Fateme Moshtaghi - MA student of TEFL, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili
Reza Abdi - Associate professor of Mohaghegh Ardabili

This study examined the relative effectiveness of recast, prompt, and recast plus repetition on the acquisition of English past tense by Iranian beginner EFL learners. Sixty two beginner students were randomly assigned to either the recast group, prompt group, recastplus repetition group or control group. They carried out picture description tasks with the researcher herself as their teacher. Each group received either recast, prompt, recast plustwice repetitions or no corrective feedback, respectively, for the target linguistic errors during the task performance. Two fill in the blank tests were used as the pretest, immediateposttest and delayed posttest. Results of analyses of variance (ANOVA) showed that the scores of all four groups improved overtime. However, the prompt group and recast plus repetition group did significantly better than both the recast group and the control group,with no significant difference between the latter two groups in posttest. Also the recast group outperformed the control group in delayed posttest. The more effectiveness of prompt and recast plus repetition implied a beneficial role for negative evidence in SLA and that prompt and recast plus repetition tend to be better choices in the L2 classroom.

recast, prompt, repetition, grammar development, effect