Self-repairs have been the subject of investigation in a number of research areas, notably psycholinguistics and conversation analysis. This study has aimed at the examination of self-repairs in second language classroom presentations. Specifically, it has sought to gain insight into self-repairs in naturally occurring talk and to explicate the possible relationships between the variables of age, sex, and educational background and self-repair behaviour of L2 speakers as well as the possible link between self-repair and proficiency. Accomplishing these required a scrutiny of individual self-repairs and their classification. However, the classifications which have traditionally been used in the psycholinguistic approach suffer from a number of shortcomings, as they are usually based on the analysis of surface forms of self-repairs. Because of the subjectivity involved in this process, there has been considerable variation in terms of classes of self-repairs and also the decision as to where a given self-repair belongs. An in-depth analysis of self-repair data revealed that self-repairs do cluster into categories. This analysis also yielded a set of features which are relevant to the study of self-repairs. In addition to showing that the established categories are mutually exclusive, comparison of major categories of self-repairs according to these features, which characterise the trajectory of self-repairs, resulted in the explication of a number of regularities in the way L2 speakers carry out self-repairs. Having established a data-driven classification of repairs, an attempt was made to see whether learner variables of age, sex and educational background have any significant effect on self-repairs. It turned out that none of these variables have a significant effect on self-repairs. In addition, it became clear that while beginning, intermediate, and advanced L2 speakers have been shown to demonstrate significant proficiency-related differences, these differences fade away when they come from the same proficiency level.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/235144 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Kazemi, Ali, School of Modern Language Studies, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Modern Language Studies |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Ali Kazemi, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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