Korean High School English as a Second Language Learners’ L2 Repair in Classroom Contexts: A Longitudinal Study of Sequential Organization and Syntactic Characteristics

Abstract

This study builds on and extends previous research on conversational interaction and second language learning in formal pedagogical contexts in New Zealand high schools through a longitudinal investigation of repair. Theoretically, the project engages with concepts of repair and language learning within the field of Conversation Analysis (CA) and attempts to re-examine the relationship between learner repair and second language classroom contexts proposed by Seedhouse (2004). Methodologically, the research employs both a micro- and macro-analytic approach to spoken interaction data to explore the complexities of second language repair in terms of its sequential organization and syntactic characteristics, and to trace language change in pedagogic contexts overtime. The participants were seven Korean international students (intermediate proficiency level, age between 16-18) in high school English as second language classrooms in Auckland. An hour of students’ classroom interaction was recorded once every three weeks using a digital voice recorder over the course of a year. Additionally, the researcher conducted classroom observations and took field notes focusing on the pedagogy of the classroom activities. Lastly, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews and record participants’ stimulated recall comments. The classroom interaction data and stimulated recall comments were transcribed following the CA conventions. Findings from the study supported Seedhouse (2004) in that L2 repair is sequenced differently in pedagogic contexts in accordance with the pedagogic goals set by the teacher. More importantly, this thesis also adds to the previous study in that the speakers orientated to different aspects of the L2, especially L2 accuracy, by employing different types of repair sequences regardless of the pedagogic aim initially set by the teacher. It was also found that the speakers utilized the same repair trajectory to achieve different pedagogic and communicative purposes, depending on what they recognized as the trouble source and to whom the trouble source belonged. On the other hand, there was no notable change in the frequency of different repair types employed by the L2 learners over time. Rather, a particular repair sequence was consistently employed by the learners to achieve specific objectives: to maintain common understanding; to resolve one’s own linguistic problems; to ask for assistance in resolving one’s own linguistic problems; to assist resolving linguistic problems of their interlocutors, and to provide linguistic correction for their interlocutor. On a syntactic level, L2 repair was initiated and completed in restricted syntactic sites and the speakers employed a set of limited patterns of repair. Furthermore, the repairing segments employed by the speakers in all types of repair organization were not constituents on their own and therefore ‘ungrammatical’ in the strictest sense. Based on the longitudinal observation of the focal participants’ self-initiated self-repair and the analysis of stimulated recall interview comments, it was argued that repair made during formulation of a syntactic constituent indicated the speakers started their turn before they completed planning the content of their utterance. On the other hand, repair initiated after a complete articulation of a syntactic constituent indicated the L2 learners monitored the grammatical accuracy of that particular syntactic constituent under repair. A close examination of repair before and after formulation of noun and verb phrases indicated that L2 learners in this study initiated self-repair at different points in formulation for different syntactic constituents and the patterns changed over time. The study is expected to contribute to a better understanding of how Korean international students deploy and develop their L2 resources in order to participate in second language communication through repair in the language they are learning and also make learning the focal concern of their interaction in pedagogic contexts. Theoretical and pedagogical suggestions for future research were also identified.