Of errors and self-repairs: the Spanish interlanguage of Filipino learners

This study examines the Spanish interlanguage of adult Filipino students in a conversational class in the Philippines through the analysis of their prompted and unprompted self-repairs. It is known that errors indicate progress in one's interlanguage (Corder, 1981), however, repairs of such errors not only indicate progress, but likewise represent the maximum limit of the same interlinguistic system (van Hest, 1996). Transcripts of five 50-minute long sessions were analyzed into four parts: according to error types, corrective feedback types, uptake moves, and types of self-correction. Results include the frequency and distribution of successful and unsuccessful prompted and unprompted self- repairs related to most frequently committed errors. The findings are twofold: on the one hand, errors that are binary in nature (e.g. ser-estar) are successfully repaired by the students with the aid of the professor; on the other, errors on verbal and nominal agreement, as well as inadequate use of terms belonging to the same semantic group, are not only detected independently but also successfully repaired by the students. These brought about the awareness of errors as frequently committed but not as often detected. Furthermore, observations suggest excessive focus on form effective for as long as both the teacher and the students agree on the importance of corrective feedback in their practice of correct usage of the target language.