| Conversation Analysis is an important part of discourse analysis and it is a systematic analysis of everyday talk. It is a way of describing human behavior based on the careful observations of everyday interactional practices and it provides a well-established methodology and a robust set of results for systematic description.Based on this theory, the thesis was carried out among 38 freshmen from school of economics and finance in Xi’an International Studies University whose major is business English. The data was collected by recording conversations in oral English classes from the beginning of May to the end of June in 2015, on the mornings of every Tuesday, from eight to ten. All together there are 16 hours. The data analyzed students’ performance relating to the uses of turn taking techniques, silence, types of repair and repair techniques with the help of transcriptional method, Excel and Antconc.From the research, it is found that in terms of turn taking techniques, business English majors tend to use “slowing down” and “selecting the next speaker” to allocate the turn; the silences which function as a period of time to solve the problem and as a way of self-correction have been located within turn. In terms of repair techniques, students tend to use self-initiated self-repair; the most common repair strategy that they use is reformulation. It is found that there are some techniques and types of silence that students are not good at. As a result, the research may enlighten teachers’ class-room activity design. In terms of the turn taking techniques, types of silence and repair techniques that students are not good at, teachers can train students’ awareness of them and give students some intensive training courses. The thesis may also inspire the selection of teaching materials, the selection of teaching methodology as well as evaluation. |
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