EFFICACY OF GESTURES AND RECASTS
ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 GRAMMAR
By
Kimi Nakatsukasa

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Second Language Studies – Doctor of Philosophy
2013

ABSTRACT
EFFICACY OF GESTURES AND RECASTS
ON THE ACQUISITION OF L2 GRAMMAR
By
Kimi Nakatsukasa
This study investigated whether gestures can be used to enhance noticing of the saliency
of linguistic targets during verbal recasts and whether they can lead to better L2 grammar
acquisition. Previous studies on corrective feedback have shown that explicit feedback seems to
be more effective than implicit feedback in general (e.g. Li, 2010) because learners are theorized
to notice target structures more easily when feedback is explicit in nature. However, recasts,
which are traditionally considered as a type of implicit feedback, are among the most favored
types of feedback in language classrooms (e.g. Ellis & Sheen, 2006). In a different but related
domain, some gestural studies have illustrated that teachers use specific gestures in language
classrooms, especially when teaching temporal and spacial concepts (Hudson, 2011). Furthermore,
some studies have argued that the use of gestures seems to promote learning because gestures
enhance memorization (e.g. Tellier, 2008) and because gestures add to the presented verbal
information (e.g. Flevares & Perry, 2001; Goldin-Meadow, 2004). What has not been addressed is
to what extent these gestures lead to L2 acquisition overall. In this study, I followed the
Interactionist framework and examined the efficacy of gestures when used alongside recasts.
This study examined whether gestures can be used to make the linguistic targets of recasts
more salient, which potentially leads to noticing, and to test whether the provision of gestures
results in better L2 grammar learning with regard to English regular past tense verbs and locative
prepositions. Eighty low-intermediate ESL students participated in this study. The students were

randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: the control condition (Control), the verbal
recasts only condition (Verbal Recast Only), or the verbal recasts plus gestures condition (Recasts
+ Gesture). They participated in four communicative tasks which elicited the target structures.
Following any non-target-like production of the target structures, learners received recasts
according to the condition they had been assigned. In addition, the learners also completed
pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests that assessed their explicit grammar
knowledge and oral production of the target structures. Using the test scores, I conducted
repeated-measures ANOVA to examine whether the short and long term L2 grammar acquisition
varied in the aforementioned conditions. In addition, nine participants from the two experimental
conditions took part in a stimulated recall session and addressed their thoughts during recasts.
The data obtained from the stimulated recall session showed that the learners did not
recognize the correction and the target structures regardless of the condition. Furthermore, no
development was observed in their explicit grammar knowledge for either structure because of
their high level of knowledge they had prior to this study. As for the oral production, the learners
did not exhibit any difference with regard to the acquisition of regular past tense verbs. However,
they exhibited a significant difference in the acquisition of locative prepositions. Specifically, the
Verbal Recast Only and Recasts + Gesture conditions surpassed the Control condition in the
immediate posttest. In the delayed posttest, the Recasts + Gesture condition surpassed the others.
This finding suggests that participants in the Verbal Recast Only and Recasts + Gesture
conditions learned without noticing at the level of awareness. Furthermore, this suggests the
advantage that the Recasts + Gesture condition had compared to the Verbal Recast Only and
Control conditions, possibly because of the impact of gestures on learners’ memories.

Copyright by
KIMI NAKATSUKASA
2013

DEDICATION

For my family

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. Shawn Loewen, for
his guidance and encouragement during my years in the Second Language Studies program. He
always pushed me to grow academically until I reached my ultimate goal with this thesis. I will
start advising graduate students soon and I hope to do the same for them.
My gratitude also goes to my committee members, Drs. Susan Gass, Paula Winke, and
Debra Hardison for their advice and suggestions on my course work, research topics, and their
insights on my dissertation. I also would like to extend my gratitude to my former committee
member, Dr. Debra Friedman, who provided me an opportunity to improve my understanding of
gestural studies, which later became a significant component of my dissertation.
I am very thankful to the Second Language Studies PhD program for supporting me
financially via various teaching and research assistantships and fellowships. I was truly able to
gain more experience through these opportunities, not to mention that I would not have been able
to complete the PhD program without their generous assistantships.
I am also grateful for the Language Learning Dissertation Grant for sponsoring this
dissertation and to the International Society of Gestural Studies for providing me with a
scholarship to attend the gesture summer school in Frankfurt-Oder, Germany, in 2010. In addition,
I would like to thank Drs. Marianne Gullberg, Steve McCafferty, Jim Lantolf, Richard Young,
and Gale Stam for their continuous feedback and guidance on the gestural component of my study
and Dr. Aline Godfroid for her insights on ‘noticing’ in this dissertation. This dissertation would
not have been possible without my colleagues, Ashley Hewitt, Erika Lessien, Allyssa
Chamberlain, Rebekah Ewing, and Dave Regan, who allowed me to collect data in their
classrooms and encouraged the students to participate in this study. I am also grateful to Dr. Sara
vi

Hillman, Rashad Mahmood, Betsy Lavolette, and Dr. Emma Trentman for piloting the research
materials, Jess Lavolette and Dr. Sheri Anderson for editing the dissertation manuscript, Dr. Luke
Plonsky for his advice on statistics, Drs. Natsuko Shintani and Rod Ellis for their advice on the
research design, and Andrew Dennis for creating the beautiful illustrations for the materials.
I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to work with my fellow SLS PhD students.
Very special thanks to Dominik Wolff for being there and supporting me when I needed it most. I
really would not have been able to complete the PhD program otherwise. Finally, I could not be
more thankful to my family who allowed me to study in the U.S. and supported me in every way
during the graduate program. Thank you all so very much.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES......................................................................................................................... xi
LIST OF FIGURES...................................................................................................................... xii
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 2: Corrective Feedback ................................................................................................... 4
Focus on Form .................................................................................................................................. 4
Implicit vs. Explicit Corrective Feedback ........................................................................................ 6
Recasts .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Noticing .......................................................................................................................................... 12
Chapter 3: Gestures ..................................................................................................................... 14
Gestures .......................................................................................................................................... 14
Processing of gestures ........................................................................................................ 14
Gestures and cognitive development .................................................................................. 17
Gesturing and learning ....................................................................................................... 17
Exposure to gestures and learning ...................................................................................... 18
Use of gestures in the classroom by teachers ..................................................................... 20
Gesture Studies and SLA ............................................................................................................... 21
Exposure to gesture helps L2 acquisition ........................................................................... 23
Teachers' gestures in language classrooms ........................................................................ 25
Teacher gestures, corrective feedback, and learning .......................................................... 27
Motivation of This Study ............................................................................................................... 28
Research Questions ........................................................................................................................ 29
Chapter 4: Methodology .............................................................................................................. 30
Piloting ........................................................................................................................................... 30
Participants ..................................................................................................................................... 31
Target Structures ............................................................................................................................ 33
Materials ......................................................................................................................................... 35
Background questionnaire .................................................................................................. 36
Assessment instruments for target structures ..................................................................... 36
Preposition oral production test .............................................................................. 36
Past tense oral production test ................................................................................ 40
Past tense grammar test .......................................................................................... 40
Preposition grammar test ........................................................................................ 41
Communicative tasks ......................................................................................................... 42
Past tense story telling Task A ............................................................................... 43
Past tense story telling Task B ............................................................................... 43
Preposition picture description Task A .................................................................. 44
Preposition picture description Task B .................................................................. 45
Verbal report session .......................................................................................................... 45
Procedure ........................................................................................................................................ 46
Description of recasts ......................................................................................................... 48
viii

Description of recasts for regular past tense communicative tasks ........................ 49
Description of recasts for preposition communicative tasks .................................. 51
Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 53
Analysis of learner comments ................................................................................ 53
Analysis of acquisition of regular past tense and locative prepositions ................. 55
Chapter 5: Results ........................................................................................................................ 57
Response to Research Question 1: Noticing of Recasts and Gesture............................................. 57
Response to Research Question 2: Gesture-incorporated Recasts and L2 Development .............. 58
Effect of types of recasts and explicit linguistic knowledge .............................................. 58
Effect of types of recasts on development of oral production ............................................ 62
Summary of Results ....................................................................................................................... 67
Chapter 6: Discussion .................................................................................................................. 70
Discussion for Research Question 1: Learner Noticing during Recasts ........................................ 70
Comments about task outcome........................................................................................... 69
No comment on error correction ........................................................................................ 71
Possible learning without noticing ..................................................................................... 72
Noticing of visual vs. aural feedback ................................................................................. 74
Measuring noticing using stimulated recall........................................................................ 75
Discussion for Research Question 2 (a): Short-term Effect of Recasts with and without Gestures
........................................................................................................................................................ 78
Short-term effect in the acquisition of regular past tense ................................................... 77
Difficulty in regular past tense verb acquisition through recasts ........................... 77
Regular past tense verb acquisition and feedback types ........................................ 78
Short-term effect in the acquisition of locative prepositions ............................................. 80
Explicitness of recasts in Verbal Recast Only condition ....................................... 80
Explicitness of corrective feedback and L2 learning ............................................. 81
Different learning outcomes between regular past tense verbs and locative prepositions . 82
Discussion for Research Question 2 (b): Long-term Effect of Recasts with and without Gestures
........................................................................................................................................................ 86
Long-term effect on acquisition of regular past tense verbs .............................................. 85
Long-term effect on acquisition of locative prepositions ................................................... 85
Long-term effect on acquisition of implicit feedback ............................................ 86
Relationship between memory and seeing gestures ........................................................... 87
Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 90
Implications .................................................................................................................................... 93
Limitations...................................................................................................................................... 94
Future Directions and Implications ................................................................................................ 96
APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................. 99
APPENDIX A: Background Questionnaire ................................................................................... 99
APPENDIX B: Preposition Oral Production Test A .................................................................... 100
APPENDIX C: Preposition Oral Production Test B .................................................................... 110
APPENDIX D: Preposition Oral Production Test C .................................................................... 120
APPENDIX E: Past Tense Oral Production Test A ..................................................................... 130
APPENDIX F: Past Tense Oral Production Test B ..................................................................... 134
APPENDIX G: Past Tense Oral Production Test C ..................................................................... 138
ix

APPENDIX H: Past Tense Grammar Test A ............................................................................... 142
APPENDIX I: Past Tense Grammar Test B ................................................................................. 144
APPENDIX J: Past Tense Grammar Test C ................................................................................ 146
APPENDIX K: Preposition Gramar Test A ................................................................................. 148
APPENDIX L: Preposition Gramar Test B .................................................................................. 154
APPENDIX M: Preposition Gramar Test C................................................................................. 160
APPENDIX N: Regular Past Tense Communicative Task A ...................................................... 166
APPENDIX O: Regular Past Tense Communicative Task B ...................................................... 167
APPENDIX P: Preposition Communicative Task A .................................................................. 170
APPENDIX Q: Preposition Communicative Task B ................................................................... 171
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 172

x

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Distribution of Eligible Participants for Analysis of Past Tense Verb Acquisition ......... 33
Table 2: Distribution of Eligible Participants for Analysis of Preposition Acquisition ................. 33
Table 3: Order and List of Materials .............................................................................................. 36
Table 4: Distribution of Frequency of Recasts for Experimental Conditions ................................ 54
Table 5: Frequency of Responses in Representative Categories .................................................... 58
Table 6: Mean Scores of Regular Past Tense Grammar Test......................................................... 59
Table 7: Repeated-measures ANOVA for Regular Past Tense Grammar Test.............................. 60
Table 8: Mean Scores of Preposition Grammar Test ..................................................................... 61
Table 9: Repeated-measures ANOVA for Preposition Grammar Test .......................................... 62
Table 10: Mean Scores of Regular Past Tense Oral Production Test ............................................ 63
Table 11: Repeated-measures ANOVA for Past Tense Oral Production Test ............................... 64
Table 12: Mean Scores of Preposition Oral Production Test ......................................................... 64
Table 13: Repeated-measures ANOVA for Preposition Oral Production Test .............................. 66

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Timing and format of questions from preposition oral production test .......................... 38
Figure 2: Timing and format of slides of past tense oral production test ....................................... 39
Figure 3: Timing and format of slides of past tense oral production test ....................................... 40
Figure 4: Example of preposition grammar test question .............................................................. 42
Figure 5: Example of preposition grammar test question .............................................................. 42
Figure 6: Illustration of procedure timeline ................................................................................... 48
Figure 7: Past tense gesture used for past tense communicative tasks A and B ............................ 50
Figure 8: Example of verbal recasts used during past tense communicative tasks A and B.......... 50
Figure 9: Example of recasts plus gesture used during past tense communicative tasks A and B 50
Figure 10: Illustrations of gestures used in preposition communicative tasks A and B ................ 52
Figure 11: Example of verbal recasts provided during preposition communicative tasks A and B
................................................................................................................................................ 53
Figure 12: Example of recasts and gestures provided during preposition communicative tasks A
and B ....................................................................................................................................... 53
Figure 13: Mean scores of regular past tense grammar tests ......................................................... 59
Figure 14: Mean scores of preposition grammar test ..................................................................... 61
Figure 15: Mean scores of regular past tense grammar test ........................................................... 63
Figure 16: Mean scores of preposition oral production test ........................................................... 65
Figure 17: Summary of preposition oral production test score analysis ........................................ 67
Figure 18. Preposition oral production test A .............................................................................. 100
Figure 19. Preposition oral production test B............................................................................... 110
Figure 20. Preposition oral production test C............................................................................... 120
xii

Figure 21. Past tense oral production test A ................................................................................. 130
Figure 22. Past tense oral production test B ................................................................................. 134
Figure 23. Past tense oral production test C ................................................................................. 138
Figure 24. Preposition gramar test A............................................................................................ 148
Figure 25. Preposition gramar test B ............................................................................................ 154
Figure 26. Preposition gramar test C ............................................................................................ 160
Figure 27. Regular past tense communicative task A .................................................................. 166
Figure 28. Regular past tense communicative task B .................................................................. 167
Figure 29. Preposition communicative task A ............................................................................ 170
Figure 30. Preposition communicative task B.............................................................................. 171

xiii

Chapter 1: Introduction
For many years researchers in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) have been
interested in how to maximize the language learning experiences of learners in the classroom.
Teaching methods have changed notably in the last half-century, and so have the materials and
activities used in classrooms. For instance, current teaching method emphasizes on the interaction
in the classroom following focus on form. (Long, 1996). However, in the 1970s, the popular
teaching method was explicit grammar teaching in which “parts of the language are taught
separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of parts until
the whole structure of language has been built up.” (Wilkins, 1976, p.2) As people became aware
of the rather problematic aspects of this method, other approaches gained popularity, such as
focus on meaning, which imitates first language acquisition, and then focus on form, which
attempts to draw the attention of learners to language while maintaining the communicative
context. The idea of focus on form evolved from the Interaction Hypothesis, which argues that the
interaction among learners or between learners and teachers leads to successful second language
(L2) acquisition (Long, 1996).
As the Interaction Hypothesis gained prominence since the late 1980s, the analysis of
classroom interaction – the investigation of how teachers and students, or students among
themselves, talk to each other – has attracted great attention. A number of initial studies that
followed the Interactionist framework examined negotiation for meaning, during which an
utterance is made more comprehensible to learners. This more comprehensible input provides the
learners with opportunities for developing form-function relationships (e.g. Gass, 1997, 2003;;
Gass & Mackey, 2006; Gass & Varonis, 1994; Long, 1996, 2007; Mackey, 2007; Mackey,
Abbhul, & Gass, 2012; Pica, 1994, 1996; Varonis & Gass, 1985). Researchers further examined
1

student-teacher interactions, specifically learner errors and subsequent error correction, or
corrective feedback, by teachers.
The present study investigated whether gestures, when used along with verbal recasts –
traditionally a form of implicit feedback – can promote noticing and facilitate L2 grammar
acquisition. A growing number of studies have investigated the efficacy of corrective feedback.
One central topic has been what types of corrective feedback lead to L2 learning. Researchers
have approached this in relation to the implicitness (e.g. recasts in which the learner’s utterance is
repeated but with the correct form) and explicitness (e.g. metalinguistic feedback which includes
the explicit explanation of learners’ mistakes) of the feedback. Overall, researchers found that
explicit feedback seems to be more effective in terms of L2 learning in general because the targets
of the corrections become more salient to learners (e.g. Carroll & Swain, 1993; Ellis, Loewen, &
Erlam, 2006), which provides the learners with opportunities for noticing, which is essential for
L2 development (Schmidt, 1990; Schmidt & Frota, 1986). However, one of the criticisms by
language teachers of such explicit feedback, and of metalinguistic feedback in particular, is that it
seems to interrupt the flow of communication, and as such generally teachers still incorporate
recasts because explicit feedback is not a time-efficient form of error correction in language
classrooms (Ellis & Sheen, 2006; Han, 2002; Leeman, 2003; Loewen & Philp, 2006). This study
examined whether pedagogical gestures can enhance the saliency of linguistic targets while
providing a non-interruptive form of corrective feedback.
Gestures have been a topic of interest in a number of fields, including developmental
psychology and education. Researchers have reported that gesturing and seeing gestures promotes
cognitive development (e.g. Cook, Yip, & Goldin-Meadow, 2010; Goldin-Meadow, Cook, &
Mitchell, 2009; Goldin-Meadow & Sandhofer, 1999; Goldin-Meadow & Singer, 2003). Studies
2

on gestures have gained attention in the field of SLA by approaching L2 narrative and classroom
data from a multimodal perspective. For example, Adams (1998) reported that speakers use
gestures (e.g. pantomime, emblems, and metaphorics) to facilitate the comprehension of L2
listeners. In a language classroom context, teacher gestures seem to help student comprehension
(e.g. Allen, 2000; Lazaraton, 2004; Sime, 2006) and carry pedagogical characteristics (e.g.
Hudson, 2011; Zhao, 2007). For instance, Hudson (2011) identified gestures that ESL teachers
used when teaching abstract concepts, such as verb tense and prepositions, and reported that these
gestures were particularly helpful in the teaching of abstract concepts. To date, however, no
studies have addressed the extent to which exposure to pedagogical gestures promotes L2 learning.
This study examined the effectiveness of pedagogical gestures during recasts targeting
regular past tense verbs and locative prepositions. Specifically, this intervention study
investigated whether pedagogical gestures can enhance the saliency of linguistic targets and
promote noticing. An intervention study was constructed to assess participants’ L2 learning in
three feedback conditions: no feedback (Control), verbal recasts only (Verbal Recast Only), and
verbal recasts accompanied by pedagogical gestures (Recasts + Gesture). The participants took
part in pretests, posttests, and delayed posttests that were designed to measures their explicit
grammar knowledge and use of the target structures in oral production. Repeated-measure
ANOVA was administered using the test scores to examine the impact of gestures on L2 learning.
Also, a subset of the learners took part in a stimulated recall session to examine if there was a
difference in the learner noticing when the recasts were provided with or without gestures.

3

Chapter 2: Corrective Feedback
This study attempts to bridge the gap between the arguments of researchers and the
practices of teachers with regard to recasts; while theoretically and empirically recasts may not be
as effective as explicit corrections (although see Long, 2007), they are still the favored form of
error correction by language teachers. In this section, I first review the background of focus on
form, from which the majority of interaction studies have arisen. Then, I review those studies that
examined the efficacy of different types of corrective feedback. Finally, I summarize the research
studies on recasts.
Corrective feedback is one of the most researched areas in one field of SLA, and studies
on corrective feedback evolved from the observation of classroom interactions. Many
opportunities are available for L2 learners to receive feedback on their production from teachers,
peers, and interlocutors when they make mistakes in class. Generally, research has found that
such feedback has a positive influence on L2 learning.
Focus on Form
Extensive research on corrective feedback has been done in the field of SLA within the
Interactionist framework on which the theoretical arguments of focus on form are based. Focus on
form bridges the two major arguments about teaching methods; the first emphasizes the explicit
grammar teaching but in non-communicative context, which was popular in the 1960s and still is
in many places. The basic theory behind explicit grammar teaching is that target languages are
divided into smaller pieces and learners learn each individually; eventually, learners would be
able to reconstruct linguistic systems by combining each linguistic piece taught. This method was
often used in conjunction with an audio-lingual method, in which learners practiced forms
4

repeatedly following the audio materials. However, this approach has been heavily criticized
because it does not entail any communicative component and often does not equip learners with
high communicative competence.
The second is communicative language teaching. Communicative language teaching, or
focus on meaning, became prevalent in language classrooms in the early 1980s. Advocates of
focus on meaning tried to recreate naturalistic language learning as it occurs in first language (L1)
acquisition (Krashen, 1985). Given that humans are capable of learning their L1s without specific
linguistic instruction and that more emphasis is given on interpreting and conveying meaning,
advocates of focus on meaning theorized that people should also be able to learn L2s by simply
focusing on meaning. Issues with this approach became apparent, however, as the number of
bilingual studies grew; learners who followed this approach were able to communicate but lacked
linguistic accuracy, even with considerable amounts of L2 exposure (see Swain, 1991 for the
summary).
Focus on form was proposed to capture the strength of both approaches while dealing with
these criticisms. It was motivated by the Interaction Hypothesis, which argues that a crucial site
for language development is the interaction between learners and other speakers, especially, but
not only, between learners and more proficient speakers (Long, 1997).
Focus on form is an integral part of the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1991). One of the
important components of focus on form is corrective feedback, specifically that learners can
benefit from the error correction from teachers or interlocutors. The Interaction Hypothesis claims
that “negotiation of meaning, and especially negotiation work that triggers interactional
adjustments by the native speaker or more competent interlocutor, facilitates acquisition because
it connects input, internal student capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in
5

productive ways” (Long, 1991, pp. 45-46). During the negotiation of meaning, learners are also
able to become aware of the gap between the target language and their interlanguage (IL) (e.g.
Robinson, Mackey, Gass, & Schmidt, 2012; Schmidt, 1990, 1993, 2001; Schmidt & Frota, 1986).
Based on this notion, focus on form also emphasizes the importance of interaction, but it
specifically argues for the importance of bringing the attention of learners to language while they
are engaging in meaningful interactions. For example, when students are tasked with developing a
travel plan, they may talk among themselves or ask their teacher for clarifications on the
particular grammar points or vocabulary words they need to use during the task. Researchers have
noted that focusing on linguistic forms (such as vocabulary, grammar, morphology, syntax, or
discourse conventions) during interaction can beneficially draw the attention of students to
linguistic elements as they arise (incidentally), which makes the forms more likely to be learned
(Ellis, 2001; Long, 1991). Focus on form is considered to be particularly beneficial to L2 students
because (a) the attention of students is acutely focused on non-target-like or missing linguistic
elements since they need those elements to complete the task, and (b) focus on form helps
students notice gaps between the aspects of the L2 they know and use and more target-like
language forms, both of which are considered essential for L2 learning (Schmidt & Frota, 1986).
To understand how such interaction helps language learning, investigators researched
various aspects of interaction, including but not limited to student-student and student-teacher
negotiation for meaning, language-related episodes, and corrective feedback.
Implicit vs. Explicit Corrective Feedback
Research studies frequently agree that providing corrective feedback can help L2
acquisition (see Truscott, 1999, for an exception). Some meta-analyses published in the last
decade found that corrective feedback may be especially helpful for the acquisition of
6

grammatical and lexical features (e.g. Mackey & Goo, 2007 but see also Li, 2010; Lyster & Saito,
2010; Russell & Spada, 2006; Li, 2010; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Russell & Spada, 2006). These
studies also examined what type of feedback results in L2 learning most effectively in terms of
the implicitness and explicitness of feedback, that is, how explicitly or implicitly teachers
commented on the structures or linguistic aspects with which their students had trouble. In general,
a common type of implicit feedback is the recast, which is a partial or complete reformulation of a
learner’s erroneous L2 production that maintains its meaning (Lyster & Ranta, 1997). The
examples of explicit feedback is metalinguistic feedback, in which teachers provide learners with
metalinguistic comments about their erroneous production (Ellis, 2006), and explicit error
correction, in which teachers or native speakers specifically talked about errors made by learners
(Lyster, 1998).
A few studies have directly compared the efficacy of corrective feedback in relation to its
explicitness and implicitness, and overall, these studies reported the beneficial function of explicit
feedback in comparison to implicit feedback (e.g. Carroll & Swain, 1993; Ellis, et al., 2006; Li,
2009). These studies argue that explicit feedback tends to be more effective because the target of
the correction is more salient with explicit feedback than with implicit feedback, and this allows
learners to notice the gaps between their own language and the target-like use.
Carroll and Swain (1993), the initial study that compared the effectiveness of
metalinguistic feedback with other types of negative feedback, including recasts, found that
metalinguistic feedback resulted in better learning outcomes with longer effect than recast. Carroll
and Swain investigated the efficacy of four different types of negative feedback on the acquisition
of the English dative alternation by 100 L1 Spanish speakers. First, the participants were
familiarized with the targeted structure, and then they participated in an exercise on dative
7

alternation. During this exercise, the researchers provided four types of feedback: (1)
metalinguistic feedback, (2) negative feedback without metalinguistic feedback, (3) recasts, and
(4) indirect feedback (e.g. “Are you sure?”). Finally, the participants took part in two recall
sessions that were designed to measure their understanding of the target structures. They found
that the metalinguistic feedback and recast groups outperformed the other conditions in the
immediate recall session, and that the metalinguistic feedback group significantly outperformed
the rest in the delayed recall session. Carroll (2001), in her later study, also found that explicit
feedback was more effective than recasts.
The aforementioned studies were conducted in a laboratory setting, however, classroom
research presented similar results as well. Ellis, et al. (2006) also showed the clear advantage of
using explicit metalinguistic explanation over recasts. The researchers randomly assigned a total
of 34 low-intermediate ESL learners to three conditions: recasts, metalinguistic explanations, and
no feedback. The learners in the two treatment groups performed two tasks in triads and received
a particular type of feedback when they made mistakes with regular past tense verbs. One pretest
and two posttests were administered. The results revealed that the learners benefited more from
explicit feedback than implicit feedback. Ellis et al. explained why explicit feedback was more
effective, saying, “metalinguistic feedback is longer…[and] it might have been better attended to
and perceived as overtly corrective… and [metalinguistic feedback] seems more likely to lead to
greater depth of awareness of the gap between what was said and the target form, thereby
facilitating the acquisition of implicit knowledge.” (p.363).
Lyster (2004) also compared the efficacy of recasts (implicit feedback) and other types of
feedback in the acquisition of French gender markings and found that prompts that contained
metalinguistic feedback were more facilitating than recasts. In his explanation, prompts provided
8

opportunities for self-repair for learners; learners were not given the correct form but had to
produce the correct form by themselves. He argued that the beneficial role of prompts in contrast
to recasts is a result of pushed output (Swain, 1995), however, the results still revealed the
advantage of a more corrective form of feedback. Prompts are a type of corrective feedback but
this study will not specifically examine them because of the focus of the study concerns recasts.
Recasts
In the previous section, I explained that studies reported in general that explicit feedback
seems to be more beneficial for L2 development. That is not to say, however, that recasts are
completely ineffective. Recasts, as a type of implicit feedback, are overall the most commonly
used type of corrective feedback in language classrooms (e.g. Doughty, 1994; Havranek, 1999;
Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Mackey, Gass, & McDonough, 200 but see also Oliver, 1995). Long (1996)
defined recasts as “utterances that rephrase a child’s utterance by changing one or more sentence
components (subject, verb, or object) while still referring to its central meanings” (p.434).
Investigators have found that recasts were favored because they did not interrupt the flow of
communication and because they saved time spent on correction (Ellis & Sheen, 2006; Han, 2002;
Leeman, 2003; Loewen & Philp, 2006).
Theoretically, recasts should facilitate L2 development because recasts include the targetlike use, which enables learners to notice the gap between their IL and the target-like production,
resulting in IL development (Long, 2007). However, the occurrence of such noticing in recasts is
still up for debate. For instance, Lyster and Ranta (1997) found that recasts resulted in the lowest
uptake for learners, even though recasts were the most commonly used form of error correction.
However, this does not dispute the efficacy of recasts completely. Some studies presented the
favorable impact of recasts on L2 learning (Doughty & Varela, 1998; Mackey & Philp, 1998;
9

Nassaji, 1998, Oliver, 1995), while others showed the opposite (Havranek, 1999; Leeman, 2000;
Lyster, 1998, 2001, 2004; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Sheen, 2004, 2007; Slimani, 1992) or were
inconclusive (Loewen & Nabei, 2007; Long, Inagaki, & Ortega, 1998; Yang & Lyster, 2010).
Researchers accounted for such discrepancies by analyzing various inter-learner and
contextual factors, and they identified four aspects that impact the efficacy of recasts: (1)
individual differences among learners, (2) classroom context, (3) linguistic targets, and (4)
characteristics of oral recasts. The individual differences include learners’ levels of proficiency,
their readiness for a target structure, and their analytic skill (Ammar & Spada, 2006; Mackey &
Philp, 1998; Sheen, 2007). Ammar and Spada found that learners with higher levels of
proficiency are more likely to recognize recasts as corrections. Similarly, Mackey and Philp found
that the readiness of learners for target structures is important for the recognition of recasts.
However, the analytic skills of learners do not seem to impact the efficacy of recasts (Sheen,
2007). The second aspect highlights the context of language classrooms and the characteristics of
tasks when recasts are provided (e.g. Philp & Mackey, 2010; Nicholas, Lightbown, & Spada,
2001). Nicholas et al. justified the discrepancies between the studies of recasts by analyzing their
classroom contexts, and they suggested that classrooms with a stronger focus on forms will enable
learners’ noticing. Some studies also mentioned that recasts resulted in higher rates of noticing
(uptake) in traditional language classes but not in meaning-based classrooms, such as immersion
programs (Lyster & Mori, 2006; Sheen, 2004). The third aspect concerns the linguistic targets of
recasts. Overall, the studies reported the mixed finding with regards to the noticeability of
grammatical features. Some reported that the lexical items and grammar are likely to be noticed
during corrective feedback (e.g. Ellis, 2007; Iwashita, 2003; Leeman, 2003; Long, 2007; Mackey,
et al., 2000; Ortega & Long, 1997) but the recent meta-analysis by Lyster, Saito, & Sato (2013)
10

showed that corrective feedback targeting grammar (morphosyntax) is less likely to be accurately
noticed followed by successful repair than the one targeting lexis and pronunciation, even though
the grammatical errors are most frequently targeted in corrective feedback. In addition, some
grammatical structures (e.g. comparative and irregular past tense verbs) seem to benefit more than
others from recasts. However, an extensive list of structures that may benefit from recasts is still
unknown. The fourth aspect concerns how recasts are provided. Being opaque in nature, the level
of explicitness of recasts seems to be affected by how recasts are provided. (Loewen & Philp,
2006; Sheen, 2006). For instance, Loewen and Philp investigated the relationship between the
characteristics of recasts and uptake and the accuracy of learners’ posttest scores. Their results
showed that some specific aspects of recasting, including stress, declarative intonation, use of one
correction, and multiple feedback moves, resulted in higher rates of successful uptake. In addition,
interrogative intonation, shortened length, and use of one change were associated with the
accuracy of the test scores. Sheen (2006) also found that three characteristics of recasts (length,
type of correction, and linguistic focus) were related to learner uptake and identified six
characteristics of recasts (mode, length, type of correction, linguistic focus, reduction, and number
of corrections) associated with learner repair. All these factors have been associated with how
corrective recasts appear to learners and whether linguistic targets are salient enough for learners
to notice.
Overall, these studies showed that recasts are the favored form of correction in language
classrooms because they take less time in class and do not interrupt communication. However, the
studies also showed that explicit feedback may be more effective in general but its efficacy
depends on contextual factors, individual differences among learners, linguistic targets, and types
of recasts. Additionally, the level of explicitness of recasts can be manipulated by fine-tuning the
11

characteristics of the recasts.
Noticing
As briefly mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that learning outcomes varied depending
on the type of feedback is that learners may or may not have been able to recognize the corrective
nature of feedback, which would encourage the noticing of target structures and may ultimately
have lead to IL development. The general consensus is that the more salient target structures are,
the more likely learners are to notice them, resulting in better language learning outcomes. On the
implicit/explicit continuum of types of feedback, more explicit feedback tends to make target
structures more salient, although the structures targeted in implicit feedback (e.g. with recasts)
need not be less salient.
The concept of noticing and attention emerged from work that emphasized the importance
of input in L2 learning, specifically comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985). Although Krashen’s
Input Hypothesis has been criticized for its one-sided emphasis on input as the driver of SLA
(Schmidt & Frota, 1986; Swain, 1985), input is still believed to be crucial for language
acquisition as it represents the primary data (i.e. target forms) to which learners can attend
(Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990, 1995, 2001; Tomlin & Villa, 1994).
Overall, researchers have agreed on the importance of learners’ attention to and noticing
of target structures for IL development, however, there are some variations in their understanding
in terms of the extent to which noticing is necessary and whether noticing needs to occur with
consciousness/awareness. The best-known holistic approach that highlighted the importance of
attention and noticing is the Noticing Hypothesis proposed by Schmidt (1990; 1995; 2001;
Schmidt & Frota, 1986). In this hypothesis, Schmidt claimed that learners’ attention to and
awareness of structures are needed for noticing to occur, and that conscious noticing is vital for
12

L2 learning. My interpretation of noticing is based on this argument. However, instead of viewing
noticing as one monolithic process, Tomlin and Villa (1994) viewed it as a combination of three
interrelated processing systems: alertness, orientation, and detection. Alertness refers to the
readiness to handle input, and orientation refers to theallocation of learner attention to specific
information (e.g. target structures) in the input. Both alertness and orientation interact with
detection, during which learners pay attention to and cognitively register specific information.
Detection promotes processing information at a higher level by directly working with short-term
memory. According to Tomlin and Villa, detection is crucial for learning, but it does not
necessarily require conscious awareness. However, the debate over whether detection requires
awareness has not yet reached a conclusion. (See Robinson, 1995; Leow, 2000; 2010; Schmidt,
1993, 1994, 1995, Williams, 2005 for studies that argue for the necessity of awareness.) The last
perspective is the one proposed by Robinson (1995; 2003), in which he explains that the learners’
focal attention triggers Schmidt’s noticing, and he argues that the occurrence of noticing varies
depending on types of instruction and tasks. He specifically argues that task-based teaching is
beneficial for promoting noticing.
Regardless of the slight variations described above, noticing is crucial for language
learning, and thus accounting for the differences in the efficacy of corrective feedback in terms of
noticing is necessary. In other words, the crucial factor that seems to impact learning outcomes is
not the classification of feedback but how corrective feedback appears to learners with regards to
its saliency. Combining the studies from noticing and the studies that explored the fine
characteristics of recasts, it is evident that recasts can be manipulated to improve efficacy. Yet, to
date, studies that analyzed the saliency of feedback have relied on verbal cues, and the
significance of nonverbal cues has yet to be determined.
13

Chapter 3: Gestures
Gestures
This section provides an overview of gestural studies. The first section summarizes
gestural studies conducted in the field of developmental psychology that illustrate how gestures
promote cognitive development and the relationship between gestures and learning. The second
section presents gestural studies in the field of SLA.
Gestures, hand movements that are directly tied to speech (McNeill, 1992), play a crucial
role in processes of interaction and communication. Not gesturing when speaking is almost
impossible. Recent technological developments have made recording people’s motions in addition
to their speech easier, and this seems to have resulted in an increasing number of gestural studies
in various fields, for example, psychology, anthropology, and communication, just to name a few.
Some commonly researched topics are: how people use gestures during communication such as
mirroring, which is imitating the gestures of an interlocutor (Parrill & Kimbara, 2006), how
gestures reveal the understanding of abstract concepts such as direction (Kita, Danziger, & Stolz,
2001), and how the production of gestures promotes the learning of complex ideas (Núñez, 2008).
To provide background on gestural studies, this section covers the following topics: (1)
processing of co-speech gestures, (2) gestures and cognitive development, (3) gesturing and
learning, and (4) exposure to gestures and learning. Although some gestural studies also cover
sign languages, such studies are not covered in this section because this paper specifically
examines pedagogical gestures.
Processing of gestures. The focus of this study was to investigate whether learners
benefited from co-speech gestures with pedagogical functions during recasts. Because no SLA
studies have addressed this very specific issue so far, reviewing some L1 studies is important to
14

account for how people process co-speech gestures. Recent neuroscience studies reported three
major findings with regard to the processing of gestures; seeing gestures (1) triggers semantic
processing (Kelly, Kravitz, & Hopkins, 2004; Kelly, Ward, Creigh, & Bartolotti, 2007), (2)
activates the premotor cortex, which involves the processing of actions (Özyürek, Willems, Kita,
& Hagoort, 2007; Willems, Özyürek, and Hagooty, 2007) and (3) allows the brain to decrease the
need for semantic control and to use the additional source for information (Skipper, GoldinMeadow, Nusbaum, & Small, 2007).
First, with regard to the types of processing triggered by gestures, Kelly, Kravitz, and
Hopkins (2004) examined what type of processing occurs when people view co-speech gestures
by examining via electroencephalography how human brains respond to gestural stimuli. In one
condition, subjects saw an actor gesturing corresponding to the characteristics of an object, such
as the width or height. In another condition, the gestures did not match the property. The
researchers observed a stronger negative deflection in the latter condition than in the former
condition, and this effect was the largest around 400 ms after the gesture. This is known as N400
effect, which indicates the difficulty in the semantic processing – which is an effort to understand
the meaning of a word or a sentence – of an item into a previous context. This suggests that
seeing gestures triggered semantic processing. Instead of an object, Wu and Coulson (2005) used
a cartoon movie, and Holle and Gunter (2007) used ambiguous words instead of an object. Both
studies also observed an N400 effect and argued that seeing gestures activated semantic
processing.
Second, researchers found that there was no difference in the neural time course, but there
was a variation in the neural locus with regards to the processing of language and co-speech
gestures. Özyürek et al. examined whether the neural time course differs when processing
15

language or gestures. Their subjects heard sentences that contained a focus word accompanied by
gestures in one of two conditions. In one condition, the word is anomalous with respect to the
context of the sentence. In the second condition, the gesture is anomalous. The researchers found
that both conditions demonstrated an N400 effect, and the onset latencies of these conditions did
not vary. This indicates that the there was no difference in the time course of incorporating
meaningful information that came from gestures or from spoken words into the sentences.
However, they found a difference with regard to the neural locus. They used fMRI and found that
in both conditions a region in the left inferior frontal cortex, which plays a crucial role when
integrating information verbally and gesturally, was activated. In addition, they found that the
subjects in the gesturally incongruent condition activated the premotor cortex, which is usually
triggered by seeing many types of actions. In short, there was no difference in the processing of
co-speech gestures and spoken sentences with regard to the neural time course. However, there
was a variation in terms of the neural locus. Seeing co-speech gestures not only activated the
premotor cortex, but its level of activation varied significantly depending on the gestures that the
people saw. These findings suggest that when the corrective feedback involves gestures, the
learners not only process the information given verbally but they also process the one given
gesturally. If this is the case, learners are provided with more input, when the relevant information
of corrective feedback is given both verbally and gesturally.
Finally, researchers examined how the presence or absence of co-speech gestures
impacted neural responses to speech. Skipper, Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, and Small (2007)
examined the difference in the processing of sentences in three conditions. In the first condition,
subjects watched a person telling a story with natural hand gestures, that is, the speaker was
allowed to gesture as they would normally. In the second condition, the person told the same story
16

with adaptor gestures, such as adjusting glasses. The person told the same story in the third
condition but left their hands at rest. They found that seeing natural gestures divided the labor of
processing into two areas of the brain: Broca’s area, which is activated when processing
languages, and the primary motor cortex, which is triggered by seeing actions. This indicates that
the listeners needed less semantic selection by Broca’s area when gestures were present. The
authors explained that this was because natural gestures helped the listener comprehension in a
way that they needed less semantic control which is needed for processing the meaning of
language. That is, meaningful gestures allowed the brain to use additional sources of information,
resulting in less effort in semantic control. If this is the case, learners are able to process the
information of the corrective feedback with less effort with regards to semantic processing, when
the meaningful gestures are present.
Gestures and cognitive development. The present study examined the facilitative role of
gestures in language learning, but it is worthwhile to explore studies that reported on the
facilitative roles of gestures in learning in general. Developmental psychologists have
investigated how gesturing helps children learn abstract mathematical concepts (e.g. Cook, et al.,
2010; Goldin-Meadow, et al., 2009; Goldin-Meadow & Sandhofer, 1999; Goldin-Meadow &
Singer, 2003). In addition, some researchers have specifically examined how exposure to the
gestures of teachers and adults promotes learning in children (Goldin-Meadow, 2004).
Gesturing and learning. The majority of studies that focused on the production of
gestures were from studies on cognitive development. A number of works in the 1990s dealt with
close examinations of the gestures of children. Since 2000, researchers further examined the
relationship between gesturing and leaning. Works by Goldin-Meadow and her colleagues
explored the facilitative functions of gesturing when learning mathematical concepts. For instance,
17

Goldin-Meadow et al. (2009) manipulated the gestures of children during a math lesson to
examine the impact of gesturing on mathematical concepts (addition and subtraction). All the
children were presented with a white board with equivalent equations written on them (e.g. 4 + 5
+ 7 = ___ - 7), and they were assigned to one of the three conditions. The first group of children
was instructed to point out relevant numbers (4 and 5) while describing the mathematical
concepts of adding and subtracting. The second group was told to point at partially correct
numbers (5 and 7), and the third group was told not to gesture. They found that the children in the
first condition surpassed those in the remaining conditions, and that the ones who did not gesture
at all learned the least among the three groups.
Exposure to gestures and learning. Furthermore, researchers also examined the effects
of exposure to gestures on learning. Some studies argued that the gestures of teachers or adults are
essential for learning because (1) the attention levels of students/children are influenced by the
gestures of teachers/caretakers (e.g. Deák, Flom, & Pick, 2000; Goldin-Meadow, 2004), (2)
gestures facilitate comprehension (e.g. Church, 1999; Golden-Meadow, Kim, & Singer, 1999;
Perry, Birch, & Singleton, 1995; Valenzeno, Alibali, & Klatzky, 2003), and (3) gestures help with
the retention of information (Cohen & Otterbein, 1992; Feyereisen, 1998).
Studies that examined the relationship between the eye gaze of children (as a sign of
attention) and gestures showed that children were more likely to pay attention when adults used
gestures (e.g. Deák, et al., 2000; Goldin-Meadow, 2004). Deák et al. (2000) assessed the attention
of children by examining whether their eye gaze focused on a target object. Sitting across from
the children, adult caretakers were instructed to (a) look at the object, (b) look at the object while
using a pointing gesture, or (c) look at the object while using a pointing gesture and verbalizing.
Their results revealed that the adults’ pointing gestures resulted in a higher ratio of children’s eye
18

gaze focusing on the target objects. They also found that pointing gestures that used larger spatial
areas attracted more attention to the target objects. However, no effect was observed for
verbalization. The participants of these studies were limited to children, but the findings may
suggest the possibility of enhancing the attention of adult L2 learners when gestures are used.
(See the following section for SLA gestural studies.).
Some studies also explored the relationship between exposure to gestures and
comprehension of mathematical concepts (Church, 1999; Golden-Meadow, et al., 1999; Perry, et
al., 1995; Valenzeno, et al., 2003) and unfamiliar/ambiguous language (Church, Ayman-Nolley,
& Mahootian, 2004; McNeil, Alibali, & Evans, 2000; Thompson, Driscoll, & Markson, 1998).
Studies also revealed that seeing gestures helped the students when they were confused (Flevares
& Perry, 2001), and that adults were better able to understand the speech of children when seeing
children’s gestures (Alibali, Flevares, & Goldin-Meadow, 1997; Goldin-Meadow, Wein, & Chang,
1992).
The last group of studies showed that seeing gestures enhanced the short-term memory of
subjects (R. L. Cohen & Otterbein, 1992; Feyereisen, 1998). R. L. Cohen and Otterbein
conducted a study that involved the recall of L1 sentences presented in a video. Adult participants
viewed a video that contained L1 sentences and wrote down as many sentences as possible. Three
versions of the video were used: (1) L1 sentences only, (2) L1 sentences plus pantomimic
gestures, and (3) L1 sentences plus meaningless gestures. The researches found that the
participants who were exposed to sentences illustrated by pantomimic gestures remembered
significantly more sentences than the other participants. Feyereisen conducted a similar study but
with iconic gestures. The results showed that the participants recalled the sentences most often
when the sentences were accompanied by meaning-matched iconic gestures.
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This section provided a brief summary of three aspects that account for the positive
relationship between exposure to gestures and learning. First, by looking at gestures, participants
were reported to be more focused on target objects. Second, participants were able to better
comprehend speech that was ambiguous or difficult to understand when looking at gestures. Third,
exposure to gestures helped short-term memorization. Combining the three findings, these studies
suggest that exposure to gestures plays an integral role in learning in general. However, the
majority of the studies here took place in a laboratory setting. Next, I will review gestural studies
conducted in a classroom context.
Use of gestures in the classroom by teachers. Studies conducted in a laboratory setting
are informative but classroom research brings in ecological validity. These educational studies
examined how teachers used gestures in classrooms and reported two major findings: (1) teachers
used gestures in the classroom (Alibali, et al., 1997; Crowder, 1996; Perry, et al., 1995; Roth,
2001; Roth & Lawless, 2002a, 2002b), (2) teachers used gestures to increase the attention of
students, resulting in better learning (e.g. Flevares; Perry, et al., 1995).
Some of the studies that have been conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s
documented how gestures were used in math and science classrooms (e.g. Flevares; Perry, et al.,
1995). The studies frequently illustrated the attention of students to teacher gestures (Alibali, et al.,
1997; Crowder, 1996; Perry, et al., 1995; Roth, 2001; Roth & Lawless, 2002a, 2002b).
In addition, researchers took further steps to identify the efficacy of teacher gestures on
learning in a classroom context (e.g. Flevares; Perry, et al., 1995). Perry et al. examined what
classroom conditions yielded the best learning of equation rules in math classrooms: (1) verbal
instruction and written instruction on blackboards, (2) verbal instruction accompanied by pointing
gestures, or (3) verbal instruction accompanied by pointing gestures and problem-solving
20

activities using objects. Upon completion of a lesson under one of the conditions, children were
directed to solve a set of questions that involved equations. The results showed that the children
who saw pointing gestures outperformed those who did not. The researchers argued that the
gestures seem to have highlighted the key components of the lesson and resulted in more effective
learning. Flevares and Perry reported similar qualitative results with regard to equation learning.
In their analysis of student-teacher interactions, they found that students were more likely to
produce correct responses following a teacher’s verbal and gestural explanations as opposed to a
verbal only explanation, possibly due to the enhanced content from gestures. They speculated that
gestures made the explanation more specific and explicit.
Overall, gestural studies in math and science classrooms showed the positive impact of
teacher gestures on learning because gestures enhanced the attention of learners and made the key
spoken information salient. What was not addressed, however, was whether such facilitative
functions of gestures are relevant to L2 learning by adult learners.
Gesture Studies and SLA
In the field of SLA, the number of gestural studies, particularly those following the
Interactionist framework, is fairly limited; this may be because gestures were perceived as
something supplemental to spoken language (Alibali, et al., 1997; Kelly & Church, 1998). Recent
studies, however, have shown that gestures do not just complement spoken language, and in fact
“[gestures are] playing both an interactive, communicative, and an internal cognitive role” and are
“tightly linked to language and speech” (Kendon, 2004).
This section summarizes three major areas of gestural studies in the field of SLA. The first
group of studies highlights the function of gestures from a pedagogical perspective. Researchers
reported that when L2 speakers used gestures, their gestures often served as a form of scaffolding
21

to compensate for their speech, and they facilitated their L2 production (p.76, Gullberg, 2010). In
addition, researchers analyzed the gestures used in language classrooms (Gullberg, 1998;
Negueruela & Lantolf, 2008) and found that teachers’ gestures help L2 speakers with their
comprehension (Allen, 1999). Finally, gestures were reported to facilitate in memorization,
including L2 vocabulary and expression learning (Allen, 1995; Tellier, 2008).
The second group of studies investigated how L2 speakers used gestures. Several research
studies have been conducted based on the notion of Slobin’s thinking for speaking. The idea of
thinking for speaking builds on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and argues that our minds “are trained
in taking particular points of view for the purposes of speaking” and becoming retrained is
extremely difficult (Slobin, 1996, p.91, cited in Choi & Lantolf, 2008). Researchers have
conducted a number of studies on L2 speakers’ understanding of motion verbs by comparing how
they narrated stories in two languages. Choi and Lantolf, for instance, investigated how Korean
L1 speakers described motion events in L2 English. Their analysis revealed that Korean L1
speakers were able to follow a target-like interpretation of spontaneous motion but not of caused
motion because of the typological differences between English and Korean, despite their high
proficiency levels. Similarly, some studies also reported the perception of manner of motion
cannot be changed, even if learners achieved a high level of proficiency (Negueruela & Lantolf,
2008; Stam, 2006).
Not limited to the gestures of L2 learners used during motion events, researchers
investigated how L2 speakers use gestures as conversation strategies to facilitate their L2
production (Gullberg, 1998, 2006). Gullberg (1998) identified that gestures were used to solve
lexical problems, to signal searching for an appropriate word, to indicate turn taking, and to solve
tense aspect problems. In her 2006 study, she investigated what motivated L2 learners to use
22

gestures by analyzing the gestures of 16 Dutch learners of French during a story-retelling task in
L1 and L2 under two conditions: in one condition, the interlocutors were visible, while in the
other they were not. She specifically analyzed how the participants used gestures when referring
to different types of referents (anaphors, NPs, and null subjects) in relation to the proportions of
accompanying gestures. Her analysis revealed that the learners gestured differently in their L1s
and L2s (see, Gullberg, 2006 for the full results), however, results showed no difference between
the visibility conditions when tasks were in the L2s. This finding indicates that L2 speakers used
gestures to facilitate their cognitive processes.
All of these studies are unique, and I believe that they opened the door for
interdisciplinary studies by bridging SLA and gestural studies. Yet, exploring whether gestures
facilitate L2 development by conducting intervention studies is needed. Since the majority of
these studies have been conducted qualitatively, the number of quantitative studies, which are
summarized in the next section, is limited.
Exposure to gesture helps L2 acquisition. Some studies used intervention designs to
assess whether gestures promote L2 comprehension (e.g. Church, et al., 2004; Sueyoshi &
Hardison, 2005) and the acquisition of L2 vocabulary and expressions (Allen, 1995; Tellier,
2008). Overall, they found that the presence of gestures had a positive effect, as opposed to when
gestures are absent. Sueyoshi and Hardison (2005) investigated the role of gestures and facial
cues in L2 listening comprehension. Forty two low-intermediate and advanced L2 English
learners participated in the study. They watched a lecture video in English in one of the following
three conditions: an audiovisual lecture with facial expressions and naturally-produced gestures,
an audio-visual lecture with facial expressions but without gestures, and an audio lecture without
facial expressions or gestures. According to the scores of the listening comprehension test
23

administered after the lecture, higher-proficiency speakers who viewed the lecture with the facial
cues answered the questions more accurately than those in the other two conditions, and lowerproficiency speakers who watched the lecture with facial expressions and gestures answered the
greatest number of questions correctly among the three conditions. This study suggests that the
gestures were more beneficial for the lower-proficiency speakers and not as beneficial for the
higher-proficiency speakers. Church, et al. (2004) also reported on the facilitative roles of
gestures in comprehension. They assigned students to math classes in which the instructors did
not teach in their L1: Spanish-speaking children were placed in English-speaking classes and
English-speaking children were placed in Spanish-speaking classes. Instructors taught each class
in two conditions, one with representational gestures, meaning gestures that represented concepts
in mathematics and measurement, such as to add, to remove, tall, and short, and the other with
only deictic gestures. Children who the instructor taught with representational gestures performed
better on tests than those in the no-gesture classes in both languages.
These findings are not limited to L2 comprehension alone; researchers have found that
teacher gestures help student vocabulary learning. Allen (1995) and Tellier (2008) investigated
how seeing and mimicking the gestures of teachers and researchers helped students better
remember expressions and vocabulary. Tellier (2008) conducted a study with 20 monolingual
French children between the ages of four and five to measure the effects of gestures on their
memorization of eight English vocabulary items. Half of the children watched a video recording
of the vocabulary along with being shown equivalent illustrations, and the rest watched a video of
the same vocabulary along with being shown equivalent gestures. The children in the gesture
group also repeated the gestures used in the video. The results indicated a positive impact for
seeing gestures and gesturing; the children in the gesture group performed significantly better in a
24

vocabulary production task than the other children. In addition, the children in the gesture
condition had a higher rate of retention of the vocabulary. Tellier concluded that this was because
the exposure to gestures, in conjunction with children’s gesturing, facilitated their memories.
Allen (1995) also used a similar research design with regard to the acquisition of L2 French
expressions and obtained similar results.
The results from these two studies need to be interpreted with caution especially when
considering the efficacy of “seeing” the teachers’ gestures because the participants had
opportunities to gesture in both studies. While isolating the efficacy of seeing gestures is not
possible, these studies indicate that being exposed to gestures facilitates vocabulary and
expression acquisition.
Teachers’ gestures in language classrooms. The aforementioned studies showed that
exposure to gestures is helpful for L2 learning, but understanding how gestures are actually used
in language classrooms is essential. In general, people speak differently when speaking with lowproficiency L2 speakers as opposed to when speaking with native speakers; this is usually called
foreigner talk, or teacher talk in a classroom context. Adams (1998) conducted a study on
foreigner talk to identify if native speakers also modify their gestures in addition to their speech
when interacting with non-native speakers. She identified an increased frequency of deictic
(pointing) gestures and the additional use of pantomime, metaphorics, and emblems as ways
native speakers facilitated the comprehension of non-native speakers.
More specifically, some studies described how teachers used gestures to identify gestures’
functions (e.g. Allen, 2000; Hudson, 2011; Lazaraton, 2004; Tellier, 2006; Wang, 2009; Zhao,
2007). These studies reported that teachers often incorporated pedagogical gestures – gestures
with pedagogical purposes – to teach abstract concepts such as metaphors, verb tenses, and
25

special relationships. For example, Zhao (2007) examined the metaphorical gestures of teachers
in four university ESL composition classes. Zhao observed and videotaped four instructors and 54
ESL students in naturally-occurring settings, including student-teacher conferences, peer reviews,
and student presentations. She found that teacher-presented metaphors and the gestures used to
conceptualize those metaphors assisted in the learning process.
Hudson (2011) investigated how a teacher used gestures in an ESL classrooms at a U.S.
university. Her qualitative analysis showed that the teacher incorporated gestures that involved
the movement of the teacher’s whole body when teaching grammar, pronunciation, and
vocabulary. Specifically, she found that the teacher frequently used gestures to explain the
concept of simple past tense verbs by incorporating deictic gestures to point to the past, which
was conceptually located behind her, using her thumb. In addition, the teacher also indicated the
present time by pointing to the ground. Hudson’s analysis also revealed that the concept of the
past was indicated by moving the whole body backwards. By making a contrast between the
present and past tense using gestures and the position of her body, the teacher accentuated the
difference in the time frame. Hudson’s analysis also found that the instructor frequently used
body movement when teaching prepositions. For instance, she walked forward to show the
directional characteristics of the preposition to as in to the beach. Similarly, Tellier (2006) also
reported that teachers uses gestures to manage their classrooms, evaluate the responses of students,
and explain grammar, pronunciation, and new vocabulary.
Overall, previous gestural studies in language classrooms showed that teachers gestured
with pedagogical purposes. Specifically, Hudson’s descriptive study illustrated that the gestures,
sometimes involving movement of the whole body, were used when teaching specific
grammatical concepts, such as tense and prepositions. While the qualitative aspects of the studies
26

bring insights about how gestures are used, the question regarding the impact of such gestures on
actual learning still remains unanswered. In the next section, I review studies that have
quantitatively measured the effect of gestures on L2 learning.
Teacher gestures, corrective feedback, and learning. A few recent studies examined to
what extent teacher gestures in language classrooms impact language learning (Allen, 2000;
Hudson, 2011; Lazaraton, 2004; Tellier, 2006; Wang, 2009; Zhao, 2007).
Davies (2006) conducted one of the first studies that incorporated paralinguistic features
in interaction studies. In his brief report, he examined the ratio of various types of corrective
feedback, including those that were provided purely paralinguistically (Davies did not explain
what he meant by “purely paralinguistic” but I assume the paralinguistic cues include gestures,
eye contact, and facial expressions etc.), and the ratio of learner uptake following corrective
feedback. He found that only 4% of the corrective feedback was provided only paralinguistically,
but this type of feedback yielded 100% learner uptake. Furthermore, he found that when the
feedback involved paralinguistic features, there was a higher ratio of uptake than when it did not
involve any.
Wang (2009) conducted a quasi-experimental study by observing a total of 68 hour-long
ESL classroom sessions at a university in the U.S. to identify what paralinguistic and extra
linguistic cues were incorporated by the teachers when providing corrective feedback. She further
examined if such cues affect L2 learning. Overall, she identified that the types of gestures were
not the strongest determiner of the correctness of learner’s responses. However, the correctness
was strongly influenced by the teachers’ paralinguistic cues, such as intonation. This coincides
with Davies, in which he argued for the importance of paralinguistic cues to elicit correct
responses from learners.
27

These studies provide information about how gestures are used. The analyses of learner
uptake indicate the relative effectiveness of gestures used during corrective feedback. However,
variables that might have affected the results (e.g. linguistic targets, learners’ readiness, classroom
context, to name a few.) cannot be eliminated. Therefore, to fully capture the efficacy of gestures
during corrective feedback, an intervention study must be constructed with limited linguistic
targets and task characteristics while still being administered in a real language classroom to
maintain ecological validity. Lyster and Ranta (2013) highlighted the importance of carrying out
the classroom research with regards to corrective feedback. Classroom research may bring in
various uncontrollable factors, such as the uneven levels of proficiency and the different social
context, as cautioned by Goo and Mackey (2013), I believe that the conducting an intervention
study in a classroom setting may more realistically depict the effectiveness of different types of
feedback than in a laboratory setting.
Motivation of This Study
As can be seen, feedback studies have shown that explicit feedback seems to be more
beneficial than implicit feedback on L2 learning because the corrective nature of the feedback and
the linguistic targets are salient (e.g. Carroll & Swain, 1993; Ellis et al., 2006), although implicit
feedback, specifically recasts, is the most common type of corrective feedback (Ellis & Sheen,
2006; Han, 2002; Leeman, 2003; Loewen & Philp, 2006).
A few gestural studies in SLA have showed that gestures help with L2 comprehension
(Sueyoshi & Hardison, 2005) and L2 vocabulary and expression acquisition (Allen, 1995; Tellier,
2008). Such beneficial functions are indirectly supported by findings from developmental
psychology studies: (1) children exhibited better attention and participation when gestures were
used (Goldin-Meadow, 2004; Perry et al. 1995), (2) gestures enhanced people’s memories (R. L.
28

Cohen & Otterbein, 1992; Davies, 2006; Feyereisen, 1998), and (3) gestures provided additional
information to verbal speech and highlighted key information (Flevares & Perry, 2001).
Furthermore, teacher gestures in language classrooms were reported to have clear pedagogical
functions, especially in the teaching of abstract concepts.
Taking the general finding that gestures help L2 learning, it is logical to assume that
implicit feedback may function more effectively when used along with pedagogical gestures
because gestures may enhance the saliency of target structures and lead to better noticing from
learners. However, to date, interaction studies have mostly relied on verbal data and have not used
a multi-modal approach to investigate this issue.
Research Questions
1. Do learners notice the linguistic target of recasts when verbal recasts involve gestures?
2. Does the use of gestures affect the effectiveness of corrective feedback?
2a. Are recasts more effective in the acquisition of L2 grammar when they are presented
only verbally or with gestures?
2b. What is the long-term effectiveness of recasts on the acquisition of L2 grammar when
they are presented only verbally versus with gestures?

29

Chapter 4: Methodology
Piloting
This section illustrates the procedure of piloting and the changes made to the materials as
a consequence. I selected two target structures for this study: regular past tense and locative
prepositions. The later section provides more information about these two structures. First, a
semester before the data collection, three native speakers of English reviewed the original
versions of four assessment materials (Past tense oral production test, Preposition oral production
test, Past tense grammar test, and Preposition grammar test). They completed each test in the
same setting in which the actual data would be collected. No major changes were made after this
piloting.
Then, three Level 2 (low-intermediate) students from the English Language Center at
Michigan State University reviewed the materials to verify if they would be suitable for the
participants’ level of proficiency. During this phase, the preposition oral production test went
through major revisions. Originally, a set of two laminated illustrations in the form of a spot-thedifference task was used. Each laminated paper contained an illustration of an identical room
except that seven items were placed at different locations in the two illustrations. The learners
were asked to find the seven differences in the picture while circling the objects using a wet erase
pen and then to describe the differences orally. One issue arose during this phase with this
material because learners were able to take time to prepare their utterances; I observed some
learners planning their sentences before speaking, thus, I failed to capture their spontaneous
speech. The test format was changed to a PowerPoint presentation, which enabled me to control
the time for which each slide was displayed and to add some distracters for the final study.
Finally, I piloted the PowerPoint version with another three Level 2 students to determine
30

the most appropriate duration. Three versions of the PowerPoint slides were prepared. Each
version contained 12 slides with illustrations, and the duration of each slide was set for 10
seconds, 5 seconds, or 3 seconds. After the participants completed the test, I asked them how they
felt about the speed of the task. All three reported that they felt the 10 second version was too
long, and two learners mentioned that the 3 second version was not long enough to read the
question and find the item. After reviewing their comments, I decided to use 5 seconds as the
duration for each illustration.
Participants
All the participants were enrolled in ESL classes at the English Language Center of
Michigan State University. The English Language Center offers ESL classes at four levels (Level
1 to Level 4 from lowest to highest) in their Intensive English Program (IEP) as well as a terminal
program specifically designed for English for Academic Purposes. A total of 80 participants from
seven Level 2 classrooms and three Level 3 classrooms of the IEP program agreed to participate
in the study, and upon completion of all the sessions they were given extra credit as determined
by the instructors of each class. Four classrooms were assigned to the Recasts + Gesture condition,
another four classrooms were assigned to the Verbal Recast Only condition, and two classrooms
were assigned to Control groups. The participants’ home countries included Saudi Arabia (n=13),
Kuwait (n=5), the United Arab Emirates (n=5), China (n=48), Korea (n=4), Japan (n=2), and
Thailand (n=3). All the participants were new arrivals to the United States; it was the first
semester for most of the students (n=68) or the second semester for a few (n=11). One participant
had lived in the U.S. until the age of 5 but went back to Korea and remained there until the age of
18. The participants had already studied English for an average of 6.2 years (SD=3.4) in their
home countries prior to attending the English Language Center.
31

Initially, 38 students from the Recasts + Gesture condition, 31 from Verbal Recast Only
condition, and 11 from Control group participated in the study. Tables 1 and 2 show the number
of eligible participants for the analysis of past tense verbs and prepositions. Eligible participants
were those who did not miss more than one posttest for each target structure and who scored
lower than 80% on the oral production test. This reduced the number of participants to 27 for the
Recast + Gesture condition, 21 for the Verbal Recast Only condition, and 11 for the Control
condition for the analysis of past tense verb acquisition. Among these 59 participants, 22 were
male and 37 were female. The participants’ L1s were Arabic (n=16), Chinese (n=37), Japanese
(n=1), Korean (n=3), and Thai (n=2). Their average age was 19.4 years (SD=1.25).
For the acquisition of prepositions, 27 participants for the Recast + Gesture condition, 13
for the Verbal Recast Only condition, and 8 for the Control condition were included in the
analysis. Out of 48 participants, 28 were male and 20 were female. The participants’ L1s were
Arabic (n=15), Chinese (n=29), Korean (n=2), and Thai (n=2). Their average age was 20.4 years
(SD=1.88).

32

Table 1
Distribution of Eligible Participants for Analysis of Past Tense Verb Acquisition
Participation and Eligibility
Signed up
Missed tests partially
Missed more than two tests

Recast + Gesture
(n)
38

Verbal Recast Only
(n)
31

Control
(n)
11

9

10

0

0
4

0
0

17
17
21

11
11
11

Missed only one posttest
8
Missed one posttest and eligible 7
Completed all the tests
Completed all the tests
21
Completed tests and eligible
20
Total eligible participants
27

Table 2
Distribution of Eligible Participants for Analysis of Preposition Acquisition
Participation and Eligibility
Signed up
Missed tests partially
Missed more than two tests

Recast + Gesture
(n)
38

Verbal Recast Only Control
(n)
(n)
31
11

7

12

0

2
2

1
0

18
11
13

11
8
8

Missed only one posttest
10
Missed one posttest and eligible 10
Completed all the tests
Completed all the tests
21
Completed tests and eligible
17
Total eligible participants
27
Target Structures

The selected target structures were English regular past tense verbs and locative
prepositions. Both structures can be problematic for learners, they can be easily corrected via
feedback, and previous studies showed that teachers actually use gestures while teaching these
structures.
33

Several studies reported that the past tense is problematic for learners (e.g. Davies, 2006;
Wang, 2009) regardless of its relatively early introduction. As reported in Ellis et al. (2006), L2
learners are familiar with the concept of the structure of the past tense but still have difficulty
using it in their spontaneous production. In other words, learners may have explicit knowledge of
regular past tense verbs but not implicit knowledge. During an informal interview, course
instructors reported similar information.
A few studies have specifically explored how learners could learn the past tense from
corrective feedback. Yang and Lyster (2006) investigated how English as a foreign language
students from China learned English regular and irregular past tense verbs under three conditions:
prompts, recasts, and no feedback. Students in the prompt condition improved more than those in
the other two conditions in the acquisition of regular past tense verbs. However, no significant
difference was found between the prompt and recast conditions in the acquisition of irregular past
tense verbs. The significant impact of feedback on the acquisition of regular past tense verbs was
also reported in Ellis et al. (2010). They randomly assigned low-intermediate ESL students into
one of three conditions (implicit feedback, explicit feedback, and no feedback) and compared the
acquisition of regular past tense verbs between the three conditions. The researchers found that
learners in the explicit feedback group learned better than those in the implicit feedback group.
Overall, corrective feedback, in particular prompts and explicit feedback, is helpful for the
acquisition of regular past tense verbs. For the present study, I specifically selected the following
verbs that take regular past tense: cook, play, kiss, watch, talk, call, and wash. The variation in the
pronunciation was not the focus of this study but the feedback was provided with the appropriate
pronunciation.
The second target structure was locative prepositions. Despite prepositions being another
34

problematic structure, studies have not been systematically analyzed to identify the extent to
which feedback helps with the acquisition of prepositions except for a study by Boom (1998).
Boom examined the efficacy of recasts on nine elementary-level ESL students. He asked the
students to tell a story about the worst accident they had ever experienced. First, they were asked
to talk with another student about the given topic. Then, they were asked to tell the same story to
a researcher, and the researcher provided recasts on various linguistic targets. Finally, they were
asked to tell the same story to another ESL student. Boom compared their original story to the
third story and found that the recasts were effective for phonology, lexical forms, irregular past
tense verbs, and prepositions, but not for articles and regular past tense verbs. This is so far the
only study that has investigated the efficacy of corrective feedback on the acquisition of
prepositions. For this study, I limited the target prepositions to above, under, in, on, and next to.
Materials
This intervention study included the following five stages: (1) pretests, (2) treatment
sessions, (3) immediate posttests, (4) interviews, and (5) delayed posttests. I will describe the
procedure in detail in the following section, but I will first present an outline of the design in
Table 3 to illustrate the list of materials used in this study. The detailed procedure is presented in
the next section.

35

Table 3
Order and List of Materials
Pretest
Treatment
• Background
• Four communicative
questionnaire
tasks (Past tense,
prepositions)
• Oral production tests
(Past tense,
prepositions)
• Grammar tests (Past
tense, prepositions)

Immediate posttest
Delayed posttest
• Stimulated Recall
• Oral production tests
(Past tense,
• Oral production tests
prepositions)
(Past tense,
prepositions)
• Grammar tests (Past
tense, prepositions)
• Grammar tests (Past
tense, prepositions)

Background questionnaire. All participants completed a background questionnaire prior
to the data collection. This questionnaire included questions about their gender, age, home
country, first language, length of stay in the U.S., number of years they have studied English, and
their English learning background. The information collected here was not used for the analysis.
However, I used this to understand the overall demographics of the participants and to eliminate
any participants who did not fit the requirements for this study. See Appendix A for the
background questionnaire.
Assessment instruments for target structures. There were four types of assessments for
each stage of the study, specifically for the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest: two oral
production tests and two grammar tests targeting regular past tense verbs and prepositions to
assess participants‘ knowledge of target structures. The oral production tests were designed to
assess learners’ implicit knowledge and the use of target structures in spontaneous speech, and the
grammar tests were designed to assess their explicit knowledge of the two target structures.
Preposition oral production test. Three versions (Prepositions A, Prepositions B, and
Prepositions C) of the PowerPoint slides were developed, each of which was composed of two
practice questions, eight questions, and four distracters, to be used for the oral production tests. A
set of four slides was created for each question, which appeared in the format shown in Figure 1.
36

The prompt appearing on Slide 2 indicates which item participants needed to focus on for the
study. In Slide 3, the second prompt appears and the participants were asked to verbally respond.
The responses were audio recorded using a voice recorder. In order to have the participants not
focus only on the locations of the items, distracter questions were also asked. Figure 2 shows how
the distracters were embedded in the stimuli. Slide 3 includes questions such as “How many
strawberries do you see?”, “What color are the flowers?”, “What time is it?”, and such. This oral
test was audio recorded. I calculated the ratio of the correct use of prepositions in the obligatory
context and used it as the score. The order of the versions was randomized. See Appendices B, C,
and D for the complete versions of the preposition oral production test.

37

Slide 1 (3 sec)

Slide 2 (5 sec)

Please find the tennis racket.

Question 3

Slide 3 (5 sec)

Slide 4 (3 sec)

Where is the tennis racket?

(For interpretation of the references to color in this and all other figures, the reader is referred to
the electronic version of this dissertation.)
Figure 1
Timing and format of questions from preposition oral production test

38

Slide 1 (3 sec)

Slide 2 (5 sec)

Please find the birds.

Question 7

Slide 3 (5 sec)

Slide 4 (3 sec)

How many birds do you see?

Figure 2
Timing and format of distractors from preposition oral production test

39

Past tense oral production test. Three versions of the past tense oral production test were
created and each contained a set of seven pictures to elicit the selected regular past tense verbs.
This test was composed of two slides as shown in Figure 3.
Slide 1 (30 seconds)

Slide 2 (2 min max)

This is what Julia did last Friday.
Please look at the pictures.

Please tell what Julia did last Frdiay.

Figure 3
Timing and format of slides of past tense oral production test
The participants were presented with seven pictures that described what happened to a
character last weekend. The pictures were designed to elicit all the target verbs cook, play, kiss,
watch, talk, call, and wash. Participants had 30 seconds to review the story, and then they
responded to the prompt, “Please tell me what happened to Julia (the name of the character) last
week.” This oral test was also audio recorded using a voice recorder. The ratio of the correct use
of past tense in the obligatory context was used as the score. The picture description tests with
past tense A, B, and C were randomized and used as a part of a pretest, immediate posttest, and
delayed posttest sequence. See Appendices E, F, and G for the complete versions of the past tense
oral production test.
Past tense grammar test. This grammar test contains 20 questions and it was constructed to
measure the participants’ understanding of the regular past tense verbs. There are five distracter
40

sentences (e.g. articles and preposition), ten ungrammatical sentences due to misuse of the past
tense, and five grammatical sentences.
For each question, the participants judged if the sentence was grammatical. When they
judged that the sentence was grammatical, they were asked to circle “correct”, and when they
judged that it was ungrammatical they were asked to circle “incorrect” and write a correct
sentence. The participants were allowed to spend as much time as needed to complete this test.
See Appendices H, I, and J for all the versions of the past tense grammar test. An example of an
ungrammatical (past tense) sentence is shown below.
Example:
Yesterday, Julia cooks Indian food for John (CORRECT / INCORRECT)
Preposition grammar test. The last section of the test was the preposition grammar test.
This test was composed of 20 questions that included five distracters. The participants looked at a
picture and read a sentence to determine whether the sentence was an accurate description of the
picture. If the sentence was correct, they were asked to circle TRUE and if the sentence was
incorrect, they were asked to circle FALSE and write a correct sentence. See Figure 4 for an
example and Figure 5 for a distracter. Out of the 15 targeted items, 10 are accompanied with an
incorrect description. Participants were allowed to spend as much time as needed to complete this
test. See Appendices K, L, and M for the complete versions of the preposition grammar test.

41

The key is under the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
_________________________________
_________________________________

Figure 4
Example of preposition grammar test question

The mouse likes the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
_________________________________
_________________________________

Figure 5
Example of distractor from preposition grammar test
Communicative tasks. A total of four communicative tasks were designed for this study.
Two of them were designed to elicit the regular past tense verbs, and the remaining two tasks
were used to elicit prepositions. They were constructed based on the Ellis’ (2003) definition of
tasks – a task includes a gap and a clearly defined outcome. Learners needed to focus on meaning
and on using their own linguistic resources. In particular, I used focused tasks, which are designed
to promote the use of particular linguistic forms.
42

Past tense story telling task A. The participants were divided into pairs, and each pair
received two pictures in a sequence illustrating a part of how one male character, Michael, met a
female character, Erica, last Friday. There were 18 pictures in total, and each pair received a set of
two consecutive pictures (Pictures 1 and 2, Pictures 3 and 4, Pictures 5 and 6, and so forth). The
task was designed to elicit the aforementioned regular past tense verbs. First, I introduced some
vocabulary words that might not be familiar (e.g. outlet, barista, and chef). Then, the participants
described the two pictures in front of the class following the prompt, “Please describe what
happened to Michael and Erica last Friday,” without showing the pictures to their classmates. I
used this prompt consistently throughout the task so that the participants could respond using the
past tense. After everyone finished describing their own pictures, they put the nine sets of pictures
in the right order. The participants needed to negotiate the possible order of the pictures with each
other until they came up with the correct order. The entire session was video recorded. This
activity lasted about 25 to 30 minutes. See Appendix N for the pictures used for this task. During
this task, I provided verbal recasts with and without gestures when the participants did not use the
past tense when it was necessary.
Past tense story telling task B. The second task targeting the regular past tense followed a
similar pattern but in a different context. The context of this communicative task was that there
was a murder last Saturday and the learners played the roles of suspects in this murder case, with
one learner playing the murderer. After reviewing some vocabulary words (e.g. murder, murderer,
suspect, jail, and arrest), each participant was presented with a picture card that described what
that character did at 9 pm last Saturday. However, one card contained the sentences “You are the
killer. Make up a story so that you will not be arrested.” Each participant was asked to narrate a
story of their activity on the last Saturday evening in front of the class based on the card they
43

received. I asked some related questions, such as, “How long did you stay?”, “What teams were
playing?”, “Who won the game?” to increase opportunities of oral production. On average, three
related questions were posed to each participant. The participants needed to listen to each other so
that their stories matched with the other characters and to identify the murderer. However, they
were not allowed to take any notes. After telling their stories, the participants asked each other
questions until they found the murderer. This activity lasted about 20 minutes. See Appendix O
for a complete illustration of the pictures that were used for this task.
Preposition picture description task A. The participants were divided into two groups. One
group played the role of detectives and the other group played the role of ‘honest’ burglars. The
following context was explained: the burglars stole the largest diamond in the world, and they
need to hide it somewhere in the house before the detectives come find it. The detectives need to
find the diamond using the fewest possible questions. Each group was given four minutes to
prepare for the task. A laminated poster-sized print of a picture of a house was attached to the
blackboard, and a picture of the house printed on letter-sized paper was given to each group. The
burglar group was advised to find the most difficult place to hide the diamond, and the detective
group was advised to come up with a strategy that would allow them to identify the place with the
minimum number of questions. The names of the furniture were labeled to facilitate production.
Then, the detectives asked Yes/No questions, such as “Is the diamond under the bed?” until they
found it. To make sure that their prepositions were used correctly, the participants who were
playing the role of detectives were told to point to locations using a laser pointer. I tallied the
number of student questions. Once the detective team found the diamond, the teams switched
roles. The group which asked fewer questions won the game. See Appendix P for an illustration
of the house. The activity lasted about 30 minutes.
44

Preposition picture description task B. For the second task, the participants were again
divided into two groups. One group played the role of the owners of a special key, and the other
group played the role of friends who were trying to find the key. A picture of a room with 18
different keys was printed on a poster-sized paper, laminated, and affixed to the blackboard. Each
group was also given a letter-sized copy of the picture. The following setting was explained: The
owners of a secret box left the key in the room, and they called their friends and asked them to
find it. However, the key owners placed various other keys in the room, and their friends needed
to ask about the location of the correct key using Yes/No questions (e.g. Is the key in the
kitchen?). In order to make sure that their prepositions matched their intended meaning, the
participants were directed to point at the keys using a laser pointer. After the proper key was
found, the participants switched roles and the whole task was repeated. I counted the number of
questions, and the team who could find the key with fewer questions won the game. See
Appendix Q for an illustration of the room.
Verbal report session. I conducted stimulated recall sessions with nine participants to
understand their perception of recasts, specifically to examine whether they recognized the
corrective nature of recasts and the linguistic targets. The participants were the one who missed
one of the immediate posttests but was still willing to be included in the data collection. The
entire session was audio recorded. The participants watched video segments of their own in-class
tasks, and they were asked to comment on their thoughts about the interaction. Stimulated recall is
a tool that “…can be used to prompt participants to recall thoughts they had while performing a
task or participating in an event. It is assumed that some tangible (perhaps visual or aural)
reminder of an event will stimulate recall of the mental processes in operation during the event
itself” (Gass & Mackey, 2000, p.17). To elicit the participants’ thoughts at that time, I provided
45

the following prompt: Tell me what you were thinking about during this interaction. I specifically
selected the segments during which I provided recasts, which made up about 75% of the total
segments, and I also included 25% of segments as non-corrective interaction for distracters.
Procedure
This study used an intervention design to measure the learning outcomes resulting from
the three conditions. Figure 6 shows a typical schedule for the data collection. On the day of
Session 1, the participants completed the background questionnaire, pretests, and then the two
grammar tests. The oral production tests were audio recorded. As mentioned earlier, there were
three versions of each test to avoid a learning effect. The results obtained from one-way ANOVA
revealed that there was no difference among the conditions with regards to the test results in the
regular past tense grammar test F (2, 57) = 2.272, p = .112, the regular past tense oral production
test F (2, 57) = 1.072, p = .349, the preposition grammar test F (2, 45) = 2.703, p =. 136, or the
preposition oral production test F (2, 45) = .980, p = .383.
The treatment sessions (Sessions 2 and 4), which included four communicative tasks, were
conducted over two days. Each entire session was videotaped. As described earlier, the first two
tasks used during Session 3 targeted regular past tense verbs and the latter two tasks during
Session 4 targeted locative prepositions. When the participants did not use regular past tense
verbs when it was necessary during Session 3 or used incorrect prepositions during Session 5, I
provided verbal recasts with or without gestures or with no recasts according to the conditions to
which they were assigned.
The immediate posttest, which was in the same format as the pretest but in a different
version, was administered on the days after Session 3 and Session 5. More specifically, the past
tense oral production test and the past tense grammar test were administered the day after Session
46

3, and the preposition oral production test and the preposition grammar test were administered the
day after Session 5. On the same day, a subset of the participants participated in a stimulated
recall session instead of the posttests. Egi (2008) warned that participants who have taken a
posttest and then stimulated recall may not be able to provide accurate data during the stimulated
recall session, and that participants who take part in stimulated recall prior to a posttest may have
their posttest scores skewed. Following her argument, the participants who took part in the
stimulated recall session were not included in this study for one of the target structures. For
example, if a participant took part in a stimulated recall session following the regular past tense
communicative tasks, I did not include their scores for the analysis of past tense acquisition, but I
did include their scores for prepositions and vice versa.
Finally, the delayed posttest was administered during Session 6, about a week after the
completion of Session 5. This session included the past tense oral production test, the preposition
oral production test, the past tense grammar test, and the preposition grammar test. Again, the oral
production tests were audio recorded.

47

Session 1

Pretests

Background
Questionnaire
1–3
Days

Past Tense Communicative Task I & II
Session 2
1
Day

Verbal Report
Session

Immediate Posttest
Session 3
2
Days
Preposition Communicative Task I & II
Session 4
1
Day

Verbal Report
Session

Immediate Posttest
Session 5
7-9
Days
Session 6
Delayed Posttest

Figure 6
Illustration of procedure timeline
Description of recasts. I provided the specific type of recast according to the condition to
48

which the participants were assigned. Controlling the manner of the provision of recasts is crucial
because the study aims to measure the effectiveness of verbal recasts with or without pedagogical
gestures. For the Verbal Recast Only condition, verbal recasts were provided. Then, for the
Recasts + Gesture condition, I provided recasts accompanied by pedagogical gestures. No
feedback with regards to the two target structures was provided for the Control group.
The next section describes how the feedback was given in each condition. When the
participants made mistakes in structures that were not targeted in this study (e.g. pronunciation), I
did not provide any correction unless not doing so caused a communication breakdown or the
participants asked me specific questions.
Description of recasts for regular past tense communicative tasks. Tasks A and B were
designed to elicit regular past tense verbs. When the participants did not use the past tense in the
obligatory context in Task 1, I provided recasts with or without gestures immediately following
the participants’ utterances.
Following Hudson (2011)’s description of teacher’s gestures that were used to teach the
concept of the past tense, I specifically used the “point back” gesture using my thumb to indicate
the past. From my personal observations of various language classrooms, this point back gesture
is commonly used when teaching the past tense. A specific illustration of the gesture is shown
Figure 7. For the Verbal Recast Only condition, I recast only verbally, and I put my hands down
next to the side of my body to avoid gesturing. The way I provided recasts is illustrated in Figure
8. For the Recasts + Gesture condition, I provided verbal recasts along with the pointing back
gesture, as shown in Figure 9.

49

Figure 7
Past tense gesture used for past tense communicative tasks A and B

S: And he wash the car.
R: Oh, he washed the car.

Figure 8
Example of verbal recasts used during past tense communicative tasks A and B
S: And he wash the car.
R: Oh, he washed the car.

Figure 9
Example of recasts plus gesture used during past tense communicative tasks A and B

50

Description of feedback for preposition communicative tasks. Tasks 3 and 4 were designed
to elicit locative prepositions (on, in, under, next to, and above). I used the native English
speaker’s gestures for under, above, on, and next to as used to describe the locations in Tutton
(2011). To my knowledge, there is no study which has addressed gestures to be used along with
the preposition in, so I created my own gesture for in. The right hand was positioned to show a
container, and the left hand, while pointing, moved toward the container to show the concept of
containment. Figure 10 illustrates what gestures were used for each preposition.

51

Preposition
In

Illustration of gesture

On

Above

Under

Next to

Figure 10
Illustrations of gestures used in preposition communicative tasks A and B
Recasts were provided following non-target-like use of the selected prepositions. The
Verbal Recast Only condition received only verbal recasts (Figure 11) and the Recasts + Gesture
condition received verbal recasts accompanied by pedagogical gestures (Figure 12).
52

S: Is the diamond on the fireplace?
T: Is the diamond in the fireplace?

Figure 11
Example of verbal recasts provided during preposition communicative tasks A and B
Figure 12 shows how the recasts were provided along with a gesture that indicates the
meanings of the correct prepositions.
S: Is the diamond on the fireplace?
T: Is the diamond in the fireplace?

Figure 12
Example of recasts and gestures provided during preposition communicative tasks A and B
Analysis
Analysis of learner comments. Two major questions were asked in this study; the first
research question explores whether students notice the corrective nature of recasts. Overall, a total
of 127 recasts were provided for past tense communicative tasks and 73 recasts were provided
during the preposition communicative tasks. Table 4 shows the breakdown of the frequency of
recasts of each experimental condition.

53

Table 4
Distribution of Frequency of Recasts for Experimental Conditions
Past Tense class
average (SD)

Past tense total
Preposition class
number of recasts average (SD)

Preposition total
number of recasts

Verbal Recast
Only
(4 classes)
Recast + Gesture
(4 classes)

15.25 (4.9)

61

9.5 (3.9)

38

16.5 (2.3)

66

11.75 (1.59)

35

Total

15.9 (3.7)

127

9.13 (2.64)

73

I analyzed the responses obtained from participants during the verbal report sessions. Five
of them were from Classroom A (Verbal Recast Only condition) and four were from Classroom B
(Recasts + Gesture condition). In Classroom A, 19 verbal recasts on the past tense and 14 verbal
recasts on prepositions were provided. In classroom B, 14 and 8 recasts accompanied by gestures
were provided for the past tense and prepositions, respectively. After the verbal report sessions, I
listened to their comments and wrote down a key word for each comment. Examples of the key
words are nervousness for a comment such as “I was worried because I had to speak in front of
everyone.” and competitiveness for a comment such as “I really wanted to win. So, [I thought]
don’t go that way.” Using these key words and the learners’ original comments, I conducted a
content analysis to find out which topics were commonly addressed. Six categories emerged from
a total of 274 comments obtained from the learners: (1) Focus on game results, (2) Effort for
comprehension, (3) Do not remember, (4) Anxiety, (5) Peer evaluation, and (6) Others. I provide
a description of each category along with an example below. All the examples are taken from the
current data set.
(1) Focus on game results: Learner comments in this category show that the learners talked about
54

their competitive feelings. For the past tense tasks, the learners were trying to be the first ones to
guess the correct order. For the preposition tasks, the learners were trying to help their group win
the game.
Example: “I really wanted our team to win. So, I kept thinking, don’t go that way!”
(2) Effort for comprehension. The comments in this category show that the learners were trying to
understand their peers’ or teachers’ utterances during the task.
Example: “I paid attention to him (the classmate) to understand what he says.”
(3) Do not remember. As the name of this category suggests, the learners were not always able to
recall what they were thinking about at the time of classroom interaction.
Example: “Sorry, I don’t remember.”
(4) Anxiety. The comments categorized here indicate that the learners felt anxious during the
tasks, especially when they had to speak in front of everyone.
Example: “I was worried because I had to speak in front.”
(5) Peer evaluation. The comments in this category show that the learners were evaluating their
classmates’ language skills at the time of the interaction during the tasks.
Example: “Now it’s [the student’s name] speaking… Her English is very good.”
(6) Others. The rest of the comments that do not match the descriptions of the aforementioned
categories.
Example: “I think I was hungry. It’s almost noon.”
Analysis of acquisition of regular past tense and locative prepositions. The second
research question asks whether the learners acquire regular past tense verbs or prepositions more
readily when the recasts are provided along with gestures. I compared the scores obtained from
the grammar tests and oral production tests in the pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest,
55

using repeated-measures ANOVA to identify if any of the groups performed significantly
differently from the others. Before interpreting the results, Mauchly’s sphericity test was used to
verify whether the assumption of sphericity was violated. When it was violated, I used
2

Greenhouse-Geisser adjusted scores. In addition, the effect size was calculated by ƞ . The results
2

2

obtained from ƞ were interpreted using the guideline provided by Cohen (1988). When ƞ was
around .01, it was interpreted as a small effect size, .06 as a medium effect size, and .14 and
above as a large effect size. When there was a significant difference, I used Bonferroni multiple
comparison to see which condition significantly differed from the others. Finally, I conducted
one-way ANOVA to examine at what point (e.g. immediately or at the delayed posttest) the
significant change occurred. When there was a significant difference, I again used Bonferroni’s
multiple comparison to identify which group differed significantly from the others. Then, I
calculated Cohen’s d to measure its effect size. The effect size was interpreted using the
interpretation guideline in Cohen (1988). An effect size of .2 to .3 was interpreted as a small
effect, around .5 as a medium effect, and above .8 as a large effect.
All the statistical analysis, except for Cohen’s d was conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics
Version 21. This program does not allow the inclusion of missing data when conducting repeatedmeasures ANOVA. In other words, if a participant had missed any part of the posttest, their data
could not be included in the analysis. This resulted in a lower number of participants included in
the repeated-measures ANOVA. For the analysis of the past tense, 19 of the Recasts + Gesture, 17
of the Verbal Recast Only, and 11 of the Control group were included. For the prepositions, 14 of
the Recasts + Gesture, 11 of the Verbal Recast Only, and 8 of the Control group were included.
However, this restriction did not apply for the one-way ANOVA, and thus all the eligible
participants were included for the post-hoc analysis.
56

Chapter 5: Results
Response to Research Question 1: Noticing of Recasts and Gesture
The first research question examined whether there was a difference in learners’
recognition of the corrective nature of recasts and the noticing of target structures when recasts
were accompanied by gestures. Overall, 237 responses were obtained from the nine participants
during the stimulated recall session. Based on the content analysis, five major categories were
identified. The frequency and ratio of the comments for these categories are shown in Table 5.
The first predominant category showed the interest of the participants in winning the task.
Probably due to the competitive nature of the tasks, the majority of their comments concerned the
task outcome. For example, one participant said that he really wanted to win but he was worried
that the other team might guess the correct location of the key. The second category showed the’
efforts of learners to understand their classmates’ oral production. For example, one learner said
that she paid attention to a classmate who was speaking in front of the class because she saw his
character’s name on her card. The third category concerned the evaluation of participants by their
peers. Some learners showed that they thought positively or negatively about the linguistic skills
or personalities of their classmates. The fourth category showed the psychological status of
participants during the task. A typical comment from this category showed how nervous a learner
was when speaking in front of everyone. However, none of the comments concerned the nature of
error correction. Therefore, I was not able to identify a difference in the quality of noticing
between the two experimental conditions at least at the level of conscious awareness.

57

Table 5
Frequency of Responses in Representative Categories
Verbal Recast Only
(n = 5)
41 (30.4%)
21 (15.6%)
36 (26.7%)
8 (5.9%)
6 (4.4%)
11 (8.1%)
135 (100%)

Focus on the game
Comprehension effort
Do not remember
Anxiety
Peer evaluation
Others
Total

Recasts + Gesture
(n=4)
39 (38.2%)
15 (14.7%)
26 (25.4%)
7 (6.9%)
3 (2.9%)
12 (11.8%)
102 (100%)

Total
(n=9)
80 (33.8%)
36 (15.2%)
62 (26.1%)
15 (6.3%)
9 (3.8%)
23 (9.7%)
237 (100%)

Response to Research Question 2: Gesture-incorporated Recasts and L2 Development
Effect of types of recasts and explicit linguistic knowledge. The second research question
asked whether the provision of recasts was overall more effective than when recasts were not
provided. Table 6 shows the mean scores of the grammar test on the past tense; Figure 13 shows
this visually. Because Mauchly’s Test of Sphericity showed that the sphericity of the dataset was
not assumed (p = .911), the adjusted data obtained from Greenhouse-Geisser was used for the
interpretation. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that there was no significant time effect, F
(1.993, 87.708) = .136, p = .872, no significant group effect F (2, 44) = 1.289, p = .286 and no
significant interactive effect of time and group F (3.987, 87.708) = 3.083, p = .686. The effect
sizes of the time effect, group effect, and interactive effect of time and group were small to
2

2

2

medium, ƞ = .003, ƞ = .055, and ƞ = .015, respectively. Table 7 presents the results of the
repeated-measures ANOVA for the past tense grammar test.

58

Table 6
Mean Scores of Regular Past Tense Grammar Test
Pretest

Immediate posttest

Delayed posttest

Control (n=11)

9.82 (SD = 1.66)

9.36 (SD=1.43)

9.27 (SD=1.19)

Verbal Recast Only

10.18 (SD = 1.38)

9.88 (SD=1.53)

10.59 (SD = 1.37)

10.07 (SD=1.28)

10.60 (SD=1.05)

10.07 (SD = 1.03)

(n=21)
Recast and Gesture
(n=27)

12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Control
Verbal Recast
Only
Recast+Gesture

Pretest

Immediate
Posttest

Delayed Posttest

Figure 13
Mean scores of regular past tense grammar tests

59

Table 7
Repeated-measures ANOVA for Regular Past Tense Grammar Test
Source
Between subjects
Within subjects

Group
Time
Group X Time

df
2
1.993
3.987

F
1.289
.136
3.083

2

p
.286
.872
.686

ƞ
.55
.003
.015

The second part of the grammar test was about prepositions. Table 8 shows the scores of
this grammar test. Again, Mauchly’s test of sphericity does not assume the sphericity of the data
(p = .863), thus, Greenhouse-Geisser’s adjusted scores were used for the analysis. A repeatedmeasures ANOVA revealed that there was no significant time effect, F (1.980, 59.402) = 2.368, p
= .103, no significant group effect F (2, 30) = 2.529, p = .097, and no significant interactive effect
2

2

of time and group F (3.960, 59.402) = .633, p = .639. Their effect sizes, ƞ = .073, ƞ = .144, and
2

ƞ = .041, respectively, were small to medium overall, except for the interactive effect of time and
group. Table 9 presents the results of the repeated-measures ANOVA for the locative preposition
grammar test.
Overall, the comparison of the regular past grammar test scores showed that there was no
significant difference across the three conditions. Similarly, the analysis of the scores obtained
from the preposition grammar test also did not show significant difference.

60

Table 8
Mean Scores of Preposition Grammar Test
Pretest

Immediate posttest

Delayed posttest

Control (n=8)

9.82 (SD = 1.66)

9.36 (SD=1.43)

9.27 (SD=1.19)

Recast (n=13)

10.18 (SD = 1.38)

9.88 (SD=1.53)

10.59 (SD = 1.37)

Recast and Gesture

10.07 (SD=1.28)

10.60 (SD=1.05)

10.07 (SD = 1.03)

(n=27)

12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Control
Verbal Recast Only
Recast+Gesture

Pretest

Immediate
Posttest

Delayed Posttest

Figure 14
Mean scores of preposition grammar test

61

Table 9
Repeated-measures ANOVA for Preposition Grammar Test
Source

df

Between subjects
Within subjects

Group
Time
Group X Time

F

p

2
1.980
3.960

2.529
2.368
.633

.097
.103
.639

2

ƞ
.144
.073
.041

Effect of types of recasts on development of oral production. This analysis compares
the learners’ oral production test scores of the two target structures to identify whether recasts are
more beneficial for L2 learning when provided with gestures. First, I compared the learners’ oral
production of the past tense followed by that of prepositions.
Tables 10 shows the scores obtained from the past tense oral production test, and Figure
15 shows this visually. Figure 15 illustrates that there was an overall increase from the pretest to
the immediate posttest in all the conditions. Specifically, the learners in the Control and the
Verbal Recast Only conditions had higher scores in the delayed posttest but not those in the
Recasts + Gesture Condition. For the analysis, the scores from Greenhouse-Geisser were used
because the sphericity of the data was not assumed, according to Mauchly’s test of sphericity (p
= .422). A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that there was a significant time effect, F (1.926,
2

86.670) = 7.241, p = .001 with a medium effect size (ƞ = .106) indicating overall improvement.
However, neither a significant group effect F (2, 45) = .065, p = .937 nor a significant interactive
effect of time and group F (3.852, 86.670) = 1.344, p = .261 were found, and their effect sizes
2

2

were small, ƞ = .056 and ƞ = .003, respectively. Table 11 shows the results of repeatedmeasures ANOVA for past tense oral production test.

62

Table 10
Mean Scores of Regular Past Tense Oral Production Test
Pretest

Immediate posttest

Delayed posttest

Control (n=11)

23.47 (SD=22.51)

33.43 (SD=20.93)

36.55 (SD=33.92)

Verbal Recast Only

23.13 (SD=21.18)

31.69 (SD = 29.04)

39.46 (SD=32.77)

21.40 (SD = 22.71)

40.78 (SD=27.98)

36.90 (SD=28.73)

(n=15)
Recast + Gesture
(n=27)

100
90
80
70
60
50

Control

40

Verbal Recast Only

30

Recasts+Gesture

20
10
0
Pretest

Immediate
Posttest

Delayed Posttest

Figure 15
Mean scores of regular past tense grammar test

63

Table 11
Repeated-measures ANOVA for Past Tense Oral Production Test
Source

df

Between subjects
Within subjects

Group
Time
Group X Time

F

p

2
1.926
3.852

.065
7.241
1.344

.937
.001
.261

2

ƞ
.056
.106
.003

Table 12 shows the scores from the preposition oral production test, and Figure 16 shows
this visually. Figure 16 shows that the scores of the Control condition were essentially static.
Scores from the Verbal Recast Only and the Recasts + Gesture conditions improved almost
equally in the immediate posttest, but the score of the Verbal Recast Only condition dropped in
the delayed posttest, although the score of the Recasts + Gesture condition remained the same in
the delayed posttest.
Table 12
Mean Scores of Preposition Oral Production Test
Pretest

Immediate posttest

Delayed posttest

Control (n=8)

56.07 (SD=19.82)

59.72 (SD=17.73)

58.83 (SD=14.67)

Verbal Recast Only

53.79 (SD = 18.67)

79.82 (SD=16.85)

69.93 (SD=20.25)

62.89 (SD = 12.59)

83.45 (SD=14.23)

85.25 (SD=9.25)

(n=13)
Recast + Gesture
(n=27)

64

100
90
80
70
60
50

Control

40

Verbal Recast Only

30

Recast + Gesture

20
10
0
Pretest

Immediate
Posttest

Delayed Posttest

Figure 16
Mean scores of preposition oral production test
The results from the repeated-measures ANOVA were used to verify if such variation in
the performances by the learners in the three conditions was significant. Since the sphericity was
not assumed according to Mauchly’s test of sphericity (p=.089), Greenhouse-Geisser’s adjusted
scores were used. The repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that there was a significant time
effect, F (1.765, 61.788) = 18.705, p = .000, a significant group effect F (2, 35) = 6.356, p = .004,
and a significant interactive effect of time and group F (3.532, 61.788) = 3.829, p = .010. Their
2

2

2

effect sizes were consistently large as well, ƞ = .346, ƞ = .266, and ƞ = .180, respectively.
Table 13 shows the results of repeated-measures ANOVA for the preposition oral production test.

65

Table 13
Repeated-measures ANOVA for Preposition Oral Production Test
Source

df

Between subjects
Within subjects

Group
Time
Group X Time

F

p

2
1.765
3.532

6.356
18.705
3.829

.004
.000
.10

2

ƞ
.266
.348
.180

There was a significant difference across the three conditions and a large effect size.
Bonferroni multiple comparisons showed that the Recasts + Gesture condition outperformed the
Control condition significantly (p =.004). However, the differences between the Verbal Recast
Only and Control conditions (p = .253) and the Recasts + Gesture and Verbal Recast Only
conditions (p = .277) were not significant.
I further conducted one-way ANOVA by using the pretest scores, then the posttest scores,
and finally the delayed posttest scores to assess when the learners started varying across the three
conditions. The results from one-way ANOVA show that there was no significant difference in
2

their pretest scores, F (2, 45) = .032, p = .969, and the effect size was minimal, ƞ = .001.
However, there was a significant difference in the scores from the immediate posttest, F (2, 45) =
2

4.947, p = .011, with a strong effect size, ƞ = .180. Specifically, the Verbal Recast Only and
Recasts + Gesture conditions both significantly diverged from the Control condition at the time of
immediate posttest (p = .011 and p = .032 respectively). The effect on the conditions on the
immediate posttest was large both in the comparison between the Control and the Verbal Recast
Only conditions (d = 1.16) and between the Control and the Recasts + Gesture conditions (d =
1.47). Yet, there was no significant difference between the Verbal Recast Only and Recasts +
Gesture conditions (p = 1.00). The effect size was also small (d = 0.23). Finally, the delayed
posttest scores were compared. The results from one-way ANOVA show that there was a
66

significant difference in their delayed posttest scores, F (2, 35) = 11.73, p =.000, with a large
2

effect size, ƞ = .41. However, there was no significant difference between the Control and the
Verbal conditions (p = .292), although there was a medium effect size (d = .62). Finally, the
Recasts + Gesture condition still significantly outperformed the Control condition (p = .000) with
a large effect size (d = 2.15) and the Verbal Recast Only condition (p = .015) also with a large
effect size (d = 0.97). I summarized these results in Figure 17.

Pretest

Immediate
Posttest

Delayed
Posttest

•  Control ≈ Recast ≈ Recast+Gesture
•  No significant, small effect size

•  Recast, Recast + Gesture > Control
•  Significant, Large effect size
•  Recast > Control: Significant, large effect size
•  Recast + Gesture > Control: Significant, large effect size
•  Recast ≈ Recast + Gesture: Not significant, small effect size

•  Recast + Gesture > Recast, Control
•  Significant, Large effect size
•  Recast ≈ Control: Not significant, medium effect size

Figure 17
Summary of preposition oral production test score analysis
Summary of Results
The first research question examined whether there was a difference in the quality of
67

noticing when the recasts were given with or without gestures. The participants’ stimulated recall
comments indicate that they did not notice the corrective nature of the recasts or the linguistic
targets at the level of awareness, regardless of the presence of the gestures. Instead, the majority
of the comments concerned learner tasks and classroom engagement.
The second research question asked whether the recasts were effective in the acquisition
of the L2 grammar when they were provided either only verbally or with gestures. The first subquestion specifically focused on the effectiveness of recasts in the immediate posttest. In terms of
the explicit knowledge of learners, there was no difference between the two conditions for both
target structures. The learners already had a high level of explicit knowledge of both structures
prior to the data collection. As for the oral production of regular past tense verbs, there was no
significant difference between these conditions. However, the analysis revealed a significant
difference between the two conditions with regard to the acquisition of prepositions. The Verbal
Recast Only condition outperformed the Control group in the immediate posttest, although this
difference was diminished in the delayed posttest. Concerning locative preposition oral
production, both the Recasts + Gesture and Verbal Recast Only conditions improved almost
equally in the immediate posttest.
The second sub-question examined if there was a long-term effect for verbal recasts
depending on whether the recasts were accompanied by pedagogical gestures. Again, the results
revealed that there was no significant difference in the development of the explicit knowledge of
learners and the oral production of regular past tense verbs. However, there was a significant
difference between the Verbal Recast Only and Recasts + Gesture conditions in the delayed
posttest for the preposition oral production test. Although both the Verbal Recast Only and
Recasts + Gesture conditions equally improved in the immediate posttest, only the Recasts +
68

Gesture condition retained its improvement, surpassing the Verbal Recast Only condition.

69

Chapter 6: Discussion
I conducted this study to examine if gestures can be used to make the linguistic targets of
recasts more salient so as to increase the noticing of learners, as well as to improve learning
outcomes. The motivation for this study came from the gap between researchers’ and teachers’
preferred forms of corrective feedback. Some researchers argued that explicit forms of corrective
feedback seemed to be more effective in general than less explicit forms, such as recasts, because
the corrective nature of feedback and the linguistic targets appear to be more salient to learners,
whereas teachers prefer using recasts because they are non-obtrusive and less face-threatening in
the classroom. I used an intervention study to see whether linguistic targets could be made more
salient by incorporating gestures during recasts, which, theoretically, may result in more frequent
noticing and L2 development. The regular English past tense verbs and prepositions were the
target structures, and I assessed learners’ linguistic development of these structures in their
explicit knowledge and their oral production.
Discussion for Research Question 1: Learner Noticing during Recasts
The results showed that the learners did not exhibit any recognition of the corrective
nature of either type of recast or of noticing of the target structures. This section explores this
outcome focusing on the following issues: (1) the majority of the comments concerned the task
outcome, (2) no comments were made on error correction, (3) the participants were observed to
have learned but without any indication of noticing, and (4) the possibility of different patterns of
processing in the visual and aural modalities.
Comments about task outcome. The first research question examined if the learners
exhibited different patterns of noticing when recasts involved pedagogical gestures. One of the
most common ideas addressed by the learners in the comments was their attention to the tasks. I
70

speculate that this outcome is due to (1) the competitive characteristics of the tasks and (2) the
context of the provision of feedback. In this study, student-teacher interaction happened during
communicative focused tasks that had a competitive nature. During the first task targeting regular
past tense verbs, the learners were paired and asked to find the correct ordering of picture cards as
quickly as possible. In the second task, the learners worked individually and competed with each
other to correctly identify the “murderer” in the classroom. During the two tasks that focused on
locative prepositions, the learners were divided into two groups, and they were told to identify the
diamond or the key using fewer questions than their opponents to win the game. Therefore, the
nature of the tasks was competitive in general, and that the learners’ comments concerned the task
outcomes was not surprising. This is not to say that the learners did not notice the linguistic
targets at all – but it appears that how much the learners were focusing on the task was the most
relevant information for the learners to report during the stimulated recall session.
Other researchers incorporated stimulated recall sessions by using interaction data
obtained from communicative tasks as stimuli, yet, the previous studies did not address such
comments found in this study. The examples of communicative tasks used in other studies were
discussions (Carpenter, Jeon, MacGregor, & Mackey, 2006) or one-way picture description tasks
and two-way spot-the-difference tasks with native speakers (Egi, 2007), all of which were
communicative but may not be necessarily competitive. My intention is not to claim that the
learners were more engaged in the tasks in the present study than those were in previous studies.
However, learners could have been more attuned to the outcomes of the tasks because of the
competitive nature of those tasks, as reflected in their comments.
The second possible way to account for this result is the context in which the recasts were
provided. In this study, the recasts were provided only during the communicative tasks – in other
71

words, only interactions that occurred during these tasks were used as stimuli for the stimulated
recall sessions. This might have specifically drawn the attention of learners to the tasks. In the
studies that used stimulated recall sessions as a tool to elicit the thoughts of learners at the time of
interaction, unrelated comments were usually classified as ‘Others’ and were not analyzed
systematically (e.g. Mackey, et al., 2000). However, having a closer look at the data may explain
why the majority of the learners’ comments concerned tasks by comparing the situations in which
the interactions occurred. Some of the studies that used stimulated recall sessions obtained their
initial data in regular classrooms (e.g. Egi, 2007; Kim & Han, 2007; Mackey, et al., 2000; Nabei
& Swain, 2002; Oliver & Mackey, 2003; Polio, Gass, & Chapin, 2006). This, of course, does not
mean that regular classrooms do not include any communicative tasks; however, using the
excerpts only from the tasks might have drawn the learners’ attention specifically to the tasks. In
addition, the learners knew that I had been teaching classes at the institution of data collection.
Therefore, it is possible that they had perceived me as an instructor, which may have influenced
the learners to comment on how well they were focused during the tasks.
No comment on error correction. The results that there was no comment on the
corrective nature of recasts or about target structures, regardless of the conditions, are surprising,
taking the findings from the previous studies that used stimulated recall sessions as a
methodology for eliciting learner noticing during classroom interaction into account (e.g.
Carpenter, et al., 2006; Egi, 2007; Kim & Han, 2007; Mackey, et al., 2000; Mackey, McDonough,
Fujii, & Tatsumi, 2001; Polio, et al., 2006; Roberts, 1995). The result of this study, that the
learners exhibited no sign of noticing, may have been due to the linguistic types of the target
structures, which are morphosyntax for regular past tense verbs and semantics for locative
prepositions, as well as the type of corrective feedback, recasts, that was involved in this study.
72

A few studies that investigated learner noticing using stimulated recall sessions reported
relatively low rates of correct identification of target structures when feedback was given in the
form of recasts. Roberts (1995), for example, showed that learners were able to identify 33% of
the errors in full recasts, which were also used in the present study. Mackey et al. (2000) showed
that learners did not identify the nature of negative feedback (75% of the negative feedback was
recasts) when the linguistic targets concerned morphosyntax (13% in an ESL classroom and 24%
in an IFL classroom). The findings of the present study are in line with those two studies in that
the amount of comments on noticing (of linguistic targets) was relatively small, and non-existent
in the present study. Although the researchers did not limit the studies only to those that
incorporated stimulated recall sessions, some meta-analyses also reported the lack of
effectiveness of corrective feedback when targeting grammatical features. Mackey and Goo
(2007)’s meta-analysis showed that corrective feedback that targeted lexical features was more
effective than feedback with grammatical targets. Thus, one possibility to account for this lack of
comments on error correction may be because that the linguistic target of this study was
grammatical. It is arguable that the acquisition of prepositions, one of the target structures of this
study, may be similar to vocabulary acquisition because of the form-meaning mapping. In this
study, the learners had already known the prototypical meaning of each preposition and during the
tasks they appeared to have expanded the understanding of the prepositions above the most
prototypical meanings. Thus, compared to learning a concrete new vocabulary words, learners
might have viewed the learning prepositions less as vocabulary acquisition. Had the linguistic
target been lexical that involves concrete vocabulary words such as name of furniture pieces in
the illustrations, it is possible that the learners might have commented on the correction.
Possible learning without noticing. The aforementioned speculation about linguistic
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targets may explain the rational behind the lack of comments on error correction; however, it does
not account for the reasons the participants of the Recasts + Gesture condition, along with those
of the Verbal Recast condition, outperformed those of the Control condition, even though
comments on noticing were not obtained from the two experimental conditions. This suggests that
learning may have occurred without noticing of the target structures at the level of awareness,
which returns to the debate over the necessity of conscious noticing for L2 learning. According to
Schmidt’s view, learner attention and conscious noticing are indispensable for L2 learning. He
claimed that only what is being noticed in the input can be learned because the interlanguage does
not change without it, and thus learner awareness, entailed by noticing, is requisite at the time of
learning. Robinson (1995) further explained noticing as what is “detected and the activated [sic]
as a result of the allocation of attentional resources from a central executive” (p.297). While their
arguments are well-supported in the field of SLA, the results from this study do not seem to
follow their claims. Instead, the results of the present study appear to be coherent according to the
claim by Tomlin and Villa (1994) that a part of the noticing process, detection, may occur without
consciousness but still result in learning.
The results of a few empirical studies that examined the possibility of L2 learning without
awareness vary to a great extent, and making a claim based on the limited number of studies is
premature. In addition, the finding of the present study needs to be interpreted with caution
because the study was not originally designed to specifically examine the possibility of L2
learning without awareness. Still, the results of this study are consistent with Williams (2005), in
which he found that L2 learners were capable of learning form-meaning mapping of artificial
English determiners without conscious attention. The researcher assigned two conditioning
factors, distance (near vs. far) and animacy (animate vs. inanimate) to the determiners. The
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researcher informed the learners of information about the distance condition but not about
animacy. After being exposed to the sentences that contained the target determiners, the learners
took tests in which they were told to choose the correct determiners. Finally, the learners attended
verbal report sessions. He found that the learners were able to correctly use the articles above
chance, even when they reported that they were not aware of the rules. This finding, however, was
not confirmed in a replication study by Hama and Leow (2010), where they incorporated thinkaloud protocol, an additional measure of noticing. They found that learners were not able to select
or produce the correct determiners when they were unaware of the rules. In addition, they also
found a mismatch between online think-aloud measurement of awareness and the results obtained
from an exit questionnaire; awareness at different levels, such as noticing and awareness at the
level of understanding, were found in the online think-aloud measure but not in the offline
measures. Similarly, some information of the awareness was only found via think-aloud protocols.
Taking the findings from these two studies into account, the results of the present study can be
explained by the following hypothesis: (1) the learners were able to learn without awareness at the
level of consciousness, as in Tomlin and Villa (1994) and Williams (2005), or (2) the learners
were unable to express awareness during the post-activity stimulated recall session, as in Hama
and Leow (2010). However, as I mentioned earlier, I do not claim either hypothesis based on the
results of this study, as the study was not specifically designed to address this issue and because
the number of previous empirical studies is fairly limited.
Noticing of visual vs. aural feedback. The results showed that the learners did not
exhibit any sign of noticing in the two experimental conditions, even though the two conditions
showed improvement in the acquisition of locative prepositions in the immediate posttest and the
Recasts + Gesture condition maintained the improvement in the delayed posttest. To the best of
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my knowledge, no study has assessed L2 learner noticing in relation to the visibility of gestures.
Furthermore, no results indicating learners’ noticing was collected in this study. Thus, explaining
whether the difference in the learning outcomes is a result of differences in the unuttered noticing,
or whether the learning outcome varied even though the learners in the two conditions did not
notice, is not possible. This section attempts to account for the first speculation by relating to
findings from neuroscience studies. The second possibility is addressed in the discussion for the
second research question.
The findings from some recent neuroscience studies showed that human brains process
verbal sentences differently when they are accompanied by meaningful gestures. Skipper, GoldinMeadow, Nusbaum, and Small (2007) examined how co-speech gestures alter the neural response
to speech, and they found that when meaningful gestures were present along with speech,
listeners needed less effort to understand the contents of the speech compared to when
meaningless adaptor gestures were present or when gestures were not present at all. Meaningful
gestures activated the primary motor cortex, which is an area related to processing actions, as well
as Broca’s area, which is related to processing languages. To date, SLA studies have not
addressed whether there is a variation in learners’ noticing when they need more or less effort in
comprehension. However, the learners in the Recasts + Gesture condition could have experienced
a lack of conscious noticing because they understood the contents of the recasts with less effort to
understand the information given in each feedback because of the presence of meaningful cospeech gestures. However, a separate study is needed to fully justify this argument.
Measuring noticing using stimulated recall. Notwithstanding the aforementioned
exploration, speculating as to possible methodological issues that may have prevented the present
study from eliciting learner comments on noticing is important. This study used stimulated recall
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sessions to measure whether learners recognized the corrective nature of feedback or whether they
noticed linguistic targets during the communicative activities. Although the stimulated recall
protocol of this study strictly followed the recommendations of Gass and Mackey (2000), some
possible methodological issues of this study need to be addressed.
First, in the present study, stimulated recall sessions were conducted completely in
English, the learners’ L2s, instead of in their L1s. Because of the relatively low proficiency of the
participants, the learners might not have been fully able to express their thoughts (Polio & Chiu,
2007). Admittedly, conducting the stimulated recall sessions in their L1s would have prevented
such issues; however, there was a methodological difficulty in conducting stimulated recall
sessions in the L1s. There were five different L1s used by the learners, and having speakers of
each L1 who were also well-trained to be in charge of the stimulated recall sessions during the
entire period of data collection would have been logistically difficult, given that the learners’
attendance for the post-treatment tests was unpredictable.
Second, this study used stimulated recall instead of other online methods to elicit noticing
but it did not use other online measures because there were close to 20 learners in each class and
because predicting which learner would participate in the stimulated recall sessions was not
possible. Some examples of online measurements of noticing are think-aloud protocols and
knocking during activities. In Philp (2003), learners were individually matched with native
speakers and were instructed to recall the native speaker’s previous utterances when hearing two
knocking sounds. Conducting such online measures was impossible in the present study because
all the communicative tasks took place in a classroom. Identifying learners who could actually
recall such sentences would have been extremely difficult. Similarly, another common online
measurement of noticing, think-aloud protocols, could not have been used in this study because of
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the learners were engaged in the oral communicative tasks. Had the data collection method and
context been different, such as via pair work, implementing additional measurements would have
been. However, this study was specifically carried-out in a classroom to maintain ecological
validity, thus, only stimulated recall sessions were used.
Discussion for Research Question 2 (a): Short-term Effect of Recasts with and without
Gestures
The second research question was constructed to examine the efficacy of verbal recasts
and verbal recasts plus gestures during the immediate posttest. The first analysis concerns the
development of the use of regular past tense verbs, and the second analysis concerns locative
prepositions. All three groups exhibited no difference in their explicit knowledge of the target
structures on the pretest, the immediate posttest, and the delayed posttest, indicating that generally
learners in all the conditions had high levels of explicit knowledge prior to the administration of
the communicative tasks, which did not allow further development.
Short-term effect in the acquisition of regular past tense. The results revealed that no
significant difference existed between the pretest and immediate posttest in all the conditions with
regard to the regular past tense verbs. This indicates that the recasts were not beneficial for the
development of the use of regular past tense verbs either with or without gestures. This section
explores why such a result was obtained, focusing on the following two aspects: (1) the difficulty
of learning regular past tense verbs through recasts and (2) the lack of difference in the two modes
of recasts.
Difficulty in regular past tense verb acquisition through recasts. The finding showed that
the recasts were not effective in development of regular past tense verbs at the time of the
immediate posttest regardless of the mode of the recasts possibly because regular past tense verbs
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are less easily acquired through recasts. Boom (1998) and Yang and Lyster (2010) reported that
recasts were not useful for developing the use of regular past tense verbs in oral production.
Boom examined whether a difference exists in the effectiveness of recasts in relation to their
targets. He found that recasts were effective for phonology, lexis, irregular past tense verbs, and
prepositions, but not for articles and regular past tense verbs. Yang and Lyster also reported the
inefficacy of feedback in the acquisition of regular past tense verbs. The researchers compared the
effectiveness of recasts and that of prompts in learner development of regular and irregular past
tense verbs and found that learners who were exposed to recasts did not exhibit improvements in
regular past tense verb oral production.
Regular past tense verb acquisition and feedback types. The results also showed that the
learners did not exhibit development in the use of regular past tense verbs even when gestures
accompanied recasts, which is thought to make the recasts more explicit. The past tense oral
production scores of the pretest and immediate posttest obtained from the Verbal Recast condition
and the Recasts + Gesture condition were compared, and the results showed that the performance
did not differ significantly from each other. This finding, that the development of regular past
tense verb acquisition was not facilitated regardless of the feedback type, is consistent with
McDonough (2007), who also reported that learners benefited neither from metalinguistic
feedback nor recasts in the acquisition of the past tense. In other words, however salient the
linguistic targets were, learners were not able to benefit from corrective feedback in terms of past
tense acquisition. Erlam and Loewen (2010), who compared the effectiveness of different types of
feedback on a different target structure also found the similar results. They examined the
effectiveness of implicit and explicit feedback on French noun-adjective agreement. Fifty learners
from French as a foreign language classes participated in the study. The learners engaged in four
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communicative tasks that were designed to elicit a target structure. Each session involved four to
seven learners, and a researcher provided either implicit or explicit feedback. Their analysis of the
learners’ pretest and posttest scores showed that no significant difference existed between the two
feedback modes. These findings indicate that regular past tense verbs and some other possible
structures are less likely to benefit from corrective feedback regardless of its explicitness.
However, replication studies are needed to determine what structures are least likely to be
improved through corrective feedback.
However, for some studies, these findings (including this study’s) contradict the findings
of Doughty and Varela (1998), Han (2002), and Sheen (2007), who reported on the facilitative
role of recasts on past tense acquisition. The types of recasts and the setting of the treatment
sessions used in the studies may explain this discrepancy. As opposed to the traditional recasts
used in this study, Doughty and Varela provided corrective recasts, which are a combination of
repetition and recasting. As the name suggests, corrective recasts highlight their corrective nature,
which might have motivated the learners’ noticing of target structures and learning outcomes as
compared to traditional recasts. In addition, the treatment sessions in Han’s and Sheen’s studies
were conducted with individual learners and not in a classroom setting as in the aforementioned
studies. A few studies illustrated that learners benefited from corrective feedback more when the
feedback was directed to them in contrast to when the feedback was directed to other students (e.g.
Mackey et al., 2006). Therefore, the learners of the studies that used one-on-one settings as
opposed to regular classrooms could have been more alert to researchers’ recasts because they
were always directed to individual participants. The discrepancy in the studies’ findings suggests
that the explicitness and the effectiveness of recasts may be greatly influenced by the contexts of
the tasks. In other words, overall, recasts that target English regular past tense verbs do not seem
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to be effective when used in regular classrooms, and the manipulation of recasts, such as with
corrective recasts, seems to be necessary to make them more effective.
The other possibility to improve the effectiveness of the acquisition of regular past tense
verbs is to use prompts instead of recasts. In Ellis et al. (2006) and Yang and Lyster (2010),
learners developed their oral production of regular past tense verbs when metalinguistic feedback
or prompts were used instead of recasts. Although this study did not include metalinguistic
feedback or prompts as a form of corrective feedback, comparing the findings to identify the
reason behind the discrepancy is important. Prompts provide negative evidence but teachers or
researchers do not provide correct answers and learners are encouraged to self-repair their
mistakes. Specifically, the researchers provided metalinguistic feedback that explained learner
errors without mentioning the correct answer in Ellis et al. Overall, corrective feedback facilitated
the acquisition of regular past tense verbs if learners were given the opportunity for self-repair
along with the more explicit form of feedback.
Short-term effect in the acquisition of locative prepositions. The results of this study
revealed that both the Verbal Recast Only and Recasts + Gesture conditions significantly
surpassed the Control condition in the immediate posttest. Unlike the past tense, not many
interaction studies specifically explored the acquisition of English locative prepositions. This
section accounts for these results with regard to (1) the explicitness of recasts specifically used
during the locative preposition communicative tasks in the Verbal Recast Only condition and (2)
the explicitness of the feedback and L2 learning.
Explicitness of recasts in Verbal Recast Only condition. The first finding is that recasts
were effective with regard to the acquisition of locative prepositions, which seems to have
resulted from the fact that the recasts in the Verbal Recast Only condition were not necessarily
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implicit. Comparing these findings with other recast studies, this result partially coincides with
those recast studies that illustrated the positive effect of recasts on L2 learning (e.g. Han, 2002;
Mackey & Philp, 1998; Nassaji, 1998, 2009), especially when the recasts targeted only specific
grammatical features. The researchers in these studies selected specific target structures in order
to implement their pretest-posttest designs. For instance, Han (2002) examined L2 learner
development of tense consistency in two conditions, a recast group and a non-recast group. The
learners in the recast conditioned surpassed those in the non-recast group in both written and oral
performance following the treatment sessions. Mackey and Philp, who investigated the
development of question formation, reported the similar findings as well. Even though the target
structures varied in these studies, the recasts were solely provided on preselected target structures.
It is possible that targeting one structure would have made that target structure more salient in the
recasts. This, arguably, made the recasts more explicit and resulted in better learning outcomes.
Explicitness of corrective feedback and L2 learning. The result of this study also
revealed that both the Verbal Recast Only and the Recasts + Gesture conditions equally improved
in the use of locative prepositions in the immediate posttests, significantly diverging from the
control group. In other words, regardless of the possible explicitness of the recasts, the learners
exhibited development in the use of locative prepositions.
Although previous studies selected different target structures, this result, that both
experimental groups developed equally, coincides with some studies that examined the
effectiveness of different types of feedback on L2 development (e.g. Loewen & Nabei, 2007;
Yang and Lyster, 2010). Loewen and Nabei investigated the development of question formation
following metalinguistic feedback and recasts. Their findings showed no significant difference
between the two conditions. A part of the results from Yang and Lyster also exhibited a similar
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pattern. In their study, they examined the development of regular and irregular past tense verbs
following treatment sessions that included either recasts or prompts. They found that the
participants equally developed the use of irregular past tense verbs regardless of the conditions.
However, I believe that if the nature of recasts indeed varied by the presence of gestures,
the findings of the aforementioned studies, including those of this study, contradict the results
reported in the meta-analysis. Li (2010) analyzed 33 published feedback studies and examined the
overall effect of implicitness and explicitness of corrective feedback on L2 learning. He found
that explicit feedback, such as metalinguistic feedback, was more effective than implicit feedback,
such as recasts. I believe the discrepancy between the results of this study and that of the metaanalysis may be accounted for by how the communicative tasks were situated in this study. The
communicative tasks were specifically designed to elicit locative prepositions, and the recasts
were provided only when the learners had issues with the target structures. Loewen and Nabei
(2007) also argued the variability of the explicitness of verbal recasts depending on the context of
the interaction. Although the form of the recast used in the Verbal Recast condition may appear
implicit when viewed out of context, it might have functioned more explicitly because no other
feedback was provided with regard to other mistakes. As Loewen and Philp (2006) and Sheen
(2006) mentioned, the more explicit recasts are, the more beneficial they may become. In the
present study, the learners may have been naturally attending to the correct use of prepositions,
thus resulting in better L2 learning. Thus, the characteristics of the tasks and the way recasts were
provided may have resulted in equal development in the use of locative prepositions in the
immediate posttest by the learners in the two experimental conditions.
Different learning outcomes between regular past tense verbs and locative
prepositions. As a response to the research question, I examined learner development in the use
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of two target structures in two experimental conditions. The results revealed that the learners in
both conditions did not exhibit an improvement in the immediate posttest with regard to regular
past tense verbs; however, both equally showed improvement in the use of locative prepositions.
This section explores the reasons different learning patterns may have been observed between the
two target structures. I speculate that there are three possible factors that might have resulted in
better learning outcomes for locative prepositions than for regular past tense verbs: (1) differences
in the learning patterns (item-based learning for the locative prepositions and rule-based learning
for regular past tense verbs), (2) differences in the task characteristics, and (3) different levels of
task engagement.
The first speculation to account for this difference is the learnability of target structures
via corrective feedback. As I mentioned in the previous section, some structures appear to be
more easily learned through corrective feedback than others. Previous studies illustrated that
irregular past tense verbs, comparatives, and prepositions tend to benefit more from corrective
feedback but not regular past tense verbs (Boom, 1998; Ellis, 2007; Yang & Lyser, 2010). Yang
and Lyster reported that recasts were not beneficial in the acquisition of regular past tense verbs
but were for irregular past tense verbs, and that prompts facilitated the acquisition of both
structures. They argued that the difference resulted from the difference in the learning patterns
that involved the two target structures – regular past tense verb acquisition involved rule-based
learning and irregular past tense verb acquisition involved item-based learning Drawing on
Skehan’s model of a dual-model system (1998), Yang and Lyster speculated that learners find
accessing rule-based systems more difficult and that learners were only able to do so following
prompts where they were required to apply rules in actual production. In contrast, irregular past
tense verbs were stored in an exemplar-based system, which does not require internal
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computation, resulting in easier retrieval than regular past tense verbs. This argument seems to
justify the difference in the learning outcomes observed in this study. Locative prepositions may
have been learned as item-based learning, thus resulting in better development in the immediate
posttest. However, regular past tense verbs may have been stored as a rule-based system, not
allowing learners to them access during communicative tasks.
Second, task essentialness, which requires learners to use the target structures during tasks,
needs to be addressed to understand why recasts resulted in the development of the use of locative
prepositions but not regular past tense verbs. During the communicative tasks targeting regular
past tense verbs, recasts were only given to indicate the missing past tense – in other words, the
presence or lack of past tense did not result in communication breakdowns and learners were able
to complete the tasks without using the target structure. On the contrary, the communicative tasks
of locative prepositions required learners to produce the correct preposition among various
options to complete the task. The same form of recasts was used for all the communicative tasks;
however, the differences in the nature of the tasks may have more strongly encouraged the
learners to produce the correct form during the communicative tasks targeting locative
prepositions than those targeting regular past tense verbs. I frequently observed learners
negotiating the meaning of locative prepositions while they were selecting the locations to hide
the diamond, selecting one key from many keys in the room, and preparing the questions for the
other team. For instance, one learner decided to hide the diamond by attaching it on the inside of
the lampshade. She suggested, “Let’s hide the diamond inside the lamp” but it confused the other
learners because some interpreted it as inside the light bulb or some other parts of the floor lamp.
This communication breakdown allowed them to further negotiate the meaning of the
prepositions such as “in the lampshade not inside the light bulb,” “on the lampshade but inside,”
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and so on while gesturing the shape of the lamp and the location of the diamond for clarification.
Extending the difference in the task characteristics, the learners also appeared to have
responded differently during the tasks. This was not the major focus of this research study and
thus it has not been analyzed systematically, but I observed the difference in the level of learner
engagement in the tasks. As mentioned earlier, all the communicative tasks of this study involved
some competitive features. During the first regular past tense verb task, the learners were told to
work in pairs, to describe the assigned pictures, and to identify the correct order of the pictures.
During the second regular past tense verb task, the learners were again asked to describe the
pictures but they were told to find the ‘murderer’ in the class. Overall, the learners appeared to
have participated more actively in the second task than in the first one. In terms of the locative
preposition tasks, the learners were split into two groups, and they were asked to find the diamond
in the first task and then the key in the second task by asking questions to the other group. Again,
the learners seemed to have been greatly engaged in these tasks. In fact, some classrooms showed
strong competitiveness during these tasks, arguing about ‘unfair’ locations the opposing team had
selected, requesting to do the locative preposition tasks one more time, or negotiating the meaning
of prepositions among themselves while preparing questions to ask. These were not observed
systematically, but it is logical to speculate that the different levels of learner engagement in the
tasks may have resulted in different learning outcomes for the two target structures.
Discussion for Research Question 2 (b): Long-term Effect of Recasts with and without
Gestures
The final research question explored the long-term effect of verbal recasts with and
without pedagogical gestures. The delayed posttest scores were compared for the two target
structures. In terms of the grammar test, no significant difference existed between the two
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conditions for either structure due to the learners’ high scores even at the time of the pretest. As
mentioned earlier, the learners had a high level of explicit knowledge at the time of the pretest,
which did not allow for further development.
Long-term effect on acquisition of regular past tense verbs. A difference was not
found between the two experimental conditions in the delayed posttest with regard to regular past
tense verb oral production. Neither condition exhibited significant development in the use of
regular past tense verbs – in fact, they did not differ from the control condition, which did not
receive any feedback. Again, this finding is consistent with Yang and Lyster (2010), in which the
recast condition showed no improvement in the acquisition of regular past tense verbs in either
the immediate or delayed posttests.
Long-term effect on acquisition of locative prepositions. With regard to the use of
locative prepositions, the analysis revealed that both the Verbal Recast and Recasts + Gesture
conditions developed equally from the pretest to the immediate posttest, significantly
outperforming the Control condition. Interestingly, a divergence was observed between the two
experimental conditions in the analysis of their delayed posttest scores. The learners from the
Recasts + Gesture condition retained their development throughout the delayed posttest. However,
the development of the Verbal Recast Only condition diminished after the immediate posttest.
Long-term effect of implicit feedback. The finding that the learners who received an
arguably more explicit form of recast, Recasts + Gesture, outperformed the Verbal Recast Only
condition in the delayed posttest partially coincides with the findings from the meta-analysis that
illustrated the overall better effectiveness of explicit feedback (Li, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007).
The second finding, that learners who received recasts only verbally did not maintain the
development in the delayed posttest contradicts the findings from the meta-analyses (Li, 2010;
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Mackey and Goo, 2007). The researchers in both studies reported that recasts provided a longlasting effect on L2 learning. In this study, however, verbal recasts did not follow this pattern. A
possible speculation is that the recasts used in the previous studies may have naturally
incorporated gestures, resulting in better performance in the delayed posttests. Indeed, Hudson’s
(2010) classroom research showed that language teachers do commonly use gestures while
teaching grammar. However, the non-verbal information was not provided in these previous
studies, thus, it is not possible to confirm this speculation. Not limited to the presence or absence
of gestures, other variables need to be considered with regard to the explicitness of recasts, as
Loewen and Philp (2006) reported. It is not surprising that the recasts in the studies in the
aforementioned meta-analysis incorporated corrective cues, such as intonation and stress, whereas
in this study verbal recasts were provided without such cues to make the data of the experimental
conditions comparable to each other. Overall, to account for the difference between the results of
this study and that of the meta-analyses, the researchers and instructors of the studies may have
used gestures while recasting that might have enhanced the explicitness of recasts, even though
this is not to say that all structures are amenable to gestures. That may have allowed for better
learning outcomes.
Relationship between memory and seeing gestures. In terms of the difference in the longterm effect of the two experimental conditions, this discrepancy may be due to the fact that
looking at gestures may have impacted the learners’ memory retention, as it has been reported in
Allen (1995), Cohen and Otternbein (1992), Feyereisen (1998), and Tellier (2008). Specifically,
Allen’s and Tellier’s studies reported that the teacher’s gestures and students’ action of gesturing
improved memorization of L2 sentences and vocabulary, respectively. Tellier, for instance, taught
French vocabulary to adolescents under two conditions. In one, the adolescents learned the
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vocabulary through flashcards with illustrations of the meanings of words. In the second
condition, they viewed the instructor’s gestures instead of flashcards. She found that the
adolescents in the gesture condition significantly outperformed those in the flashcard condition
with regard to the memorization of target vocabulary. The impact of gesture on memorization was
certainly not the main focus of this study. Yet, the gestures that the learners viewed in the Recasts
+ Gesture condition may have resulted in longer retention of the target structures. Previous studies
indicated that gestures were helpful for the memorization of vocabulary and sentences, which all
follow item-based learning – thus, meaning-bearing locative prepositions may be acquired in a
similar manner as learning new vocabulary.
Studies in the field of psychology compared the difference in memorization using verbal
input and visual input and found that visual input resulted in better memory retention than verbal
input. This might account for the result that the Recasts + Gesture condition outperformed the
Verbal Recast Only condition in the delayed posttest. Cohen, Horowitz, and Wolfe (2009)
examined whether participants were able to recognize new and old items in the form of sound
stimuli and visual stimuli. A total of 100 participants were exposed to a variety of sound clips
from three different categories: complex auditory scenes, isolated auditory objects, and music.
Then, the participants determined whether an item was new or old. After this, they also took part
in an old/new identification task using images instead of sounds. The researchers found that the
participants performed significantly better in the task that involved images than in the task that
involved any sound type. This finding indicates that auditory memory is systematically inferior to
visual memory. Extending the facilitative role of visual input in memorization, some researchers
examined how multimodality promoted learning. Dual Coding Theory proposed by Clark and
Paivio (1991) argues that integrating verbal and non-verbal modalities reinforces learning because
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learners are left with more traces in the memory system after coding the information through
different modalities. In short, in this study, learners in the Recasts + Gesture condition surpassed
those in the Verbal Recast Only condition in the delayed posttest of locative prepositions because
they had processed recasts both aurally and visually. This appears to have helped them better
retain the information of recasts and resulted in better learning outcomes than those who were
only exposed to verbal recasts. Although this is my speculation, I assume that the learners did not
receive the similar benefits with regards to the regular past tense because the gestures used for the
recasts targeting past tense were less meaningful than the ones used for the recasts used for
locative preposition.
Conclusions
This study was designed to examine whether pedagogical gestures used during recasts
enhanced the saliency of recasts and whether they lead to learners’ better noticing and L2 learning
outcomes, specifically with regard to the two target structures, English regular past tense verbs
and locative prepositions. The learners engaged in four communicative tasks targeting the two
target structures and took two types of tests: grammar tests and oral production tests. A subset of
the learners participated in stimulated recall sessions to measure their noticing of the target
structures.
First, I investigated whether the learners noticed the linguistic targets of the recasts when
the verbal recasts involved gestures. The majority of comments from learners concerned task
outcomes, and there were no comments on error correction or linguistic targets. I speculate that
the context of the stimuli used during the stimulated recall session, task characteristics, and
linguistic targets may have affected this outcome. To be specific, the stimuli for the stimulated
recall session were obtained only from the interactions during the communicative tasks, although
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previous studies that used stimulated recall sessions used the whole of regular classroom
interactions as stimuli instead. This might have biased the learners to pay specific attention to task
outcomes. In addition, the tasks used in this study seem to have involved competition, as opposed
to those in other studies. Finally, the linguistic target of this study falls under the category of
morphosyntax, which is less likely to be noticed than other categories, such as vocabulary. These
factors may have resulted in the lack of learner noticing comments.
Interestingly, even without learner comments on noticing, the two experimental conditions
exhibited some development in the acquisition of locative prepositions. Two possible reasons for
this were explored. The first is that learning may have taken place without noticing at the level of
conscious awareness. This argument, however, needs to be interpreted with caution because this
study was not designed to investigate this specific issue. The second speculation was about
methodological issues with stimulated recall, such as conducting stimulated recall in learners’ L2s
despite the learners’ relatively low proficiency. In addition, a high level of awareness appears to
have been needed to verbalize their noticing. Learners may have experienced noticing during the
tasks but did not comment on it during the stimulated recall session because of a relatively low
level of awareness.
The second research question explored whether the presence of gestures affected the shortterm and long-term effectiveness of recasts. Overall, there was no difference in the learners’ level
of explicit knowledge in all the conditions for the two target structures. Their levels were high
prior to the treatment sessions.
In terms of regular past tense verbs, no significant difference existed among the three
conditions. Some linguistic structures, such as regular past tense verbs, appear to be less likely to
be learned from recasts (e.g. Boom, 1998; Ellis, 2007; McDonough, 2007; Yang & Lyster, 2010),
91

and to enhance the effectiveness of the recasts it seems necessary to be in a setting where the
learners can pay better attention (e.g. one-to-one sessions) or to promote the corrective nature of
recasts and provide opportunities for self-correction by using corrective recasts (Doughty &
Varela, 1998) and prompts (Yang & Lyster, 2010).
With regard to locative prepositions, the Verbal Recast Only and Recasts + Gesture
conditions surpassed the Control condition in the immediate posttest. The verbal recasts may have
been effective in this study because the recasts were only provided for the target structures. Other
studies that reported the benefits of recasts also had specific target structures of focus (e.g. Han,
2002), and therefore the explicitness of the recasts might have contributed to their effectiveness.
The equal development of the two conditions in the production of locative prepositions in
the immediate posttest coincides with previous studies that addressed the lack of difference in
learning outcomes between the feedback types (e.g. Loewen & Nabei, 2007), although the metaanalysis showed the stronger effectiveness of explicit feedback (Li, 2010). In this study, the
possible explicitness of the Verbal Recast Only condition seems to have been influenced by the
occasions of recasts, that is, the recasts were provided only for the target structures, and this may
have made the recasts of the Verbal Recast Only condition as explicit as those in the Recasts +
Gesture condition.
With reference to the difference in the development of the two target structures, the
difference in the learning pattern and the task characteristics may have resulted from the
difference in the learning pattern. Regular past tense verbs follow rule-based learning, which
makes items less easily retrievable online than locative prepositions, which follow item-based
learning. In addition, the learners appeared to have been more engaged in the tasks that targeted
locative prepositions. These factors may have resulted in better learning of locative prepositions
92

than regular past tense verbs.
Finally, the research question explored the long-term effect of recasts with and without
gestures. Again, no difference was found between the two experimental conditions and the control
condition in the production of regular past tense verbs. However, as to the production of locative
prepositions, the learner from the Recasts + Gesture condition retained their improvement in the
delayed posttest, while the development of the Verbal Recast Only condition that was observed in
the immediate posttest diminished by the time of the delayed posttest. Meta-analyses have showm
that explicit feedback tends to function better than implicit feedback on immediate posttests and
short-delayed posttests (Li, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007). If recasts accompanied by gestures were
indeed more explicit than verbal recasts, this result follows the same pattern. To account for the
stronger effectiveness of the Recasts + Gesture condition, the impact of seeing gestures on
memory and the lack of semantic labor during processing were considered. Tellier (2008) and
Allen (1995) found that seeing gestures during vocabulary or expression lessons helped with the
memorization of target words and phrases. It was also found that the part of the brain that is
responsible for processing languages had less labor because another part of the brain that was
triggered by seeing actions was also activated when seeing co-speech gestures. Thus, the learners
who saw the gestures could have had more cognitive capacity when they saw recasts accompanied
by gestures and thus had better retention of the contents of the feedback than those who did not.
Implications
This study examined whether incorporating gestures during recasts promoted learner
noticing and their learning outcomes. Extensive research of classroom interaction, notably that of
corrective feedback, has been conducted in the field of SLA, but the majority of the studies have
relied only on verbal data for their analyses. The results of this study indicated that recasts
93

accompanied by gestures resulted in a long-term learning effect on some grammatical features. I
propose that interaction studies need to take the impact of nonverbal features into consideration
for more in-depth analysis.
Second, the findings from this study imply that recasts, especially when used with
pedagogical gestures, can be helpful for teaching spatial relationships, such as prepositions.
Previous studies analyzed the efficacy of corrective feedback in relation to linguistic structures
(e.g. grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and semantic structures). While such categorization of
linguistic targets brought insights for seeing what can be learned more effectively from corrective
feedback, I suggest that a finer analysis within the categories of “grammar” or “morphosyntax” is
needed for more extensive analyses.
Pedagogically, the findings from this study suggest that gestures have the potential for
enhancing the long-term effectiveness of recasts on some linguistic structures. One aspect focused
on in teacher preparatory programs is how to provide corrective feedback in language classrooms.
Training on provision of feedback may need to include the topic of the effective use of gestures. I
also recommend that language teachers use consistent gestures in their classrooms because
learners will be able to determine the meaning of gestures easily. If the meanings of gestures are
transparent to learners, I believe that the use of such gestures will promote learner attention and
noticing of target structures.
Limitations
The present study showed how learners were able to benefit from recasts when gestures
were incorporated, especially when teaching locative prepositions. However, that does not mean
that this study was perfectly executed.
The first concerns issues with the use of stimulated recall sessions because of the low
94

proficiency level of learners, which might have limited their comments in their L2s. Although
reactivity might be an issue, conducting an interview with the participants specifically addressing
their perception of recasts may allow learners to highlight their thoughts on error correction. In
addition, although this is rather anecdotal, I observed that some students repeated the gestures
used in recasts for both structures, which seems to happen frequently in language classrooms (e.g.
Smotrova & Lantolf, 2013). This was not analyzed systematically; however, this may indicate
that the learners did notice the corrective nature of feedback and the target structures during
interactions, even though they did not address this during stimulated recall sessions. If so, a lack
of comments during stimulated recall sessions may not represent a complete lack of noticing.
Echoing Goo and Mackey (2013) who recommended incorporating triangulated approaches to the
feedback research, I suggest that researchers combine multiple noticing measurements, stimulated
recall sessions, and online measurement as Philp (2003) to fully capture learner noticing.
Furthermore, since I conducted the current project as an intervention study, qualitative analysis,
such as discourse analysis, was not included. Further qualitative analysis of learner-instructor
interactions, such as the verbal and gestural uptake of learners, may serve as an additional method
to assess learner noticing.
The second is about recasts, which were only provided for the target structures. The
communicative tasks were designed to elicit the target structures, and the recasts were provided
only when the learners made mistakes with them. There were other linguistic errors that occurred
during the interactions; however, they were not corrected. Providing recasts only to the specific
structures may have enhanced the explicitness of the recasts more than those recasts used in
language classrooms, in which, assumedly, the recasts would target various structures. For better
ecological validity, corrective feedback should be given that is not limited to the target structures.
95

The third concerns the difference in the task characteristics created for the two target
structures because it may have impacted the results of this study. During the regular past tense
verb tasks, the learners were recasted to use regular past tense verbs for correct utterances;
however, the lack of use of regular past tense verbs did not necessarily cause any communication
breakdown because all the events narrated in the tasks took place in the ‘past’ time frame. On the
other hand, the learners had to choose the correct prepositions to complete the locative preposition
tasks. The learners might have exhibited better improvement in the production of regular past
tense verbs, had they been required to choose the correct tense among many to compete the task.
The fourth concerns the lack of a long-delayed posttest. The time frame used for delayed
posttests varies greatly depending on the studies. In this study, the delayed posttest was
administered 7 to 9 days after the completion of the treatment sessions. However, as mentioned in
Li (2010), the timing of the delayed posttest appears to affect the assessment of learning outcomes.
Because of logistic difficulties, this study only included one delayed posttest, but the
administering of an additional delayed posttest after a month may have provided more
information on the long-term effectiveness of feedback.
Finally, learners’ perception of gestures was not assessed in this study. In this study, I did
not assess whether the learners knew the intended meaning of pedagogical gestures. Because of
the diverse backgrounds of the learners, some learners may have interpreted the meanings of
gestures differently from what was intended. If a longitudinal study will be conducted,
introducing the meaning of the gestures and using the relevant gestures constantly during class
would be an ideal way to avoid this issue.
Future Directions and Implications
This study examined the development of learners in the acquisition of regular past tense
96

verbs and locative prepositions. It was found that recasts, when used along with gestures, were
helpful when teaching locative prepositions but not when teaching regular past tense verbs. Along
with Yang and Lyster (2010), I speculated that this may have been due to the different learning
patterns, item-based learning for locative prepositions and rule-based learning for regular past
tense verbs. However, the conclusion that the effectiveness of recasts relates to the learning
patterns used is based on a limited number of studies. More intervention studies involving various
linguistic targets are needed to see what linguistic elements benefit from recasts with or without
gestures and to examine whether the learning system is a crucial factor.
This study indicated that pedagogical gestures when used along with recasts were helpful
for learning some grammar structures. Previous interaction studies illustrated that the targets of
corrective feedback are not limited to grammatical structures; they also targeted vocabulary and
pronunciation. In addition, observational studies reported that gestures were used for teaching
pronunciation in language classrooms (e.g. Hudson, 2011; Tellier, 2006). Therefore, conducting
an intervention gestural study in the Interactionist framework with regard to the acquisition of
pronunciation would be worthwhile to fully understand the interactive effect of gestures and
corrective feedback in other linguistic domains.
Another aspect that needs further attention is the impact of individual and contextual
differences. In the present study, due to the level of the selected target structures, all the
participants were selected from a low-intermediate classroom from an ESL institution in the U.S.
However, other variables such as the level of proficiency of learners and their cultural
backgrounds may impact L2 learning. For instance, exploring the impact of levels of proficiency
and their attention to gestures during corrective feedback is worthwhile. Learners from different
cultures may look at different body parts of their instructors (e.g. making an eye contact or not).
97

Examining if learners from specific cultural background benefit more than others with regard to
their comprehension of gestures and the learnability of the meaning of classroom gestures will be
informative. These empirical questions need to be answered by conducting more empirical studies
on gesture and L2 learning.
Pedagogically, the findings of this study suggest the importance of incorporating
pedagogical gestures while providing recasts, especially when the target of the feedback follows
item-based learning. However, prior to such implementation, systematic analysis of pedagogical
gestures used in a language classroom is necessary. Then, during teacher preparatory courses,
prospective language teachers are informed about corrective feedback, however only in the verbal
modality. Researchers in the field of SLA, along with language teachers, must explore teaching
from a multi-modal perspective to further explore effective language teaching.

98

APPENDICES

99

APPENDIX A: Background Questionnaire
Name ______________________________
Level _____________ Section___________
Gender

Male / Female

Age ______ years old
First Language ___________________
Country of Origin _________________________
Q1. How long have you been studying English? __________ year(s) __________ month(s)
Q2. How old were you when you came to the U.S.? __________ years od.
Q3. Have you lived in the U.S. or other English speaking countries before attending the English
Language Center?

Yes / No

Q3 a. If yes, how long?
Country

Age

Length (years)

School/Institution

Length (years)

Q4. Where have you studied English so far?
Country

Q5. What other languages do you speak? ____________________________________________
Q6. How long have you been studying at the English Language Center?
________ year(s) _______ month

100

APPENDIX B: Preposition Oral Production Test A

Slide 1

Slide 2

Do not touch the computer

Practice Session

Slide 3

Slide 4

Please find a coffee pot.

Question 1

Figure 18
Preposition oral production test A

101

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 5

Slide 6

Where is the coffee pot?

Slide 7

Slide 8

Please find the water bottles.

Practice 2

Slide 9

Slide 10

How many water bottles do you
see?

102

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 11

Slide 12

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

Question 1

Slide 13

Slide 14

Please find the newspaper.

Where is the newspaper?

Slide 15

Slide 16

Question 2

103

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 17

Slide 18

Please find the bears.

How many bears do you see?

Slide 19

Slide 20

Question 3

Slide 23

Slide 24

Question 4

104

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 25

Slide 26

Please find the photo frame.

Where is the photo frame?

Slide 27

Slide 28

Question 5

Slide 29

Slide 30

Please find the fruit basket.

What fruits do you see?

105

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 31

Slide 32

Question 6

Slide 33

Slide 34

Please find the cat.

Where is the cat?

Slide 35

Slide 36

Question 7

106

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 37

Slide 38

Please find the coffee pot.

Where is the coffee pot?

Slide 39

Slide 40

Question 8

Slide 41

Slide 42

Please find the clock.

What time is it?

107

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 43

Slide 44

Question 9

Slide 45

Slide 46

Please find the flowers.

Where are the flowers?

Slide 47

Slide 48

Question 10

108

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 49

Slide 50

Please find the packages.

How many packages do you see?

Slide 51

Slide 52

Question 11

Slide 53

Slide 54

Please find the shoes.

Where are the shoes?

109

Figure 18 (Cont’d)
Slide 55

Slide 56

Question 12

Slide 57

Slide 58

Please find the bag.

Where is the bag?

Slide 59

Slide 60

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

110

APPENDIX C: Preposition Oral Production Test B

Slide 1

Slide 2

Do not touch the computer

Practice Session

Slide 3

Slide 4

Please find the books.

Question 1

Figure 19
Preposition oral production test B

111

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 5

Slide 6

How many books do you see?

Slide 7

Slide 8

Please find the guitar.

Practice 2

Slide 9

Slide 10

Where is the guitar?

112

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 11

Slide 12

Click space bar to continue.

Question 1

Slide 13

Slide 14

Please find the bird.

Where is the bird?

Slide 15

Slide 16

Question 2

113

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 17

Slide 18

Please find the poster.

What is the title of the movie?

Slide 19

Slide 20

Question 3

Slide 21

Slide 22

Please find the flowers.

Where are the flowers?

114

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 23

Slide 24

Question 4

Slide 25

Slide 26

Please find the shoes.

Where are the shoes?

Slide 27

Slide 28

Question 5

115

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 29

Slide 30

Please find the jacket.

What color is the jacket?

Slide 31

Slide 32

Question 6

Slide 33

Slide 34

Please find the guitar.

Where is the guitar?

116

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 35

Slide 36

Question 7

Slide 37

Slide 38

Please find the calendar.

Which month is it?

Slide 39

Slide 40

Question 8

117

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 41

Slide 42

Please find the bag.

Where is the bag?

Slide 43

Slide 44

Question 9

Slide 45

Slide 46

Please find books.

Where are the books?

118

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 47

Slide 48

Question 10

Slide 49

Slide 50

Please find the keys.

How many keys do you see?

Slide 51

Slide 52

Question 11

119

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 53

Slide 54

Please find the clock.

Where is the clock?

Slide 55

Slide 56

Question 12

Slide 57

Slide 58

Please find the bottle.

Where is the bottle?

120

Figure 19 (Cont’d)
Slide 59

Slide 60

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

121

APPENDIX D: Preposition Oral Production Test C
Slide 1

Slide 2

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

Practice Session

Slide 3

Slide 4

Please find the tennis rackets.

Question 1

Slide 5

Slide 6

How many tennis rackets do you
see?

Figure 20
Preposition oral production test C
122

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 7

Slide 8

Please find the books.

Practice 2

Slide 9

Slide 10

Where are the books?

Slide 11

Slide 12

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

Question 1

123

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 13

Slide 14

Please find the butterfly.

Where is the butterfly?

Slide 15

Slide 16

Question 2

Slide 17

Slide 18

Please find the cake.

How many strawberries do you
see?

124

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 19

Slide 20

Question 3

Slide 21

Slide 22

Please find the tennis racket.

Where is the tennis racket?

Slide 23

Slide 24

Question 4

125

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 25

Slide 26

Please find the plant.

Where is the plant?

Slide 27

Slide 28

Question 5

Slide 29

Slide 30

Please find the flowers.

What color are the flowers?

126

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 31

Slide 32

Question 6

Slide 33

Slide 34

Please find the books.

Where are the books?

Slide 35

Slide 36

Question 7

127

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 37

Slide 38

Please find the birds.

How many birds do you see?

Slide 39

Slide 40

Question 8

Slide 41

Slide 42

Please find the coffee cup.

Where is the coffee cup?

128

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 43

Slide 44

Question 9

Slide 45

Slide 46

Please find the cat.

Where is the cat?

Slide 47

Slide 48

Question 10

129

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 49

Slide 50

Please find the clock.

What time is it?

Slide 51

Slide 52

Question 11

Slide 53

Slide 54

Please find the newspaper.

Where is the newspaper?

130

Figure 20 (Cont’d)
Slide 55

Slide 56

Question 12

Slide 57

Slide 58

Please find the mouse.

Where is the mouse?

Slide 59

Slide 60

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

131

APPENDIX E: Past Tense Oral Production Test A
Slide 1

Do not touch the computer.
Please wait.

Figure 21
Past Tense oral production test A

132

Figure 21 (Cont’d)
Slide 2

This is what Jim did last Sunday.
Please look at the pictures.

133

Figure 21 (Cont’d)
Slide 3

Please tell what Jim did last Saturday.

134

Figure 21 (Cont’d)
Slide 4

END

135

APPENDIX F: Past Tense Oral Production Test B

Slide 1

Do not touch the computer.
Please wait.

Figure 22
Past tense oral production test B

136

Figure 22 (Cont’d)
Slide 2

This is what Sara did last Saturday.
Please look at the pictures.

137

Figure 22 (Cont’d)
Slide 3

Please tell what she did last Saturday

138

Figure 22 (Cont’d)
Slide 4

END

139

APPENDIX G: Past Tense Oral Production Test C

Slide 1

Please wait.
Do not touch your computer.

Figure 23
Past tense oral production test C

140

Figure 23 (Cont’d)
Slide 2

This is what Julia did last Friday.
Please look at the pictures.

141

Figure 23 (Cont’d)
Slide 3

Please tell what Julia did last Friday.

142

Figure 23 (Cont’d)
Slide 4

END

143

APPENDIX H: Past Tense Grammar Test A

Directions: Read the sentences. If the sentence is correct, circle CORRECT. If not, choose
INCORRECT, and correct the sentences.
1. I went swimming before class tomorrow.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

2. Jessica visited Egypt two years ago.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

3. Three years ago, Mark will live in Washington D.C.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

4. Last spring, Susan paints the wall orange.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

5. Next summer Jose had returned to Venezuela.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

6. Dominic played the guitar until very late last night.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

7. Two years ago, Michael opens a coffee shop in East Lansing.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

8. Julia cooks Indian food last Friday.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

9. In two weeks, Calvin will become a high school student.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

10. Last year, Erica joined the discussion group.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

11. Sara watches a 6-hour Italian movie with her friend last week.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

12. Last spring break, Josh learns how to play golf.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

13. Richard is not here. He has taught in Singapore right now.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

14. Amy talked to her sister for 2 hours last night.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

15. Jennifer talks with her husband about spring vacation three days ago.

144

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
16. Last night, Luke kisses Pamela before she went home.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

17. Next summer, Kim is going to take a cooking course in Paris.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

18. In 1930, my grandmother met my grandfather for the first time in New York City.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
19. My friends and I plan my friend’s wedding last month.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

20. Matthew watches the fireworks with his family yesterday around 10 pm.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

145

APPENDIX I: Past Tense Grammar Test B

Directions: Read the sentences. If the sentence is correct, circle CORRECT. If not, choose
INCORRECT, and correct the sentences.
1. Erica likes to go shopping with her friends on Sundays.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
2. Jessica started her piano lessons when she was three.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

3. Last year, Mark visits Guggenheim Museum in New York.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
4. Yesterday, Susan cooks Italian food for her friends.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

5. Next month, I goes to Chicago with my family.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

6. Dominic walked by the river early yesterday morning.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

7. Last year, Michael receives a laptop on his birthday.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

8. Julia plants some tulips two months ago.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

9. In two weeks, Calvin will move to Boston.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

10. Last year, Erica arrived in Lansing.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

11. Two weeks ago, Sara cleans her house with her husband.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

12. Last summer, Josh bakes 100 cupcakes.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

13. Richard said, “I do not like cold drinks.”

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

14. Amy called her sister at 10 pm yesterday.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

15. Jennifer plays tennis with her husband last night at MSU.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

16. Last night, Luke paints his son’s room blue.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

17. After graduation, Mr. Kim wants to teach English in Korea.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

146

18. Jim washed his dog with his children yesterday afternoon because the dog was dirty.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
19. Three days ago, my friends and I plan our next trip.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

20. Last Monday, Matthew creates a piece of art with his wife.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

147

APPENDIX J: Past Tense Grammar Test C

Directions: Read the sentences. If the sentence is correct, circle CORRECT. If not, choose
INCORRECT, and correct the sentences.
1. Erica tried to make a wedding cake for her sister.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

2. Jessica waited for her friend for three hours yesterday.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

3. Last year, Mark proposes to Alexis at a beautiful restaurant in Michigan.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
4. Yesterday, Susan learns how to make croissants.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

5. Next month, I travels to Washington D.C. with my parents.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
6. Dominic cleaned his room very late yesterday.
7. Last month, Michael listens to Spanish music.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

8. Julia talks to her Indian friend for many hours yesterday.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
9. In five years, Calvin will become the CEO of his father’s company.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
10. Yesterday, Erica danced with his friends until midnight.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

11. Two years ago, Sara travels to Central America.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

12. Last Monday, Josh watched a musical with his son.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

13. Richard thinks that his students are not do well.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

14. Amy looked for her kitten everywhere in her house last night.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
148

15. Jennifer’s husband cook Italian food for her last night.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

16. Yesterday afternoon, Luke walked around Lake Lansing with his son.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
17. My dog always ask me to take him out for a walk.

(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

18. Jim checked his mailbox and he saw a letter from his sister.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
19. Three years ago, my friend opens a restaurant near MSU.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)
20. Bill decides to come to the U.S. to study five years ago.
(CORRECT / INCORRECT)

149

APPENDIX K: Preposition Grammar Test A

Directions: Read the sentences. If the sentence matches the picture, circle TRUE. If not, choose
FALSE, and correct the sentence so that it matches the picture.
Example:
The cat is listening to the music.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
The cat is talking on the phone.

1. The cat is on the table.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

Figure 24
Preposition grammar test A

150

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
2. The cat is sleeping.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

3. The cat is in the suitcase.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

4. The mouse likes the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

151

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
5. The cat is above the chair.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

6. The cat is next to the TV.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
7. The cat is on the bed.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

152

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
8. The key is under the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

9. The cat wants to eat the fish.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
10. The cat is in the bag.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

153

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
11. The cat is swimming under the fish.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
12. The cat is under the sofa.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
13. The cat is under the bathroom.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
14. The cat is waiting for his food.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

154

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
15. The baby is next to the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

16. The cat is sitting under the pillow.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

17. The cat is waiting for the bus.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

155

Figure 24 (Cont’d)
18. The clock is above the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

19. The cat is on the computer.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
20. The books are under the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
___________________________________________
___________________________________________

156

APPENDIX L: Preposition Grammar Test B

Directions: Read the sentences. If the sentence matches the picture, circle TRUE. If not, choose
FALSE, and correct the sentence so that it matches the picture.
Example:
The cat is listening to the music.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
The cat is talking on the phone.

1. The cat is above the ducks.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

Figure 25
Preposition grammar test B

157

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
2. The cat is on the piano.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

3. The cat is happy.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
4. The bird is in the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

158

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
5. The cat is under the table.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
6. The cat is above the refrigerator.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

7. The cat is next to the bookshelf.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

159

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
8. The cat wants hot coffee.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
9. The cat is under the mouse.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

10. The cat is on the fish bowl.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

11. The cat is under the chair.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
160

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
12. The cat does not like cake.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
13. The cat is on the boat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

14. The cat is under the mug.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

15. The cat is next to the desk.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
161

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
16. The cat is next to the dog.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
17. The cat is on the basket.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
18. The cat is feeling sad.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

19. The calendar is next to the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

162

Figure 25 (Cont’d)
20. The cat is listening to music.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

163

APPENDIX M: Preposition Grammar Test C

Directions: Read the sentences. If the meaning of the sentences matches the picture, circle TRUE.
If not, choose FALSE, and correct the sentences so to match the picture.
Example:
The cat is listening to the music.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
The cat is talking on the phone.

1. The cat does not like a rainy day.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

Figure 26
Preposition grammar test C

164

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
2. The cat is above the phone.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

3. The cat is under the window.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
4. The cat is in the suitcase.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
5. The cat is jumping.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
165

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
6. The cat is above the swimming pool.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

7. The cat is in the tree.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

8. The cat is above the mouse.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
9. The cat is in the flower vase.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
166

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
10. The cat is reading a newspaper.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

11. The cat is next to the mouse.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
12. The cat is on the car.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

167

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
13. The monkey is in the cat.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

14. The cat is hungry.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
15. The cat is under the bathtub.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

168

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
16. The cat is next to the squirrel.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
17. The cat is next to the house.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

18. The cat is traveling
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
19. The cat is in the kitchen.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

169

Figure 26 (Cont’d)
20. The cat is next to the bird.
TRUE / FALSE
If false, write a correct sentence:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

170

APPENDIX N: Regular Past Tense Communicative Task A

Figure 27
Regular past tense communicative task A
171

APPENDIX O: Regular Past Tense Communicative Task B
Jack

Mike

Jack
Mike
Sally

Julia

Julia

Sally

Sheri

Cathy

Cathy

Sheri

Figure 28
Regular past tense communicative task B
172

Figure 28 (Cont’d)
Ben

Mark

Mark

Ben

Josie

Claire

Claire
Josie

Betsy

Natalie

Natalie

Betsy

173

Figure 28 (Cont’d)
Anna

Joe

Anna

Joe

Justin

Scott

Justin

Scott
Kate

Jonathan
You killed Jessica!
Make up an allibi!

Kate

174

APPENDIX P: Preposition Communicative Task A

Figure 29
Preposition communicative task A

175

APPENDIX Q: Preposition Communicative Task B

Figure 30
Preposition communicative task B

176

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177

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