Acceso usuarios
Shiao-Yung Chiang, Han-Fu Mi
Reformulation is mostly considered as an important verbal mechanism for coping with non-native speakers’ speech production problem in second language acquisition. Drawing on interlanguage pragmatics and conversation analysis, the present study examines the specific ways in which reformulation is used to achieve mutual understanding in the instructional interaction between US college students and foreign-born instructors. The data under examination consist of 10 dyadic interactions that naturally occurred during office hours. The matter of analytic interest is the communicative functions of reformulation as a strategy to display and cope with American college students’ comprehension difficulties that may be related to the foreign-born instructors’ limited language proficiency. Both self-reformulation and other-reformulation are found in the data to deal with the foreign-born instructors’ difficulties in speech production and reception. The close analysis of the linguistic features and interactional procedures of reformulation in the data here may have some implications for language awareness development in instructional interactions across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
