Recasts
You corrected the error. Did the learner notice?
A recast is a teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a learner’s utterance without the error, often given while the conversation stays focused on meaning.
Lan says, Yesterday I go to Hội An, and the teacher replies, Oh, you went to Hội An? Lovely! The error is fixed, but did Lan notice?
That reply is a recast: all or part of the learner’s sentence said back without the error. Michael Long’s interaction research helped make recasts central in SLA. In French immersion classrooms in Canada, Roy Lyster and Leila Ranta (1997) sorted teachers’ corrective moves into six types. Recasts made up over half of all feedback, yet rarely led learners to fix errors themselves, as measured by uptake, the learner’s immediate response. Four types that left learners to find the form did better: elicitation, metalinguistic clues, clarification requests and repetition.
Lyster (1998) showed that recasts served the same functions as teachers’ repetitions of correct utterances and came with praise just as often, so learners could easily hear them as agreement, not correction. Long argued the opposite case: because the learner already knows what they meant, their attention is free to notice how the teacher’s version differs. Alison Mackey and Jenefer Philp (1998) found gains from intensive recasts for learners who were developmentally ready, even when they did not repeat them, making uptake an imperfect measure of learning.
YoungHee Sheen (2004) found more uptake after recasts in Korean EFL and New Zealand ESL classes than in Canadian ones, and linked this to more noticeable, often partial recasts and to learners oriented to form. Meta-analyses agree that feedback helps but differ in emphasis: Lyster and Saito (2010) found larger classroom effects for prompts than for recasts, while Li (2010) found that implicit feedback’s effects were better maintained over time. Much depends on how noticeable a recast is.
In actionA full recast and a noticeable one
- S1
- Yesterday I go to Hội An with my family.
- T
- Oh, you went to Hội An? Lovely! What did you see?
- S1
- Yes, lovely. We see the lanterns.
- T
- We… saw?
- S1
- Ah, we saw the lanterns.
The first recast is embedded in praise and a new question, so the learner hears agreement. The second, partial and stressed, makes the focus on form clear and gets repair.
In the classroom
- 1
When accuracy matters, make recasts noticeable: reformulate only the faulty part, stress it or use rising intonation, then pause so the learner can respond.
- 2
Mix recasts with prompts such as elicitation (Yesterday I…?) or a metalinguistic clue (Past tense?), so learners do some of the repair themselves.
- 3
Before a fluency task, agree with learners which one or two forms you will recast, so they listen for the form as well as the approval.
Myth and reality
Recasts are the ideal correction because they fix errors without interrupting communication.
Recasts keep talk flowing, but learners may hear them as agreement rather than correction. Their effect depends on how noticeable they are, learner readiness and context, and one classroom meta-analysis found larger gains for prompts.
Reflect
When you reformulate a learner’s error mid-conversation, what evidence do you have that they heard it as a correction at all?
Worth a minute before your next lesson, or a conversation in the staffroom.
SourcesChecked against Crossref and library records
The term comes from child-language research, where Nelson, Carskaddon and Bonvillian (1973) showed that adults’ recasts of children’s sentences aided syntax development. In SLA, Long’s interaction research made them a central topic; Lyster and Ranta (1997) gave the definition most classroom studies use.
Nelson, K. E., Carskaddon, G., & Bonvillian, J. D. (1973). Syntax acquisition: Impact of experimental variation in adult verbal interaction with the child. Child Development, 44(3), 497–504.
Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form in communicative classrooms. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 37–66.
The six-way feedback taxonomy and the uptake model that much later classroom feedback research has adopted.
Lyster, R. (1998). Recasts, repetition, and ambiguity in L2 classroom discourse. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(1), 51–81.
Why recasts are easily missed: in meaning-focused lessons they look just like the teacher’s ordinary approving repetitions.
Sheen, Y. (2004). Corrective feedback and learner uptake in communicative classrooms across instructional settings. Language Teaching Research, 8(3), 263–300.
Compares four settings, including Korean EFL, and shows that context and noticeability shape how learners respond to recasts.
Lyster, R., & Saito, K. (2010). Oral feedback in classroom SLA: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), 265–302.
Pools 15 classroom studies: feedback has durable effects, prompts outperform recasts, and younger learners benefit more.
Goo, J., & Mackey, A. (2013). The case against the case against recasts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35(1), 127–165.
The counter-argument: methodological problems in studies that find recasts weaker than other feedback types.
ConnectionsSee it in the graph
- The Interaction Hypothesisnot yet writtenLong’s framework treats recasts as implicit negative feedback that arises in interaction.
- The Noticing HypothesisA recast can only help if the learner notices the gap between forms.
- Uptakenot yet writtenLyster and Ranta’s measure of how learners respond to a recast or other feedback.
- IRF / IRE SequenceRecasts often fill the third turn, where they blend with evaluation.
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