Adopting a conversation analytic framework, this paper examined the delay and potential indeterminacy of teacher’s repetition as an other-initiated repair (OIR) strategy, which took place at the third turn of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequence in one-on-one tutoring sessions. Tutor-tutee interactions for a Korean secondary student were transcribed and analyzed along with notes used in the class. Data showed that when repetition was used as an OIR strategy, it was delayed and inaccurate. The learner was sometimes unsure whether the teacher’s repetition constituted a repair initiation regarding her prior turn. Furthermore, the learner could not successfully recognize which part of the repeated phrase should be repaired. Prior studies have confirmed that repetition can promote learners’ interactions rather than simply highlighting error while also giving learners an opportunity to correct their errors themselves. However, the analysis in this paper suggests a potential risk associated with using repetition as an OIR strategy at feedback turn in instructional discourse.

This study investigated how Korean EFL learners’ attentional allocation changes during task repetition with or without self-reflection and how this change affects their task performance. A total of 30 Korean high school students were divided into a task repetition only group, a task repetition with self-reflection group, and a comparison group. Each group repeated the same picture-based storytelling task according to its group condition and then performed a new task. Participants’ task performances were analyzed in terms of fluency, complexity, and accuracy and their retrospective interviews were categorized in order to explore their attentional allocation during task planning and performance. The results demonstrated that the learners placed most attention to conveying the message while planning and performing their first task. However, when repeating the same task, the learners paid more attention to structures and forms leading to improvement in complexity and accuracy. These learners were also more likely to employ strategies they had learned previously when doing a new task, which was helpful. Self-reflection raised learners’ awareness on the target form and positively influenced accuracy.