Types and Initiating Factors of Self-Repair in Korean Elementary School Students’ English Speaking

This study investigates the types of self-repair observed among Korean elementary school students during English speaking tasks and the factors that initiate it. Drawing on both classroom performance data and stimulated recall interviews, the analysis identified four categories of self-repair: grammatical, phonological, lexical, and fluency-related repair. Among these, fluency-related repair—including hesitations and repetitions—was the most frequent. Most self-repairs were self-initiated, typically triggered by self-noticing or uncertainty rather than teacher intervention. While teacher gestures were occasionally observed, students did not consistently attribute their corrections to these external cues, suggesting a gap between observable behavior and learner recognition. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of fostering learner autonomy, utilizing indirect feedback strategies, and designing communicative tasks that support self-repair. They also suggest that further teacher training in corrective feedback and additional research into fluency-related self-repair are justified.