the impact of reduction recasts on the improvement of efl learners’ speaking ability

the present study attempted to discover the impact of reduction recasts on the improvement of the speaking ability and on the repaired grammatical uptake rates of iranian intermediate level efl learners. after administering a language proficiency test, 52 homogeneous students were randomly assigned to the experimental and control group. the comparison of the two groups on the speaking pretest confirmed the homogeneity of the subjects before the instruction. during 12 sessions of instruction, the experimental group received reduction recasts and the control group received non-reduction recasts. the whole sessions were video-recorded for further analysis of the students’ errors, the teacher’s feedback to such errors (reduction or non-reduction recasts), and the students’ responses to the recasts (uptakes). after the treatment, both groups took part in the speaking posttest. the results indicated that the performance of the subjects in the experimental group was significantly better than that of the control group. furthermore, the comparison of the repaired grammatical uptake means between the experimental and control groups revealed that the former group had outperformed the latter to a great extent.