Chapter One Introduction
1.1Background of the Study
Spoken language plays a dominant role in human communication, and oralEnglish competence will directly affect the communicative competence andcommunicative effect. However, Affected by traditional examination-orientededucation, spoken English ability did not cause enough attention, which caused muteEnglish abounding among college students. College English teaching reform, one ofthe new century educational reforms launched by ministry of education has steppedinto the stage of implement since 2003. With higher demands for English talents anddevelopment of English teaching, improving students’ speaking and listeningcompetence becomes the focus of English teaching. Therefore, spoken English getsunprecedented attention. In this context, the attention of oral English competence hasbeen increased. Self-repair as a common phenomenon in students’ oral expression hasaroused the concern of many researchers. Speakers make errors or inappropriateexpressions every now and then. They may spontaneously correct errors or modifyinappropriate information in their own speech. Such modification results in self-repair(Van Hest,1996).
………
1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
1.2.1 Purpose of the Study
On the basis of the above analysis and discussion of the current background andnecessity of research on self-repair, this thesis aims to compensate the defect of theprevious study in both research depth and scope. Studies abroad of self-repair havegained fruitful results, while studies at home on this topic are far from enough. Until recent years, some researchers have begun to show their interests in this topic. Butthere are some limitations in these studies. In the course of summarizing the literature,it is found out that most of the former study merely lingers in self-repair in mothertongue. Empirical studies are rare and some of them are on a small scale. Many ofthem merely paid attention to the interaction between language proficiency, taskcharacteristics and L2 learners’ self-repair. They left gender differences out ofconsideration. It would be advantageous if the set of variables could be enriched. Thisstudy would like to overcome these limitations. Exactly speaking, this paper aims toinvestigate the influence of gender differences on self-repair behavior. The presentstudy is to investigate first-year non-English majors’ self-repair behaviors withdifferent genders. All the participants involved are first-year students of ShandongNormal University. To be specific, the thesis, in the first place, intends to research therelevance between gender differences and self-repair; Then, the characteristics ofself-repairs in terms of frequency and distribution; Lastly, the corresponding strategiesare put forward to be used for reference of other researches.
……….
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definitions of Relative Terms
The further studies of self-repair can not be carried out without the understandingof the definitions and the classification systems of self-repair behaviors. In order tounderstand the nature of self-repair behaviors, the definitions and the classificationsystems of self-repair behaviors are summarized in the present research. The definition of self-repair is one of the most crucial aspects of self-repairresearch. It varies according to different approaches or purposes of the study. Thuscorrection and repair should be firstly defined and explained before giving thedefinition of self-repair. Repair and correction are two important phenomena ofspeech expression. In the study of L2, the two terms all refer to the correction oferrors in learners’ language output. Strictly speaking, the meaning of these two termsis different. Schegloff et al. (1977) are the first linguists who propose that we shoulddistinguish them. The term ‘correction’ refers to the replacement of a linguistic erroror mistake with a correct form, while the term ‘repair’ deals with inappropriateinformation occurred in spontaneous linguistic output and it’s not merely limited tothe replacement of error and mistake. When speakers notice inappropriate expressionnot only errors they have produced, they will take action to repair. Therefore, ‘repair’has a broader range than the term ‘correction’. “It is a notable fact that the occurrenceor distribution of repair is not well-ordered by reference of the occurrence of error.Repair is sometimes found where there is no hearable error, mistake or fault.Furthermore, hearable errors do not necessarily yield the occurrence of repair”(Schegloff et al, 1977).
………..
2.2 Classification of Self-repair
The classification of self-repair has aroused great interest in speech productionresearch, for it’s the basis for further researches. Without a reliable system ofclassification, no systematic analysis of the collected data can be carried out (Kormos,1999). However, linguists in this field may apply different classification systems ofself-repair partly due to their different objectives of the study (Kazemi, 2006).Classifications made by previous researchers from different perspectives will bepresented in this section.Schegolff et al(1977) are the first to study the classification of self-repair fromthe angle of conversation analysis. They point out four varieties within repairaccording to the person who initiates the repair as well as who performs the repair: self-initiated repair, other initiated repair, self-initiated other repair and other initiatedother repair. They indicate that self-repair and other-repair should not be taken asstructurally equivalent or equally valued. According to their research, people preferself-initiated to other-initiated and self-repair to other-repair. The present researchonly focuses on self-initiated self-repair.
………
Chapter Three Methodology..........22
3.1 Research Questions .....22
3.2 Subjects.......22
3.3 Instruments..........22
3.4 Data Collection.....23
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ...........25
4.1 Results and Discussion on the Questionnaire .......25
4.2 Results and Discussion on Oral Task....28
4.2.1 Characteristics in Frequency ....28
4.2.2 Characteristics in Distribution ..........30
4.3 Relevance Between Self-repair and Gender Difference ........35
4.4 Discussion ...........39
Chapter Five Conclusion........43
5.1 Major Findings ....43
5.2 Pedagogical Implications.....44
5.3 Limitations of the Study.......46
5.4 Suggestions for Further Study......47
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Results and Discussion on the Questionnaire
The questionnaire aims to work out students’ attitude towards their own errors,their methods of correcting errors and the content they made self-repair. Thequestionnaires were handed to 100 subjects. The data collected from the questionnaireis presented in this part. (For the content of the questionnaire, see Appendix I ) Item 1 and Item 2 are mainly about the personal information of the subjects.There are 50 male students and 50 female students participated in the questionnaireresearch. Their ages are all above 16 and the number of students who are in the agegroup of 19-21 is the most, accounting for 87%. Therefore, the subjects share similarage. Besides, they all received regular English education in middle school and sharedsimilar L2 proficiency. In general, about 73% of the subjects choose to correct their errors at once. Mostof the students take the same attitude towards errors and they hope to correct theerrors at once. Because they think repairing at once can give them profoundimpression and cause less misunderstanding. 60% of male students and 86% of femalestudents hope to correct the errors at once. And 28% of the male students choose tosimply ignore the errors. Therefore, it indicates that female students have a higherawareness of self-repair.
…………
Conclusion
In this chapter, the major findings are summarized from the analysis of the datacollected in this study. Then the pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.Limitations of the present study and suggestions for future researches are alsopresented in this chapter. In frequency, both of the two groups produced a high rate of self-repairs, whichindicates that students have the awareness of self-repair and attach more importanceon the accuracy of language. Both of the two groups employ too many repetitions,which definitely affect the fluency of their expression. The number of repetitionemployed by male students accounts for 50% of the overall self-repairs. As for overtself-repairs, female students make more overt self-repairs than male ones. Withinovert self-repairs, both of the two groups make error repairs most frequently. E-repairsand D-repairs they made are more or less the same in number, but the amount ofappropriateness repairs female students made outnumbers that of male ones, whichmeans female students pay more attention to the appropriateness of their expression.
………
References (omitted)