Patsy M. Lightbown

Abstract: The developing oral English of approximately 100 second language learners (four intact classes) was examined in this study. The learners were native speakers of French (aged 10–12 years) who had received a 5-month intensive ESL course in either grade 5 or grade 6 in elementary schools in Quebec. A large corpus of classroom observation data was also analyzed. Substantial between-class differences were found in the accuracy with which students used such English structures as progressive -ing and adjective–noun order in noun phrases. There was some evidence that these differences (which were not correlated with performance on listening comprehension tests) were due to differences in teachers' form-focused instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of current competing views of the role of form-focused instruction in second language learning.

TL;DR: The authors found that recasts appear to be most effective in contexts where it is clear to the learner that the recast is a reaction to the accuracy of the form, not the content, of the original utterance.

TL;DR: The authors investigated the contribution of form-focused instruction and corrective feedback to the development of interrogative constructions in the oral performance of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners.

TL;DR: Second-language acquisition research has been a hot topic in the last few decades as mentioned in this paper, with a large number of studies being carried out in the field. But the main contribution of second-language research lies not so much in what it has to say regarding the development of syllabus content or specific teaching methods, but rather in the development expectations on the part of teachers for what they and their students can accomplish.