Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Self-repairs are the behaviors speakers made spontaneously to correct errors ormodify inappropriate productions in their own speech. They are distinctive linguisticphenomena in both first language and second language. It is estimated that half of speecherrors are repaired by speakers themselves. Nakatani and Hirschberg (1994, Preface) statethat “self-repairs occur in about 10% of spontaneous utterances”. Since self-repairs aresuch prominent phenomena in spoken language, it is necessary to explore the underlyingreasons behind them.Adopting a cognitive perspective to investigate the productive mechanisms ofself-repairs in oral English can not only advance our understanding of the cognitiveprocesses of EFL oral production, but also promote the testing of conceptual blendinghierarchy theory and other related theories which explore the mechanisms of languageoutput. Moreover, through investigation of the productive mechanisms of self-repairs inoral English, inadequacies of EFL learners can be found, which may shed some light onEFL teaching and learning.At present, most studies on self-repairs focus on their features, motivations, repairstrategies, influencing factors, structures etc. Some researchers devote themselves toexploring the underlying mechanisms behind these phenomena, such as how wrong orinappropriate productions are monitored and what are the influencing factors of monitoringetc. But studies on why and how errors or improper expressions are produced and how arethey repaired have received surprisingly little attention, especially from the perspective ofcognition. The thesis aims to fill up this gap.
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1.2 Research Questions
In order to explore the productive mechanisms behind self-repairs produced by EFLlearners, following questions are needed to be addressed:
1. What are the characteristics of self-repairs produced by EFL learners?
2. Are there any similarities or differences in self-repairs produced by EFL learners ofdifferenct proficiency?
3. What are the cognitive reasons?
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1.2 Outline of the Thesis
This thesis consists of five main parts. Chapter one serves as a general introduction toself-repairs, which mainly focuses on the background and research questions of the study.Chapter two reviews the definitions, research status both at home and abroad and relevanttheories of self-repairs. After this chapter comes the main body of the thesis: chapter threeand chapter four. Chapter three presents the design of the study, including the selection ofstimuli and subjects, data collection processes and classification of self-repair in this thesis.Chapter four presents the analyses results and makes discussion on them. The last chaptersummarizes major findings of the study, points out its limitations and gives suggestions forfurther studies.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definition
Studies on self-repairs are not independent in the first place, but are included instudies on other linguistic phenomena, such as hesitation (e.g. Maclay & Osgood, 1959),correction (e.g. Hockett, 1967), repair (e.g. Jefferson, 1974), self-correction (Shegloff et al.,1977), non-fluency (Hindle, 1983) and disfluency (e.g. Lickly, 1991) etc. Due to differencein research purposes and perspectives, the phenomena of self-repairs in different studiesare named and defined differently.Strictly speaking, studies specialized in self-repairs date from Shegloff, Jefferson andSack (1977). In paper Self-correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation, theterm self-repair is firstly put forward (Shegloff et al., 1977, p. 375). From the perspectiveof conversation analysis Shegloff et al. define self-repair as self-initiated same-turn repair.They point out if trouble source, the initiation of repair and repair itself are within the sameturn, then the repair is self-made self-accomplished repair, which is shorted for self-repair.According to Encyclopedia Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1999, p. 274),self-repair is “correction of the speaker's own utterances”. It may direct at either meaningor form and operate at the level of phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, clause, sentence ordiscourse.
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2.2 Studies Abroad
Studies on self-repairs first start from the observation of self-repairs in nativelanguages. From the point of view of conversation analysis, Shegloff et al. (1977) sort outone kind of self-initiated same-turn self-repair and explain the preference for self-repairingby analyzing the structure of self-repair. Since then, studies on self-repairs are blooming.Levelt (1983, 1989, 1992, 1999) develops speech production model and perceptual looptheory of monitoring to explain the detection and production process of self-repair from theperspective of psychological linguistics. Based on Levelt’s research, Blacfkmer and Mitton(1991), Postma (2000), Oomen and Postma (2001), Pillai (2007) etc. examine therelationship between monitoring and repairing with a focus on timing aspect; in the field ofcomputational linguistics, Hindle (1983), Bear, Dowding and Shriberg (1992), Nakataniand Hirschberg (1993, 1994), Heeman and Allen (1994) examine how self-repair isdetected, corrected and understood.
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Chapter Three Research Design ..........22
3.1 Selection of Stimuli and Subjects......... 22
3.2 Data Collection......... 24
3.3 Classification of self-repairs......... 26
Chapter Four Results and Discussion......... 29
4.1 Analyses Results......... 29
4.1.1 Statistics on Retrospective Comments......... 29
4.1.2 Statistics on Texts......... 30
4.2 Cognitive Reasons behind Self-repairs......... 32
4.3 Similarities between Groups .........49
4.4 Differences between Groups......... 51
Chapter Five Conclusion......... 55
5.1 Major Findings......... 55
5.2 Pedagogical Implications......... 56
5.3 Limitations of this Study and Suggestions for Future Studies......... 57
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Analyses Results
Statistical analysis is made on the retrospective comments. 684 retrospectivecomments are collected in all, among which 373 are from undergraduate group (396 ofself-repairs are made in all) and 311 from graduate group (345 of self-repairs are made inall). The frequencies of the two types of self-repairs are distributed as follows: From the above table, it is clear that the trends of self-repairs made by two groups arethe same. Both of them make more grammatical self-repairs than conceptual self-repairs.Comparatively speaking, low-proficiency group make higher percentage of conceptualself-repairs than high-proficiency group, separately are 46.6% and 37.9%.By far, the thesis verifies one of the hypotheses written down at the beginning of chapterthree: the proportions of the two types of self-repairs produced by EFL learners of differentproficiency are different. The reason behind this phenomenon will be explored in next sections.
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Conclusion
This chapter includes three sections. Section one summarizes major findings of thepresent study. Section two discusses pedagogical implications of the findings. Limitationsof the present study and suggestions for future studies are presented in the last section. The thesis reviews former studies on self-repairs and finds few studies devote toexploring how self-repairs are produced and repaired. In order to fill in the gap, the thesisinvestigates self-repairs made by EFL learners of different proficiency and several findingsare achieved.Firstly, the thesis classifies self-repairs produced by EFL learners according to theirretrospective comments. Two types of self-repairs are sorted out in both groups: conceptualself-repairs and grammatical self-repairs. No third-order blend is found in both groups.Secondly, conceptual blending hierarchy theory can explain the productivemechanisms of self-repairs. Conceptual self-repairs are the results of first-order blending,while grammatical self-repairs are the results of second-order blending. Since cognitiveintegrations at these two levels are inevitable and coexist in self-repairing operations, thetwo types of self-repairs are found in both groups. The thesis holds that third-orderblending is beyond the capacity of EFL learners’ cognitive operation for it is sophisticatedand often culturally sensitive, therefore, no such blend is found in the study.
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