Practices of Other-Initiated Repair in the Classrooms of Children with Specific Speech and Language Difficulties

Abstract

This paper uses conversation analysis to document four types of repair practices used by specialist teachers who work with children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLD). Repair practices with SSLD children have hitherto been largely unexplored and therefore the classroom offers a new context for researching their design and considering how they compare with non SSLD interactions. Repair trajectories are of interest because they are dialogic sites where the child's meaning is being negotiated and, therefore, where adults might create opportunities for language learning. The interactions take place during classroom activities, such as story writing, where teachers elicit children's ideas and orient, in various ways, to their lack of clarity. From a large dataset of 78 cases, significant patterns of teacher repair initiation emerged. Non-specific repair initiators (RIs), including open class RIs, are distinguished from specific RIs on the grounds that the former target the trouble source in a general way. In contrast, specific RIs, such as designedly incomplete utterances, pinpoint the location of the trouble whilst 'wh' questions target the nature of the trouble and are used to elicit further information. Offers of candidates, as a form of correction, provide new models of lexical or grammatical information but do not elicit repetition from the child. The study provides a clearer account of the work done by teacher feedback moves that initiate repair.

Teaching assistant and pupil interactions: The role of repair and topic management in scaffolding learning

“…Feedback moves by the adult need to build contingently on the response (provide a repair initiator) in order to prompt self‐repair (Macbeth, ). Correction in the feedback position is the least preferred move as it does not require the pupil to draw on their own resources or attempt self‐repair (Radford, ). It therefore would not meet the fading or hand over aspects of scaffolding.…”

Laughter in correction sequences in speech therapy sessions

“…Repair requires a high level of linguistic and pragmatic abilities (Milroy and Perkins 1992), and this thus may be a delicate activity for impaired speakers (see Merrison and Merrison 2005 on children with pragmatic difficulties). Because repair sequences deal with the patient's difficulties, they are particularly useful in terms of therapeutic and/or instructional outputs (Ridley et al 2002;Radford 2008).…”

“…Ridley et al (2002) show how the institutional status of the unimpaired partner impacts repair trajectories in interactions involving children with SSLD. They show that specialist teachers and peers produce other-repair and other-initiation of self-repair in a way in which the repair provides useful instructional outputs to the impaired partner (see also Radford 2008). Inversely, the mainstream teacher tends not to repair the trouble source, thus minimizing learning opportunities.…”

“…After Barbara has agreed with the therapist's correction and thus completed the correction sequence (19), the therapist repeats the mistake (20). In doing that, the therapist resets the correction sequence (see Drew 1981;Seedhouse 2004;Radford 2008 on how repetition of the partner's error is a way of inviting him/her to produce further elaboration), inviting Barbara to respond 9 . Barbara does not speak but discreetly produces 9 The therapist's repetition of Barbara"s mistake could be analyzed as a way of making fun of it (i.e.…”

“…Repair trajectories are particularly delicate in contexts in which language impairments are a central issue (Milroy and Perkins 1992;Merrison and Merrison 2005). In speech therapy interactions, repair sequences create opportunities to focus on instructional issues (Ridley et al 2002;Radford 2008) as they may challenge the linguistic and interactional competence of the patient (Wilkinson 2007), which may trouble the progression of the interaction. By showing how therapists and patients jointly adjust laughter to maximize the instructional value of the repairable while minimizing the problematic features of correction in terms of epistemic positions, our study offers therapeutic resources to help speech therapists develop a greater sensitivity to the functions of adolescents" laughter in speech therapy sessions (see also Petitjean and González-Martínez 2015, on classroom data).…”