Choices They Make: How ESL Teachers Initiate Repair in the Classroom

Choices They Make: How ESL Teachers Initiate Repair in the Classroom

  This study examined conversational repair strategies of teachers of English as a second language (ESL) and how the strategies are used as conversational resources to deal with communication breakdown and to initiate correction in the classroom. The landmark research on feedback by Lyster and Ranta (1997) and Panova and Lyster’s (2002) tried to establish a framework of teacher response types and student uptakes but did not address factors that may be associated with teachers’ decisions. This study investigates how student proficiency levels and instructional foci may be related to the patterns of second language teachers’ use of conversational repair strategies in the classroom. The data consisted of 24 hours of ESL classes from four different courses taught by two teachers in an intensive English institute in the United States. The data were closely transcribed and microanalyzed following the conversation-analytic methodology. The results established a typology of second language teachers’ conversational repair strategies. Findings showed that the teachers displayed different preferences for repair strategies in different classes and that the types and distribution of the teachers’ strategic decisions on classroom repair techniques may be influenced by the student proficiency levels and the instructional foci of each class.