An ESL Teacher's Perspective on Recasts: A Qualitative Exploration of "When" and "How"?

Recasts, which are defined as implicit types of corrective feedback, have been the focus of numerous SLA researchers for more than a decade. A range of classroom-based observational and experimental research studies have explored how and when language teachers provide recasts to learners' ill-formed utterances and aimed to understand the role of recasts in language acquisition or learning. On the basis of previous studies on recasts, our study investigated when an ESL teacher provided recasts and how recasts were provided in his class. The research questions were as follows: (1) When does an ESL teacher provide recasts? (2) How does the teacher provide recasts? The data came from observations of one ESL classroom as well as consecutive-semi structured interviews with the teacher. The data analysis included transcriptions of teacher-student interactions in the target setting and categories of recasts according to the linguistic phenomena, which prompted recasting. Based on the findings, practical suggestions for ESL teachers were provided. [156 words].