The Impact of Recast on the Development of the Intermediate Iranian EL Learners’ Interlanguage Pragmatics Regarding Speech Act of Refusal

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Velayat University of Iranshar

2 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Valayat University of Iranshar

10.22111/ijals.2026.41582.2258

Abstract

The study was set up to explore the effect of recast as a kind of implicit feedback on the development of interlanguage pragmatics of the intermediate Iranian EL learners. To this aim, eight subjects were chosen and assigned randomly to either control or experimental group. The control group was engaged in role-plays without any treatment; the experimental group received recast for their pragmatically erroneous utterances during role-plays. Treatment lasted eight sessions. Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was utilized as both pretest and posttest. Self-report was also employed. The findings demonstrated that post-interventional improvement of the recast group was significantly more than that of the other group. That is, using recast as feedback promotes EL learners' pragmatic proficiency regarding speech act of refusal. Moreover, an eye-catching, yet unexpected, finding was a new type of repair which was called repair-plus by the researchers. The results also indicate that recast can be used by teachers as effective corrective feedback in language classes to improve language learners' pragmatic competence.

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