Examining the differential effects of reformulations and elicitations on Turkish EFL learners’ uptake and use of English past counterfactual conditionals

The study investigated the differential effects of reformulations and elicitations during the use of a complex linguistic structure, namely, English past counterfactual conditionals. It also explored how proficiency level of learners mediated the successful use of the target form. Sixty Turkish EFL learners were employed and distributed into three groups: reformulations (n = 20), elicitations (n = 20), and control (n = 20). During the online delivery of courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the learners met their instructors synchronously outside class times over a period of five weeks for the administration of the treatment and data collection. To prompt the use of the target linguistic structure, the researcher developed an oral production task. The immediate learner uptake measures and pretest-posttest results were analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of both feedback strategies. The analysis comparing the measure of learner uptake indicated a greater number of successful corrections for reformulations. The data from the pretest-posttest measures also suggested that the reformulations group outperformed the elicitations and control group. It was also revealed that the proficiency level of learners had a mediating role only for reformulations. The findings of the study were discussed with reference to pedagogical implications.