In this exploratory study, we examine the role of literacy in the acquisition of second-language (L2) oral skills through a partial replication of Jenefer Philp's (2003) study of recasts in native speaker (NS)-non-native speaker (NNS) interaction. The principal research question was the following: Is the ability to recall a recast related to the learner's alphabetic print literacy level? The participants in the study were eight fi rst language (L1) speakers of Somali with limited formal schooling, who were grouped according to scores on L1 and L2 literacy measures. Procedures involved interactive tasks in which participants received and recalled recasts on their grammatically incorrect interrogative sentences. Unlike Philp's more educated participants, our overall less educated participants showed no signifi cant effects for recast length or, as a group, for number of changes in the recasts. This suggests that fi ndings on the oral L2 processing of more educated L2 learners may not hold for the oral L2 processing of less educated learners. Within our less educated population, the more literate group recalled all recasts signifi cantly better than the less literate group when correct and modifi ed recalls were combined. Literacy level was also signifi cantly related to ability to recall recasts with two or more (2+) changes, with the more literate group doing better than the less literate group. Theoretical implications of these fi ndings are discussed. LITERACY AND THE PROCESSING OF ORAL RECASTS IN SLAR esearch to date on adolescent and adult second language acquisition (SLA) has focused almost exclusively on a population of literate learners. Bigelow and Tarone (2004) and Tarone and Bigelow (2005) argue that second language acquisition researchers should expand the database for research on SLA to include adolescent and adult learners

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The results suggest the incentive financing based on client outcomes may be a potent state strategy for improving service system performance.