A recast is a technique used in

language teaching Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: ...

to correct learners' errors in such a way that

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqu ...

is not obstructed. To ''recast'' an error, an interlocutor will repeat the error back to the learner in a corrected form. Recasts are used both by teachers in formal educational settings, and by interlocutors in naturalistic

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

Child language acquisition

Recasts can be used by adults to improve children's native language skills. A frequently used technique is for the adult to imitate the child's speech. In this form of recast, the adult repeats the child's incorrect phrases in correct form. This enables the child to learn the correct pronunciation, grammar and sentence structure.

Language education

Recasts can be used for teaching second languages. Sometimes, the teacher will repeat the words back to the student, usually with different intonation or form, or as a question, so that the recasting appears as a continuation of the conversation: For example, in German: * Student: "Ich möchte haben ein Stift." * Teacher: "Du möchtest einen Stift haben?" Here, the teacher has corrected the student's incorrect positioning of the infinitive "haben" and their declension of the indefinite article "ein". In this form the recast is usually more than a simple repeating of the learner's words. The teacher will correct the student's errors but also extend the learning by adding additional words or phrases. A further example, in English: * Student: "I want eat." * Teacher: "What do you want to eat?" In this example the teacher is making the correction to the student's speech (adding a "to") but also extending the learning by asking a question.

Efficacy

Some researchers into second language learning have challenged the degree of effectiveness of recasts drawing attention to the abilities of the learner and the limitations imposed by the learner only being able to repeat the words of the teacher as factors that have not been accounted for by proponents of the method.

References

{{reflist Language-teaching techniques