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The Effect of Recast on Students’ Speaking Skill Based on  
Their Learning Strategies 

 
Adhi Nurhartanto 

Lampung University 
radhyo16@gmail.com 

 
 
Abstract 

Many studies have been conducted to find the effect of recast as a feedback on 
students.  Some studies have also revealed that recast is found to be less effective.  
This study is aimed to find the effect of recast to students with different learning 
strategies in an EFL context in Indonesia.  The study is conducted using quasi-
experimental design.  The research instruments include LLSQ questionnaire and 
speaking test.  The results reveal that recast may be effective for students with 
certain dominance of learning strategies. 

 
Keywords: recast, speaking skills, learning strategies 

 
 

A. INTRODUCTION 
Generally, it is agreed that one 

of the teacher’s role is giving 
corrective feedback to the students’ 
exercises.  This area has been 
observed by Lyster and Ranta (1997), 
Ellis, Loewen, and Erlam (2006), 
Mackey (2006), and Goo and Mackey 
(2013).  These researches have 
conducted researches which elaborate 
the use of corrective feedback and its 
effectiveness in laboratory and 
classroom studies.  Studies on 
corrective feedback show that the 
results of corrective feedback are 
positive to students’ language 
production.  These studies have 
mentioned that corrective feedback is 
important and contributes to second 
language acquisition.   

A study recommends that 
corrective feedback is useful is shown 
by Lyster and Ranta (1997).  Their 
study examines six types of oral 
corrective feedback, namely: recasts, 
elicitation, clarification requests, 
metalinguistic feedback, explicit 
correction and elicitation.  Lyster and 
Ranta’s (1997) study mentions that 
even though recasts appeared to be 

the most common error correction 
used by teachers, it is found to be 
ineffective since only 30% of the 
recasts are followed by the uptake by 
the students while the other 70% goes 
unnoticed.  Lyster and Ranta (1997) 
defines uptake as ‘student’s utterance 
that immediately follows the teacher’s 
feedback and that constitutes a 
reaction in some way to the teacher’s 
intention to draw attention to some 
aspect of the student’s initial 
utterance.  In most studies, the use 
and usability of corrective feedback is 
based on the uptake, in terms of the 
learners’ immediate response to the 
feedback but the validity of immediate 
uptake as an indication of acquisition 
in a long term is questionable. 

The finding mentions that 
recasts are mostly used by teachers to 
correct students’ error but found to be 
less-effective.  Since then more 
researchers make comparative study 
of recasts with other types of 
corrective feedback.  The results are 
mostly similar to mention that recasts 
are less effective compared to other 
types of feedback but still more 
effective than those without any 



The Effect of Recast on Students’ skill ... 

92 
 

treatments (Ellis, et.al, 2006; Ellis, 
2007).  However, the studies have 
proven that the use of corrective 
feedback is important to accelerate 
students’ language acquisition. 

Corrective feedback is claimed 
by Schmidt (1994) as the importance 
of noticing and noticing the gap in L2 
acquisition.  Schmidt’s definition of 
corrective feedback seems to give a 
direction of the claim of why error 
correction goes unnoticed.  Krashen’s 
(1983) Affective Filter Hypothesis 
which points out that error correction 
has the immediate effect of putting the 
students on the defensive and 
therefore, harmful for language 
acquisition.  This theory has since 
made the use of direct correction is 
limited.  Teachers hesitate to give 
direct correction and it is resulted in 
the fossilization of the errors made.  
Questions related to giving correction 
are still remained.  Hendrickson 
(1978) formulate the questions on 
error correction as when should 
learner’s error be corrected?, which 
errors should be corrected?, how 
should errors be corrected?, and who 
should do the correction?.  Krashen’s 
theory seems to put learners in 
unlimited time and let them speak 
when they feel ready, when the 
language is learned or acquired.   

Since then, the studies which 
compare recasts with other types of 
corrective feedback have been done 
which mostly compare between 
recasts with other type of feedback.  
In their research in low-intermediate 
of second language class, Ellis, 
Loewen, and Erlam (2006) apply 
recasts as implicit feedback and 
metalinguistic explanation as explicit 
feedback in correcting students’ errors 
in regular past tense. Their research 
concludes that explicit feedback in the 
form of metalinguistic information is 
more superior than the implicit 
feedback in the form of recasts in oral 

imitation test, grammaticality 
judgment test, and metalinguistic 
knowledge test in delayed posttest. 

In other research, Mackey 
(2006) discusses feedback in the form 
of instructed second language 
learning which inserts feedback in a 
game-show quiz activity involving 
questions, plurals, and past tense 
forms.  Mackey mentions that the 
purpose of the study is to determine 
whether the interactional feedback is 
associated with learners’ reports 
about noticing.  The study concludes 
that there may be association between 
noticing and learning. 

Other study from Sheen (2008) 
investigates the level of language 
anxiety related to learners’ ability in 
improving the accuracy when the 
learners are provided with corrective 
feedback in the form of recasts.  The 
result shows that the low anxiety 
group which is treated by recasts as 
the corrective feedback scores 
significantly higher than high-anxiety-
recast- group and the control group.  
The finding shows that language 
anxiety is a factor that influence not 
only whether recasts lead to modified 
output but also whether they promote 
learning.   

In their library study, Goo and 
Mackey (2013) mentions that 
comparing recasts with other types of 
corrective feedback seems to be 
standing in shaky foundation for some 
reasons because recasts are 
operationalized as single type while 
the others often used in multiple 
types.  Moreover, they argued that 
recasts and prompts-like clarification 
requests, metalingusitic feedback, and 
elicitations- are not to be compared 
and may work synergistically to effect 
positive changes in L2 development 
(Goo and Mackey, 2013).  The type of 
recasts, such as 
S : To her is good thing 
T : Yeah, for her it’s a good thing 



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S : Because she got a lot of 
money there 

(Loewen and Philp, 2006) 
Seems to let the student under 

confusion because it seems like 
responding to the student’s speech 
and does not give opportunity for the 
students to make an uptake and 
repair the error while the other types 
of feedback gives more information 
such as ‘Pardon?’ (clarification 
request), ‘you need another 
preposition’ (metalinguistic 
feedback), ‘to her?’ (repeat and 
change of tone in repetition).  Based 
on this view, the research might be 
expanded, not only to compare the 
types of feedback, but also to explore 
on how corrective feedback is 
effective.  Again, Goo and Mackey 
(2013) propose research on the 
interaction of the effectiveness of 
corrective feedback to individual 
differences in cognitive capacity.   

Different view comes from Goo 
and Mackey (2013) which states that 
comparing recasts to other types of 
feedback is comparing one apple to 
oranges.  Their view comes from the 
fact that other feedbacks are modified 
feedbacks which lead to modified 
output opportunity in the form of 
clarification requests, metalinguistic 
feedback, elicitations, and repetitions, 
while recasts are giving the complete 
correct form of the target language 
without waiting for the output. 

Researchers have agreed that 
feedback is contributive to second 
language learning.  The factors of 
affective filter, students’ response to 
feedback, types of feedback, and its 
effect on students’ acquisition of the 
language seems to be teachers’ 
consideration in conducting the 
classroom activity.      

Ellis and Schmidt (1997) 
mention that Second Language 
Acquisition’s important foci is the 
examination of cognitive processes in 

second language learning.  Moreover, 
Mackey et al. (2000) mentions that 
two cognitive processes which plays 
important role in SLA is attention and 
awareness.  From the point of view of 
learning strategies, cognitive 
processes are useful to explain two 
basic issues, namely: mental 
representation and mental processing 
(Setiyadi, 2012).  Moreover, Setiyadi 
(2012) adds mental representation 
may refer to how students memorized 
what they have learned, or 
experienced in their life by 
remembering things in their native 
languages, while mental processing, 
on the other hand deals with cognitive 
processing.  From the definitions 
above, it is clear that cognitive 
processes include all activities related 
to mental processing. 

Therefore, this study is aimed 
to investigate the effectiveness of 
recasts on students, based on their 
dominance in using language learning 
strategy categories, namely; cognitive 
category, metacognitive category, and 
social category. Research question is 
as follows. Is student’s dominance on 
certain learning strategies influence 
their acceptance on recasts? 
 
B. METHOD 

This research is a cross-
sectional design where the data were 
collected from a relatively large 
sample at one point in their language 
development (Dulay, Burt, Krashen, 
1982).  It was done with deductive 
approach where researcher had 
preconceived notion or expectation 
about L2 phenomena to be 
investigated (Suparman, 2009).  This 
research involved students who are 
taking basic classes of listening, 
reading, structure, speaking, and 
writing.  In the end, researcher picked 
ten students to apply the recasts 
treatment.  The subjects of this 
research came from university 



The Effect of Recast on Students’ skill ... 

94 
 

majoring non English Department and 
did not use English frequently.  

Before the test was done, the 
students were asked to take a 
questionnaire based on the Language 
Learning Strategies Questionnaires 
(LLSQ) which were taken form 
Setiyadi (2012).  The questionnaires 
were given at the beginning of the 
class to categorize the students in 
certain dominant learning strategies 
category.  It is hoped that in each class 
all categories of language learning 
strategy users, namely; cognitive 
category, metacognitive category, and 
social category are represented in the 
class.   
 The data was collected from telling 
the family member’s daily activities.  
The study noted students’ speech 
production of someone’s daily 
activities.  So, the data taken were in 
the Simple present form for the third 
person which focuses in verb+s.  In 
this technique, students were asked to 
tell one of the family member’s daily 
activities.  In the first chance, the 
students told the story focusing on the 
use of verb+s with the teacher gave 
recasts when the students did not 
make the right sentences.  In the 

second chance, after a few minutes, 
students were asked to tell again 
about the daily activities of the other 
family member (different from the 
first), based on their own 
understanding and diction without 
any interference from the teacher.  
The uptake and modified output was 
noted. 
 
C. DISCUSSION 

Uptake is defined as the output 
produced by learners as a result of 
feedback that they receive after they 
make utterance which may consist of 
modified output or not (Ellis, 2005).  
From these definitions, uptake can be 
seen as a product after feedback is 
given.  However, the result of uptake 
cannot be guarantee as correct 
outputs.  Uptake can be seen as the 
direct response of the feedback.   

Meanwhile, repair is referred 
by Lyster and Ranta (1997) as the 
correct reformulation of an error as 
uttered in a single student turn and 
not to the sequence of turns, resulting 
in the correct reformulation. 
To answer the research question, the 
following data was gained from the 
questionnaires. 

 
Table 1. Number of Recasts, Uptakes, and Repairs 

No. Name Sentence  
Made 

Recasts 
Made 

Uptakes Uptakes 
Percentage 

Repairs 

1 MAr 14 2 2 100% 2 

2 IY 10 10 1 10% 1 

3 Ar 10 4 3 75% 3 

4 RAM 7 7 4 57% 4 

5 INV 10 7 2 29% 2 

6 DTA 8 8 1 13% 1 

7 SMN 11 9 0 0% 0 

8 FA 10 8 4 50% 3 

9 LS 7 5 4 80% 3 

10 MAf 12 10 1 10% 1 

Total 99 70 22 31%  



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The data had described about 
how students of Indonesian EFL 
learners responded to the corrective 
feedback used by their teacher, in this 
case recasts as the corrective 
feedback.  This finding is in line with 
Lyster and Ranta (1997) which shows 
that 69% of the recasts go without any 
uptake from the students.  This 
finding contributes to their finding 
that recasts can be seen as ineffective.  
Even from student No.7, the 
percentage of uptake was 0%.  
Student No.7 only replied by “yes” 
without doing any uptakes.  This data 
indicates that students’ acceptance on 
corrective feedback was different 
from each other.   

From what had been found, it 
may be necessary to look back to 

Schmidt’s (1994) statement that 
teachers need to show the importance 
of noticing and noticing the gap in L2 
acquisition.  Mackey et al. (2000) 
mentions that two cognitive processes 
which plays important role in SLA are 
attention and awareness.  These two 
theories have probably shown the 
cause.  The student’s lacking of 
awareness and attentions have failed 
him to notice what went wrong from 
the sentence he produced.  From the 
simple present tense sentences (verb 
1 +s), that were produced by the 
students, most of the students were 
not able to give additional +s, even 
though the verbs used had been 
taught in the classroom. 

Table 2. Errors Percentation Without Recasts 

No. Name Sentence  

Made 

Errors Errors 

Percentage 

1 MAr 7 3 43% 

2 IY 7 4 57% 

3 Ar 11 8 73% 

4 RAM 7 7 100% 

5 INV 7 7 100% 

6 DTA 7 5 71% 

7 SMN 8 8 100% 

8 FA 12 0 0% 

9 LS 8 5 63% 

10 MAf 5 5 100% 

  79 52 66% 

 
In the more natural speech, 

without any intervention from the 
teacher, which were taken only 30 
minutes after the first interview, 66% 
of the sentences produced by the 
students were inaccurate.  There were 
errors contained in the sentences.  
From 79 sentences produced, 52 
sentences had errors.  These also 

showed that the recasts given by the 
teacher were not memorable and had 
failed to give notification of what went 
wrong. 
 The result also showed that 
one student, No.8, made no errors 
from his twelve sentences to describe 
about his sister’s daily activities.  It 
showed that individual differences 



The Effect of Recast on Students’ skill ... 

96 
 

may cause in how a language is 
acquired.  From the first interview, 
student No. 8 showed that he made 
errors in 50% of his sentences (Table 

1), but the next result (Table 2) he 
showed good accuracy.  Therefore, 
there may be some ways to see the 
individual differences in each student.  

 

Table 3.  Score of Learning Strategies 

No. Name Cognitive Meta Social 

1 MAr 3.8 4.0 3.4 

2 IY 2.5 3.6 3.6 

3 Ar 3.3 4.2 3.0 

4 RAM 3.5 4.2 3.6 

5 INV 3.4 3.6 3.8 

6 DTA 3.6 3.6 2.6 

7 SMN 2.9 3.0 3.4 

8 FA 3.3 3.8 3.2 

9 LS 2.7 3.8 3.4 

10 MAf 2.9 4.0 2.8 

 
Based on the research 

question, this research tries to find 
which learning strategy is probably 
effective to make recasts is 
noticeable.  From the errors made, 
only student No. 1 and No. 8 with 
each made 57% of correctness and 
100% of correctness.  Both of the 
students also had highest score in 
metacognitive strategy.  Setiyadi 
(2012) mentions that metacognition 
involves processes related to 
monitoring and evaluating what has 
been done and planning what to do 
in acquiring another language.  
Moreover, he added that 
metacognitive strategies include 
self-direction, self-monitoring, self-
evaluating and self-correcting. 
 From the strategy employed 
by the two students, altogether, both 
of them put ‘I try to speak with myself 
to improve my speaking’ and ‘I notice 
my English mistakes, and use that 
information to help me do better’ as 
as always true of me, which means 
these strategies were employed by 

them.  Therefore, it is probably 
necessary to teach this strategy to 
the students to improve their 
speaking accuracy. 
 
D. CONCLUSIONS 

Based on the findings, it can 
be concluded that the skill to notify 
what went wrong in their speech, is 
different from one another.  These 
individual differences should be 
considered before giving the 
corrective feedback.  Corrective 
feedback, represented by recasts can 
take role to wrap up what have been 
learned by the students, but the 
effectiveness is still arguable.  This 
study has showed that it can be 
effective to certain type of student.  
From the point of view of learning 
strategy, it can also be taught to 
students to reflect how the 
successful students use the learning 
strategy to increase their speaking 
ability, specifically speaking 
accuracy.   
 



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