David Shimamoto examines vocabulary-related repair sequences in pre-task interaction.
At Tokyo Global Gateway (TGG), task-instruction cards, or "mission cards" as they are known institutionally, inform learners of their responsibilities in their roleplay tasks. In the pre-task phase, agents (the title given to educators at TGG) approach each learner and check that they have understood their assigned missions. In these instruction-checking sequences, learners at times display trouble producing and/or understanding lexical items on their mission cards. Our data session on February 25, 2025 focused on repair in such sequences.
The first extract centered around a learner's mission to seek medical treatment for his injured wrist. When the learner stated his mission, he appeared to confuse the words "wrist" and "ankle" by uttering "reenkle." This was made further evident as he held his ankle while hesitantly delivering the trouble-source turn. A vocabulary explanation ensued in which the peripheral learners used gesture and gaze to collectively demonstrate the location of the wrist on the body. Through laughter, the involved participants co-constructed the repairable as a non-serious blunder.
The second extract looked at a learner's instructions to complain about a squeaky bed in her hotel room. When stating her mission, the learner displayed trouble producing the word "squeaky." The agent confirmed the correct pronunciation, which then led to a vocabulary explanation enhanced with gestures and onomatopoeic glosses of the word.
These two examples highlight the types of problems that language learners may encounter when they access their task instructions through written form but are prompted to verbalize them. Agents and learners work collaboratively to identify the cause(s) of the trouble (remembering a word, articulating a word, understanding a word, etc.) so that the sequence can progress towards the provision of an appropriate solution.
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