A Contrastive Study Of Repair Between Novice And Experienced Teachers In EFL Classroom Conversation

This study makes a contrastive study of using repairs in class by experienced teachers and novice English teachers in junior high school. The contrastive analysis is carried out mainly from the following aspects:First, a contrastive analysis of the trouble sources; second, a contrastive analysis of the repair types; third, distribution of repair types for various trouble sources. Based on the corpus collected, the major findings of this research are as follows:1. The frequency of the trouble sources in experienced teachers’(ETs) classes is lower than that in the novice teachers’(NTs) classes. The proportion of trouble sources in speaking is higher in novice teachers’ classes, while the proportion in understanding and listening is lower than of novice teachers. The proportion of linguistic errors is a little higher in novice teachers’ classes, while the proportion of appropriateness repair (A-repairs) is a little higher in experienced teachers’ classes. The proportion of grammatical errors is higher in experienced teachers’ classes, while the proportions of phonological errors and lexical errors are higher in novice teachers’ classes.2. The proportion of zero repair (trouble unrepaired) is slightly higher in NTs’ classes. There is no significant difference between ETs and NTs in terms of unsuccessful repair (X2=0.200<X20.05=3.840). There is more initiated repair in ETs’ classes and there is more direct repair in NTs’ classes in terms of successful repair. For successful initiated repair, the proportion of teacher initiated teacher repair (TITR) is2.1%higher in NTs, while there is no significant difference(X2=0.143<X20o.05=3.840) between NTs and ETs in learner initiated teacher repair (LITR). As for learner initiated learner repair (LILR), there is very significant difference between ETs and NTs, and NTs are10.1%higher than ETs. ETs are2.8%higher in teacher initiated/other learner initiated learner repair (mainly teacher initiated learner repair) than NTs. ETs and NTs are nearly the same (X2=0.091<X20.05=3.840) in learner initiated teacher repair/other learner repair (mainly LITR). ETs are9.3%higher than NTs in teacher-initiated/other-learner-initiated teacher-repair/other-learner-repair (mainly TITR).3. As for the distribution of the five repair types in the data, there are more self-initiation and self-repair in NTs’classes, and there are more other-initiation and other-repair in ETs’classes. There is no significant difference between NTs and ETs in self-initiated other-repair (SIOR) and other-initiated self-repair (OISR).NTs use more self-initiated self-repair (SISR) while ETs use more other-initiated other-repair (OIOR).4. The distribution of the five repair types for different trouble sources are as follows:For phonological errors, ETs mainly use OIOR (77.8%) to carry out repairing, while NTs mainly employ two types, namely OIOR (50%) and SIOR (41.7%) to carry out repairing. For lexical errors, NTs have a higher proportion in self-initiation. Meanwhile, ETs have a higher proportion in self-repair. For grammatical errors, ETs use more other-initiation and other-repair, and NTs use more self-initiation and self-repair. For appropriateness problems, NTs have a higher proportion in self-initiation and self-repair, while ETs have a higher proportion in other-initiation and other-repair.Overall, the frequency of the trouble sources in the ETs’ classes is lower than that in the NTs’ classes. It can also be seen that ETs use more of teacher initiation and teacher repairing, while NTs use more of student initiation and student repairing. One of the main reasons is that, based on our observation, Experienced teachers attach more importance to the efficiency and rhythm of classroom teaching so they control the class more tightly, while novice teachers pay more attention to making the students "learn" by themselves so students have more freedom in class.