A Study On Self-Repair Behaviors Of Female English Majors In Second Language Speech Production: With Intensive Language Exposure To Native Speakers

The present study aims to explore the role of intensive language exposure to native speakers in self-repair behaviors of female English majors in speech production. The premise of the study has been based on Speech Production Model, Input Hypothesis and Automaticity Theory. In our study the following issues are addressed: (1) Is there a relationship between self-repair behaviors and intensive language exposure to native speakers? (2) What are the features of self-repairs employed by female English majors with intensive language exposure to native speakers?There are totally 31 female English majors from Xinjiang University, and 30 female English majors from Xinjiang Normal University participated in the present study. In the experiment, these students were required to retell story in English according to pictures provided. They were not informed of any intention of the present study. All the speech productions from the subjects were recorded. In line with the specific classification system proposed by Levelt (1983), which modified by van Hest (1996) and Kormos(1999), the transcribed data was identified and analyzed. Subjects from Xinjiang Normal University, which was exposed to ESEC teachers (native English speakers) for one year would be significantly studied and analyzed in terms of the construction and distribution of self-repair behaviors in their speech production.The results then show that there is a close relationship between self-repair behaviors and intensive language exposure to native speakers. There are some major features regarding the subjects with intensive language exposure to native speakers: (1) Subjects with intensive language exposure to native speakers employ less self-repairs in their speech production compared to the group of students who are not with intensive language exposure to native speakers. (2) Subjects with intensive language exposure to native speakers conduct more self-repair at the level of being appropriate, but less at the level of error repairs. Within appropriateness repairs, they focus more on lexical appropriateness repairs, while they concentrate less on phonological and syntactical error repairs. (3) Subjects with intensive language exposure to native speakers attach great importance to convey messages instead of being formal according to grammatical rules in their speech production. They speak more fluently, but sometimes less accurately since more attention is paid to be informative rather than formal in communications. However, the group of students who have less language exposure to native speakers, pay more attention to form instead of content, therefore, they emphasized more on accuracy, but less on fluency.