The role of implicit feedback on Korean college students' learning of the English dative alternation: recasts, primes, and their combination

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of three types of implicit feedback -recasts, structural primes, and their combination- on Korean college students' learning of the English dative alternation. Forty Korean college students participated in the students participated in the study. Participants were given pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests on the dative construction over an eight-week period. Ten participants were each placed into a control, recast, prime, or prime + recast group. Each group was provided with the assigned feedback through interaction tasks with the researcher for three weeks. The study revealed that while structural primes had a beneficial effect on Korean learners' grammaticality judgments, neither type of feedback had a significant effect on their oral production.