Repair is a characteristic of oral discourse. The ability to repair one's own discourse appropriately is a part of native speakers' communicative competence. This study investigates the repair behaviour of foreign language (L2) learners at different levels of oral proficiency. Two principal types of repair, code- and discourse-related, were distinguished. In the use of these, both quantitative and qualitative changes occur according to development of L2 learner proficiency. L2 learners also differ individually in their repair behaviour. Two main types of languages users were identified: safe-players and explorers. The study suggests repair to be related to other contextual factors in the discourse, such as errors, or lexical problems. Thus, in different contexts, use of repair may either enhance or impoverish communication.
Contents: Repair: structure and scope - Oral discourse - Fluency - Oral
proficiency - Oral proficiency testing - Code-related and discourse-related
repair - Monitoring - Repair and foreign language teaching - Intercultural
competence.
The Author: Liisa Salo-Lee was born 1944 in Nokia (Finland). She graduated 1971 (M.Sc.), Helsinki School of Economics (Finland). During 1981-1985 she was lecturer in German at the University of Helsinki (Finland), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Universidade Federal da Paraiba (Brazil), and Georgetown University (USA). Since completing her Ph.D. (Georgetown University, 1989) she has been Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba, and in 1991-1993 Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Jyvaeskylae (Finland).
