Repair strategy use during SA: the impact of initial proficiency level

Abstract

This study deals with a key issue in second language acquisition research (SLA), i.e. communication strategies (CS) in a specific learning context, that is, study abroad (SA) in the case of undergraduate students from a U.S. university learning Spanish over a short1 stay in the city of Barcelona (SPAIN), following formal instruction (FI) at home. It examines the development of repair strategies among university level students to determine whether L2 initial proficiency level affects the quality and quantity of repairs used. Participants (n=9) were undergraduate students from a U.S. university studying abroad in Barcelona for 9 weeks. 3 semi-structured interviews, the Language Contact Profile (LCP), Language diaries, and a sociolinguistic background questionnaire were completed to gather data. The 3 sets of semistructured interviews were analyzed for the following repairs, adopted from Smartt & Scudder (2004), in ascending order of complexity: language switch, appeal for assistance, word form search, circumlocution, utterance expansion, and global revision. Results indicated that the participants with higher level initial oral proficiency showed greater development in repair strategy use as compared to their lower initial level counterparts.