The Organization of Second Language Classroom Repair

Author(s): Jung, Euen Hyuk (Sarah) | Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the repair mechanism in second language classroom talk. More specifically, the current paper focuses on how co-participants (i.e., the teacher and the learners) carry out repair operations on the trouble source produced by the learner in the second language instructed talk-in-interaction. The present findings show that participation frameworks (i.e., types of activities) play an important role in constructing repair sequences in the instructional context. When learners engage in role-playing activities with one another, a wide variety of repair sequences are manifested, such as self-initiated and self-completed, self-initiated and other-completed, and other-initiated and other- completed repair sequences.The collaborative nature of repair sequences is also manifested in learner role-playing activities, in which self-initiation of the trouble source by the learner is collaboratively completed withco-participants in the form of word search and try-marking. Other-initiated and other-completed repair in learner role-playing activities is manifested in the form of cluing, which is accompanied by the sequence of teacher's initiation, learner's response, and teacher's evaluation (i.e., IRE sequence). Teacher-fronted activities, on the other hand, in which a teacher asks a question to learner(s), are mainly characterized by other-initiated and other-completed repair structures in the form of IRE sequence and unmodulated"no." Furthermore, a close examination of learners' responses to the teacher's repair (e.g., recast) reveals the key role of activity types operating in L2 instructional discourse.