| dc.description.abstract | Questions surrounding the impact of feedback in response to learner error are
of interest in the fields of both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Intelligent
Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL). Current empirical SLA research
seeks to ascertain what feedback types have a statistically significant positive
impact on the process of acquiring a second language. Similarly, research
in ICALL focuses on testing Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems (ILTSs) generally
as well as the effectiveness of the feedback that they deliver. Despite this
common interest in feedback, to date there has been no significant interdisciplinary
research involving the two fields.
The experiment reported here seeks to bridge this gap. Using a purpose-built
ILTS, we tested the effect of two types of feedback on the acquisition of French
past tense aspect among anglophone learners. Inspired by previous work in SLA,
Explicit Inductive (EI) and Input Processing (IP) feedback were tested against a
control group using a pre test/post test design. The learners completed a transformation
and a grammaticality judgment task. For the transformation, they
were presented with texts in the present tense and asked to re-write them in the
past tense. For the grammaticality judgment, they had to rank the grammaticality
of each sentence in a set of texts. In response to errors, EI feedback interpreted
the aspectual meaning of the learners' answer and explicitly told them that it
was not the most natural according to the context. In order to encourage formmeaning
mapping, IP feedback asked the learners to match their erroneous answer
to its interpretation. Two interpretations were presented: one was the target
interpretation and the other matched the learner's answer. Having made their
choice, they were then told whether it was correct as well as which interpretation
was in fact target-like.
The quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of the EI and IP feedback was
not statistically significant. We argued that this was due to a combined effect of
learner level, target structure and feedback. | en |
