducted a study in Japan directly addressing the
contribution of taught-explicit knowledge to learning from recasts. In this study, the participants
were Japanese university students who had been learning English with traditional grammar-
translation methods as shown in the background questionnaire: 90 % of the participants reported
that their English education had been formal and they had studied in Japan mostly with the
average length of 7 years. Therefore, the amount of explicit knowledge they had can be
reasonably assumed to be homogenously high, considering also the educational system where
they passed the paper-based university entrance exams (whose focus was primarily on measuring
explicit knowledge).
Employing untimed and timed grammaticality judgment tests, in addition to an oral
production test, as did the series of Ellis‟ studies, Loewen and Nabei (2007) revealed that all

CJAL * RCLA Sato 17
feedback groups (i.e., recasts, metalinguistic feedback, and clarification requests) equally
improved their test scores on the timed grammaticality judgment test, which indicates a
comparable effect of recasts on improvement of implicit knowledge. However, in the oral
production test, which is also claimed to measure implicit knowledge, Loewen and Nabei did not
find significant improvements. They provided two possible reasons for this: (a) the nature of the
oral production task which required the participants to produce sentences on their own unlike the
grammaticality judgment test, and (b) the developmental stages of question forms that were too
broad to measure improvement. Although Loewen and Nabei acknowledged that the research
setting was not as natural as a classroom setting because of the interlocutor and the number of
students in one class, they revealed that learners who have explicit knowledge can benefit
equally from recasts and prompting types of feedback.
What these studies (Ellis et al., 2006 and Loewen & Nabei, 2007) demonstrate is that
explicit knowledge but not proficiency or analytic(al) ability partly constructs the form-
orientation. In other words, explicit knowledge aids learners to detect corrective nature even in
an implicit type of feedback, namely, recasts. This argument can be strengthened when the
findings are compared with the experimental studies from meaning-oriented classrooms that did
not find notable differences between the recast and no-feedback groups (e.g., Lyster, 2004). It
can be claimed, then, that this cognitive ability, which identifiably distinguishes the learners in
the studies conducted in New Zealand from the ones in the Canadian studies, is a powerful
variable in detecting recasts and thus contributing to language acquisition; that is, explicit
knowledge is one of the constituents of the form-orientation. Table 2 shows the focused studies
and the findings with regard to variables affecting recast effectiveness.

Table 2. Studies Including Recasts and Variables on the Effectiveness of Recasts and the Measurements
Participants (L1) &

Study Research setting(s) Variable(s) Measurement(s)
Target language(s)
CJAL * RCLA
Lyster & Mori (2006) Elementary (English) Classroom (Quebec) Instructional context COLT Part A
French vs. Immersion vs.
Elementary (English) Classroom (USA)
Japanese Immersion
Sheen (2004) Adult (mixed) Classroom (Quebec) Instructional context (None)

English vs. Immersion & ESL vs.
Adult (Korean) Classroom (Korea & NZ)
English ESL & Private language
schools
Mackey, Philp, Egi, Fujii, & Tatsumi Adult (Japanese) Laboratory (USA) Individual differences Nonword recall test
(2002) English (working memory) Listening span test
Trofimovich, Ammar, & Gatbonton Adult (French) Laboratory (Quebec) Individual differences Letter-number recall test
(2007) English (phonological memory, Nonword recognition test
working memory, Trail Making Test
attention control, Modern Language Aptitude Test (Part IV)
analytical ability)
Lin & Hedgcock (1996) Adult (Chinese) Laboratory (Spain) Proficiency Holistic assessment of speech
Spanish Length of education
Length of residence
Mackey & Philp (1998) Adult (mixed) Laboratory (Australia) Proficiency Developmental stages of question forms
English
Philp (2003) Adult (mixed) Laboratory (Australia) Proficiency Developmental stages of question forms
English
Sato 18
(continued)

Havranek & Cesnik (2001) Varied (German) Classroom (Germany) Proficiency Verbal intelligence
English ESL School-administered test
C-test
CJAL * RCLA
Ammar & Spada (2006) Elementary (French) Classroom (Quebec) Proficiency Passage correction task
English Intensive ESL Picture description task
Bigelow, delMas, Hansen, & Tarone Adult (Somali) Laboratory (USA) Literacy Native Language Literacy Screening
(2006) English Device
Ellis, Loewen, & Erlam (2006) Adult (mixed) Classroom (NZ) Explicit knowledge Untimed Grammaticality judgment test
English Timed Grammaticality judgment test
(ungrammatical items)
Metalinguistic test
Ellis (2007) Adult (Spanish) Classroom (NZ) Explicit knowledge Untimed Grammaticality judgment test
Metalinguistic test
Loewen & Nabei (2007) University (Japanese) Classroom (Japan) Explicit knowledge Untimed Grammaticality judgment test
Sato 19

CJAL * RCLA Sato 20
Conclusions and Remarks
In reviewing studies pertaining to recasts, this article adds to our present knowledge of
recasts by: (a) focusing on implicit recasts in order to separate learner factors from feedback
factors; (b) exploring possible learner variables determining the effectiveness of implicit recasts;
and (c) proposing form-orientation, which does not entail individual differences or
developmental readiness (see Ellis & Sheen, 2006), as a general descriptor of L2 learners who
benefit from implicit recasts. More specifically, this paper sought to address three questions: (a)
What roles do contexts play in second or foreign language acquisition research? (b) How does
explicit knowledge affect the noticing of recasts? (c) What types of learners learn the most from
recasts? In the first section, operationalizations of recasts in various studies were discussed to
confirm that in many studies, the saliency of recasts was experimentally increased and thus that
learners noticed recasts is not so surprising; that is, in these studies, recasts arguably provided
explicit negative evidence. In the second section, by employing a sociocultural approach,
contextual factors were the focus as a possible variable in learning from recasts. The last section
focused on the psycholinguistic dimension used to examine explicit knowledge and its effect on
recast noticeability. To answer the proposed questions, a research context provides us with
information about an instructional setting but not necessarily information about individual
participants. In this case, measuring explicit knowledge of participants seems a valid
methodology, considering the fact that some of them may have educational backgrounds which
do not conform to the linguistic environment of the research context. In some cases, however,
context does play a role in forming certain cognitive orientations. Obviously this SLA variable is
multi-faceted (e.g., linguistic environment, L1-L2 distance, classroom orientations) and requires
further research. Nonetheless, what is clear is that these features evidently develop an ability to
notice recasts, even the ones that are truly implicit. Therefore, context and explicit knowledge do
not independently affect the noticeability of recasts; rather, these two constructs interdependently
create a cognitive ability to detect recasts. Learners who possess this form-orientation thus seem
to benefit the most from recasts.
The hypothesis build in this paper cannot be answered conclusively because of the
paucity of relevant research. Additional empirical studies are needed to examine context as an
independent variable when operationalizing recasts. The number of studies that have investigated
explicit knowledge and its relation to noticing is limited as well. It would be of interest to see
more empirical studies in the future that directly investigate how contextual factors and explicit
knowledge play a role in learning language through recasts. Important, however, is to consider
ecological validity. Van den Branden (2006) argued that findings from laboratory studies are
often unfeasible to practice in actual classrooms and, thus, research should ultimately be
conducted in classroom settings (see also Foster, 1998; Lightbown, 2000). Ellis et al. (2006) also
emphasized that “ecological validity can only be achieved through classroom-based research” (p.
365; but see Hulstijn, 1997 for a comprehensive justification of conducting a laboratory study).
Also, considering the fact that learning background and previous education are factors that affect
a learner‟s amount of explicit knowledge, careful participant selections and measurements are
necessary. This is to say, a given research setting should not be a predictor of how much explicit
knowledge a participant holds. This raises a question to a simplified construct of the ESL and
EFL dichotomy (Block, 2003). In addition, having fluent speaking ability does not promise that
he or she has an amount of explicit knowledge, and neither does a low score on a proficiency test

CJAL * RCLA Sato 21
indicate his or her explicit knowledge is limited. Thus, clear identification and operationalization
of the construct of proficiency is also of necessity.
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Constitution of form-orientation: Contributions of context and explicit

knowledge to learning from recasts

Constitution of form-orientation: Contributions of context and explicit knowledge to

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

To add to Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada‟s (2001) comprehensive review of

Feedback Factors and Learner Factors on Recast Effectiveness

Drawing on the research of both L1 and L2 acquisition, Nicholas et al. (2001)

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Saliency of Recasts: Feedback Factors

By now, it is evident that recasts function differently depending on where learners‟

On the other hand, a considerable amount of research in laboratory settings has

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Divergent Findings in Classroom Studies: Learner Factors

To date, classroom studies, regardless of the contexts (i.e., foreign or second

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Ohta (2000) University (English) Classroom (USA) (Observational) Recasts > ø

English how to provide recasts.

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Contexts and Research Participants

Contextual Factors in Recast Effectiveness

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Learning Contexts and Research Participants

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Explicit Knowledge and Noticing

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Individual Differences or Explicit Knowledge?

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Proficiency or Explicit Knowledge?

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Explicit Knowledge and Noticing of Recasts

In the investigation of explicit and implicit knowledge and their differential

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Participants (L1) &

Sheen (2004) Adult (mixed) Classroom (Quebec) Instructional context (None)

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Conclusions and Remarks

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

of second language acquisition (pp. 313-348). Oxford: Blackwell.

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

language acquisition (pp. 224-255). Oxford: Blackwell.

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

Language Acquisition, 25(1), 37-63.

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

model. Cognition, 92, 231-270.

The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 14,1 (2011): pp.1-28

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