The Paradox of Comprehensible Input: Hesitation Phenomena in L2 Teacher-Talk

Hesitation phenomena (HP) have previously been shown to be sources of perceptual error for NNSs. Difficulties of decoding HP, especially filled pauses, are revealed when NNSs are asked to transcribe recorded texts. This procedure was employed in the first of two studies reported in this paper. Results of an analysis of HP-generated errors in the tran­ scripts showed a high proportion of filled pauses (in the region of 20%) to be misperceived. The second study was, therefore, undertaken to investigate the occurrence of filled pauses in segments from 30 lessons given by 10 EFL teachers. A significant reduction in the frequency of filled pauses was observed in the classroom deliveries when compared to NS-NS baseline frequencies. This is presumed to indicate a recogni­ tion of the difficulty experienced by NNSs in decoding filled pauses, and a (probably unconscious) monitoring of HP in input by EFL teachers. HP (hesitation phenomena) ti, ~* NNS 0)~1t -a:-m i? 1t ~ ~IZSI~ ~ ~ c ~ tL -C ~ t::. 0 HP, ¥-.H;: "filled pauses" -a:-m~T ~ ~O).l., ~ ~;t, NNS ~;:~l.,t::,T;fA l' -a:-Jt=f:1eT~ J::? ~;:*6f)~~~;:mtL~ o ~O)