A Study Of Self-repair In College Students' Oral English

Self-repair refers that the speaker corrects or adjusts the inappropriate information in his (her) utterance, which is also a common phenomenon in spoken language. During the recent decades, the research on self-repair strategy has become a hot issue of second language acquisition.The author took Levelt's Self-monitoring theory and Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis as this thesis's theoretical foundations. In the research, she took the students in two classes that she taught as the research subjects, then made analysis on the students'oral English self-repair through questionnaires, interviews and oral English tests.The author has the following findings in this paper after the research:1. The self-monitoring of the students in both high and low-leveled groups changes from simple to complex; meanwhile, the number of errors they committed has also reduced sharply, which indicates the improvement of the students'oral English level and the increasing percentage of covert repair.2. The results of the tests shows the two groups'error rates were significantly lower after one year's study, during which the repair-instruction was offered. This means the monitoring training is very effective in reducing the careless errors.3. After the two semesters'teaching practice, the author confirmed that there would be a unity between language proficiency and accuracy. Actually, the author tries to combine the two essentials together.The author also hopes that the students'ability on self-repair can become a useful route to improving the students'oral English level.