You went where? Repair in language teaching and learning

Abstract

When speakers in spontaneous interactions proceed through their turns-attalkthere often occur instances of trouble. These trouble sources may be troublesin speaking such as mis-saying a word, inability to produce a word in‘tip of thetongue’type occasions, reformulating a grammatical unit and the like. Similarly,troubles of hearing may also occur, due to environmental noise, low speaking volumeand so on. Thirdly, problems of understanding may occur, such as when a listenerdoes not know the referent person or place. When these trouble sources occur, participants engage in what is known as repair in order for the interactionto progress. This paper describes ways in which repair is carried out by L1 speakersand also details the specific ways in which L2 learners go about the businessof repair, such as use of silence, reversions to L1 and incremental turn construction.It is suggested here that awareness of the nature of repair in L1 and sensitivityto learners' repair strategies can help learners develop a wider repertoireof repair practices with concomitant benefits for using the target language naturalistically