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Table 1 below represents the descriptive statistics for the study: Table 1

As Table 1 shows, the mean of recast group is 39.39 and that of explicit group is 78.03. The high value of mean score of the explicit group indicates the outperformance of the participants in this group. Additionally the low standard deviation of the explicit group represents the superiority of the performance of the explicit group in the final test.

Below is table 2, representing the results of a T-test applied to see the differences between the means of groups:

Table2

Taking the obtained T value, i.e. (t = -7.23), with P value of (P<0.000), we easily realize that there is a highly significant difference between the performances of these two groups. In other words, the mean of the number of Error-free T-units has increased significantly in the explicit group as far as the degree of explicitness has maximized through locating the errors and specifying the type of the errors by labeling.

Discussion and Conclusion

As a matter of fact, different factors such as context of situation, time, level of proficiency, age of the learners, etc. are crucial in terms of the effectiveness of recasts as a type of negative implicit feedback. One of the points in this study was the participant themselves. In fact, the participants of this study were non-majors and they studied math. They suffered from lack of an appropriate level of proficiency. It is argued that learners are apt to take recast as a confirmation on meaning in advanced levels. The low proficiency level of the participants put a great hurdle in front of them so that they could not take much more benefit from recast effect in their performance. Put in simple words, the language itself was the main point of study in the setting and the participants of this group did not tolerate any ambiguity imposed by recasting. Context of situation might be another factor decreased the efficacy of recasting in this study. As it is clear, this study was conducted in the classroom context where English was regarded as a foreign language. Different results have been reported concerning the issue of context. For example, Doughty 1999 cited in Nicholas et al. 2001

suggests that recasts in L2 classrooms are effective if they are accompanied by some different cues, telling learners that it is the form and not only the meaning of the utterance that is in focus. And this in turn is an indication of the priority of explicitly provision of feedback. Lyster ( 1998 b), on the other hand, casts doubt on the

effectiveness of recasts in the classroom setting arguing that "recasts may be less successful at drawing learners attention to their non-target output at least in content­based classes where results risk being perceived by young learners as alternative or identical forms fulfilling discourse functions other than corrective ones . . .. Recasts tend to provide or seek confirmation or additional information related to the learners' message. Thus recasts of grammatical errors probably do not provide young classroom learners with negative evidence." The exception for the above-mentioned points about context may be some foreign language classrooms in which students' and teachers' focus on form is more consistently on the language itself. Consistent with those studies that have reported on the effectiveness of negative feedback in the

classroom (e.g. Tomassello & Herron, 1998), the result of the present study has

suggested that negative evidence is effective in helping foreign learners to master L2

properties if the very evidence was more explicit. Labeling the errors of the drafts of the explicit group served as a vehicle in highlighting the types of errors for the participants so that they could easily notice the mismatches between the target feature and the produced ones.

The finding of this study is consistent with theoretical claim proposed by Lyster and Ranta 1997 As a matter of fact, they cast doubt on the effectiveness of recast if maximum uptake is expected. They actually believe that recasts lead to the least uptake. Providing corrective feedback, in their opinion, should be accompanied by some cues in order to attract the learners' attention to discrepancies between the target language forms and ill-formed utterances. It is obvious that Lyster and Ranta are in the side of explicit pole.

It can be concluded that in EFL contexts, writing instructors should provide the more explicit feedback especially if the learners are at the lower level of proficiency. They should devote enough time and energy to provide appropriate feedback to their learners.

In fact, writing instructors need to be aware of the extent of the explicitness to which EFL students value their feedback. One implication concerning the finding of this study is the fact that there seems to be an immediate advantage to more explicit corrective feedback for the learner writers. Hence the instructors should devote time for this purpose and specify the type of the errors in the learners' drafts. Providing codes and defining them for the learners at the beginning of the course would be beneficial especially if these codes be accompanied with brief explanation of L2 features.

Overt classroom instruction through providing models is only one part of language teaching process; providing feedback for the learners is another. How to provide feedback for the learners and with what degree of explicitness in different settings are some issues that need more exploration. Basically we need to consider so many factors such as learners' language proficiency, the level of learners' motivation, the context of situation, learners' attitudes, etc. while giving feedback (Ferris, 19 9 V), Course goals are also important (Leki, 1990  cited in Truscott, ) 1996

In sum, while providing feedback, we should take various factors such as context of situation, course goals, and proficiency level of our learners, etc. into consideration. This study addressed the context issue and learners' proficiency level in relation to accuracy and the implicit type of negative feedback. The study resulted in advising the instructors to provide more explicit feedback if more accuracy in written performance of the learners is expected. The specific circumstance under which this study has been carried out should not also be neglected. In fact, in exact terms of Schachter 1991 "when the dust settles, we fully expect that we will have answers to the negative evidence question like "yes, under these circumstances with these aspects of language with these age groups" and "no under those circumstances with those aspects of language with those age groups". In fact, when we hear conflicting claims, we should not be disturbed; each of these studies addresses one aspect of language under one circumstance. Each is a piece of puzzle and it will take a while to see what the final picture looks like. In fact we should bear in our mind that the kind of knowledge to be learned, the kind of evidence presented to the learner, the situation in which learning takes place and the cognitive capabilities of the learner all play a part in the efficient and non-efficient use of cognitive evidence."

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