Metalinguistic feedback's gains on wh-question performance decline over a ten-day delay while recast gains hold, leaving the two no different¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 2 studies · 1 causal r2, 1 quant-synthesis r? · q2–q3 · n=33 studies
Currency · newest study 2011 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The metalinguistic group's performance declined sharply from post-test to delayed post-test, while the recast group's gains held, making the recast effect more stable. → Ehsan Rassaei 2011 q3 i? A meta-analysis of 33 corrective-feedback studies found the effect of implicit feedback better maintained over time than that of explicit feedback; the abstract prints no effect size and does not say how recasts and metalinguistic feedback were classed. → Li 2010

Evidence¶

Ehsan Rassaei 2011¶

Ehsan Rassaei, Ahmad Moinzadeh. (2011). Investigating the Effects of Three Types of Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of English Wh-question Forms by Iranian EFL Learners. English Language Teaching, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n2p97

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Figure 1 plots mean total grammaticality judgment performance across the three testing periods for the four groups; the text reports "a sharp decline in metalinguistic group's test performance from post-test to delayed post-test" while recast gains held (delayed means 15.31 recasts vs 15.44 metalinguistic).

"Figure1 provides a visual representation of learners' performance in three testing periods across four treatment groups. The figure shows that there is a sharp decline in metalinguistic group's test performance from post-test to delayed post-test resulting in no significant difference between metalinguisitc and recast groups."

Li 2010¶

Li, S. (2010). The effectiveness of corrective feedback in SLA: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 60(2), 309–365. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00561.x

q3 · meta-analysis (abstract only) · i? · n=33 studies · quant-synthesis · r?

Meta-analysis of 33 primary studies of corrective feedback in second language acquisition (22 published studies and 11 Ph.D. dissertations), coded for 17 features of which 14 were treated as independent and moderator variables. Among its findings, the effect of implicit feedback was better maintained over time than that of explicit feedback, which is this claim's direction at the level of feedback type. Only the abstract was read: it prints no effect sizes and does not say which feedback types were coded implicit or explicit, so that recasts and metalinguistic feedback fall on the two sides as this claim assumes is not established from what was read, and nothing here concerns wh-questions or a ten-day delay specifically.

"the effect of implicit feedback was better maintained than that of explicit feedback"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Corrective feedback on second-language errors has a significant effect on L2 development that is maintained on delayed tests — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Explicit teaching is more effective for EFL copular be learning but its effect is not durable — related
• Metalinguistic feedback outperforms recasts on the immediate post-test, but the two do not differ significantly on the delayed post-test — related
• Metalinguistic feedback and recasts, but not clarification requests, significantly improve Iranian EFL learners' wh-question performance on an immediate post-test — related
• Child EFL learners receiving recasts in task-based lessons improve their production of third person singular -s from pretest to posttest, in a study with no no-recast comparison group — related
• Corrective feedback treatment and time interact significantly in shaping wh-question learning gains across the three testing periods — a broader claim this one bears on
• The literature is supportive of recasts, but recast effectiveness varies with the language area and learner knowledge, focus, and aptitudes — a broader claim this one bears on
• Corrective feedback facilitates L2 grammatical development, with explicit feedback stronger immediately and implicit feedback better maintained over time — reports the opposite
• All four written CF types, including metalinguistic code CF, outperformed the control group on the delayed posttest of implicit L2 knowledge. — related
• Low-proficiency L2 learners benefited significantly more from prompts than from recasts — related
• Explicit metalinguistic feedback outperforms recasts on the delayed grammaticality judgment posttest — related
• Metalinguistic feedback produced system learning, generalizing to verbs not included in the treatment — reports the opposite
• A controlled experiment tested whether various types of negative feedback affect adult second-language learners' acquisition of abstract constraints on an overgeneralized rule (the English dative alternation). — related
• Prompts were overall more effective than recasts as corrective feedback for L2 grammar learning — related
• Explicit metalinguistic feedback outperforms recasts on the delayed oral imitation posttest measuring implicit knowledge — reports the opposite