Replacement of operation in Self-initiated repair practices in oral reproduction of short stories

Azizeh Chalak, Amirhossein Talebi, Seyed Naser Khodaeian, Ali Asghar Pourakbari, Javad Danesh

Abstract

This paper investigated replacement operation, one of the self-initiated repair operations, practiced by Iranian students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in reproduction of short stories. In addition, the present study examined learners’ priorities in employing repair methods. Two repair methods were analyzed, explicit repair and tacit repair. To this end, two groups of thirty EFL students in two oral reproduction courses at Sheikh-Bahaei university (Iran) were required to reproduce two short stories as their final exam. This study purposefully used two groups of learners in two different academic years, sophomores and juniors, to inspect whether the academic level of studies has an impact on the frequency of use of repair practices. To collect data, two short stories were selected from Oral Reproduction of Stories by Abbas Ali Rezai, and participants were voice recorded. After transcribing the data and applying the Chi-square test (Yates correction factor), the results revealed that both sophomore and junior Iranian EFL learners produced explicit repair practices more frequently. Furthermore, students in the sophomore group practiced more instances of replacement repair operation. The findings of the present research may have implications for syllabus designers and teachers as well as students.

Keywords: self-initiated repair, repair operation, repair method, explicit repair, tacit repair