Conversational repair strategies of teachers of English as a second language

This study investigates how student proficiency levels and instructional foci may be associated with the patterns of second language teachers' use of conversational repair strategies in the classroom. The data consisted of 24 hours of ESL classes from four different courses taught by two teachers in an intensive English institute on a large Midwestern university campus. The male teacher's Low and High Level Listening Comprehension classes were chosen to examine the proficiency level variable and the female teacher's High Level Conversational English and High Level Reading/Vocabulary classes were chosen to investigate the instructional focus variable. Six hours of each class, videotaped and audiotaped, were analyzed. The data were closely transcribed and microanalyzed following the conversation-analytic methodology. Quantitative analysis in addition to qualitative analysis was conducted.;The results established a typology of second language teachers' conversational repair strategies. It included strategies involving nonverbal aspects such as gesture, prosody, turn-taking, and display of sympathy. The findings indicated that both student proficiency levels and instructional foci influenced the types and distribution of the teachers' strategic decisions in a variety of ways. In the High Level class the male teacher employed more Repetition of initiation turn and Metalinguistic clues strategies than in his Low Level class, and he used more Explicit correction of vocabulary and phrase usage and Display of sympathy strategies in the Low Level class. In her Conversational English class, where the instructional focus is on communication, the female teacher used more Clarification request strategies of Offering a possible understanding and (Partial) repeat or a question word than she did in her Reading/Vocabulary class. She employed Hinting, Explicit correction of pronunciation, stress, vocabulary/phrase usage, and Display of sympathy strategies more frequently in her Reading/Vocabulary class. In both teachers' classes task types were found to be another strong variable that influenced the teachers' decisions on the types and frequency of their repair strategies. The study provides baseline data and conversational resources for second language teacher education. It also offers a stepping-stone toward investigation of how to repair in a more effective and facilitative way in the second language classroom.