Effects of communication mode and salience on recasts: A first exposure study

Abstract

This article reports on a study that investigated whether the extent to which learners benefit from recasts on two Turkish morphemes differ depending on communication mode - i.e. Face-to-Face Communication (F2FC) and text-based Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC) - and/or the salience of the target structure (i.e. salient and non-salient). In this first exposure study, 24 native speakers of English with no Turkish background studied 51 Turkish words by completing a series of vocabulary learning tasks. Participants who scored at or above a criterion level of 60% on a screening test met with the researcher and carried out two communicative tasks. In each task, learners received recasts on one of the target structures through one of the communication modes. The order of the tasks was counterbalanced across four subgroups of learners. Two oral production tasks were used as a posttest in order to measure learners' performance on the two target structures. Results revealed that learners scored statistically significantly higher on receiving recasts through text-based SCMC than recasts through F2FC. However, results showed no difference between the salient and the non-salient morpheme in benefiting from recasts.