The moderating effects of perceptual salience and language aptitude on the effectiveness of L2 recasts

Abstract

Abstract Although extensive research in SLA has focused on the facilitative effects of L2 recasts, few studies have investigated the moderating effect of a priori perceptual salience of the linguistic target. The present study addresses this issue, along with the role that language aptitude plays. Forty-eight native speakers of English carried out oral tasks during which they received recasts of two Korean morphemes differing in their degree of perceptual salience. Results of the study revealed a significant interaction between salience and language aptitude in terms of the ability to infer grammar rules of an artificial language. In conclusion, this study sheds new light on factors that moderate the effectiveness of recasts in the learning of L2 grammatical morphemes.