This paper attends to allo-repetition for topic development in EFL-speaking and chat-style writing to investigate how interlocutors monitor and construct mutual understanding. The analysis reveals that speakers regulate spoken interactions more by using successive allo-repetitions to acknowledge, request for confirmation, or display understanding of the content in context.
This paper examines the use of allo-repetitions to develop topics in EFL-speaking and chat-style writing (colloquial writing that the author drew her inspiration from how to chat online), by investigating how interlocutors monitor and construct mutual understanding. The research questions regard the frequencies of allo-repetition in EFL spoken interaction and chat-style writing as well as what and how interlocutors monitor by using allo-repetition. The analysis focuses on instances of allo-repetition employed to encourage the current speaker (or writer) to continue speaking (or writing) on the topic, or to trigger repairs. The data are drawn from an English class for advanced beginner and early intermediate EFL learners at a Japanese engineering university. The paper analyzes excerpts of three-minute video-recorded conversations and five-to-ten-minute chat-style writing samples, both of which encompass topics from daily or school life. The data analysis reveals that the development of a topic in spoken EFL interactions incorporates more allo-repetitions than those in the development of a topic in chat-style written interactions. Moreover, spoken utterances in conversations are more invisible to listeners and thus more negotiation of meaning must be done. In this context, spoken interactions contain more monitoring of understanding through successive allo-repetitions that serve to acknowledge the previous utterance, ask for confirmation, or exhibit understanding of the spoken content. The results are further discussed in terms of the effects of implicit and explicit instructions. In teaching EFL students how to use repetition in interactions, it might be necessary to pay attention to the functions and use of the technique as an explicit method depending on the context. Further, the process of mutual understanding through allo-repetition based on creativity in context should also be taught implicitly so that students can recognize the pragmatic negotiation of meaning and can think about effective ways of communicating with others in English.
