Data-based Study On Teachers' Self-repair In The EFL Class

As a universal behavior in oral communication, repair refers to the active treatments to those problems in listening, speaking or understanding. Besides, there is a preference for self-correction in the organization of repair. When the repair study find its way into language teaching context, most of the researches focus on the repairs made by language learners, neglecting the fact that the teacher in the English as a foreign language (EFL) class also repair their talks frequently. Most of teachers'repairs are self-initiated self-repairs due to their higher language proficiency and authority. So this research aims to bring about the characteristics of the teachers'self-repair (TSR for short).A transcript of 43,200 words in total is accomplished based on the real-time records of College English classes and corresponding field notes of interviews and questionnaires in a local college in Hengyang.2,744 self-repairs are sorted out and classified into five major categories, namely, Covert Repair (C-TSR), Different Information Repair (D-TSR), Error Repair (E-TSR), Appropriateness Repair (A-TSR) and Rest Category of Repair (R-TSR). Accordingly, a database of TSR is built for the detailed analysis on the structure of TSR, the using of editing terms (ET's) and the distribution of each category of TSR. At last the motives and significance of TSR are discussed.The research findings are summarized as follows:(1) Currently, the College English class in this database still belongs to teacher-fronted and content-based modes, which shows a certainty and necessity for teachers'self-repair. (2) Generally, the organization of TSR accords with the three-part structure of self-repair put forward by Levelt (1983:45), namely, the trouble source, the editing phase and the completion of repair. More than half of the TSR involve at least one editing term. However, the editing phase not necessarily appears in the middle of the repair sequence. (3) The distribution of TSR shows that C-TSR and A-TSR account for the largest part in the occurrence, with a minor part of E-TSR and the rest categories. It is quite different from the learners'self-repairs which mainly focus on linguistic errors in their speeches. In addition, teachers prefer to employ repetition repair (CR-TSR) and message repair (AM-TSR) in their talks. Language shift (AS-TSR) is typical in the EFL classes. (4) Questionnaires and interviews confirm that it is applaudable for teachers to make repetitions and appropriateness repairs for the sake of comprehensible input. However, the teaching effects are thought to be greatly discounted due to the improper use of editing terms, frequent language shift as well as frequent disfluency in the teacher talk.It is therefore concluded that teachers will benefit a lot from their reflections on their own talks in class when they are practicing certain teaching concepts. Improving the self-repair will definitely improve the teacher talk and teaching effect. Those repairs results from the faults in language production or speaking habits can be avoided, while those pragmatic or pedagogy-motivated repairs play a significant role in constructing comprehensible input for language learners.