Monitoring and Self-Repair in L2: Judit Kormos

Language Learning 49:2, June 1999, pp.
303–342
Monitoring and Self-Repair in L2
Judit Kormos
Eötvös University
The aim of this article is to review the psycholinguistic

research on second language (L2) self-repair to date with
particular attention to the relevance of this field for L2
production and acquisition. The article points out that W.
J. M. Levelt’s (1989, 1993, 1992) and W. J. M. Levelt et al.’s
(in press) perceptual loop theory of monitoring can be
adopted for monitoring in L2 speech as well. It is also
argued, however, that this theory needs to be comple-
mented with recent research on consciousness, attention,
and noticing in order to account for mechanisms of error
detection in L2.
Speech errors have traditionally been seen as exposures of

the underlying language-formulating machinery and, indeed,
taken together with the study of hesitation devices and pauses, it
is the analysis of repair mechanisms that can provide us with the
most direct information about the psychological and linguistic
processes at work in first language (L1) and second language (L2)
speech production and communication. Thus, the phenomena of
self-repair and monitoring in the speech of both L1 and L2 speak-
ers have been of great interest to applied linguists, sociolinguists,
Judit Kormos, Department of English Applied Linguistics.

I am grateful to Zoltán Dörnyei and Sarah Thurrel for their comments on
earlier versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to the anonymous review-
ers for their particularly thorough and thoughtful comments.
Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed to Judit Kormos,
Eötvös University, Department of English Applied Linguistics, 1146 Ajtósi
Dürer sor 19-21, Budapest, Hungary. Internet: kormos@isis.elte.hu
303
304 Language Learning Vol. 49, No. 2
language teachers, and psycholinguists during the past decades,

and a great deal of research has been conducted in these diverse
fields. However, except for a pioneering study by Tarone (1980) and
the descriptive reviews of van Hest (1996b) and van Hest, Poulisse,
and Bongaerts (1997), no attempt has yet been made to compare
the findings that have emerged in different areas of linguistics,
psychology, and pedagogy. This article will suggest that adapting
a psycholinguistic perspective for the investigation of L2 repairs
has the potential to offer a comprehensive framework of analysis
to integrate the advanced area of L1 self-repair research with
relevant theories of L2 acquisition and use.
As Poulisse (1997b) argues, the acquisition and production of
language are generally regarded as psychological processes; thus
the psycholinguistic perspective can prove to be a fruitful direction
in the study of L2 use and learning (see Skehan, 1998, for a similar
line of argumentation). Adopting a psychological approach to the
investigation of L2 self-repairs and monitoring has potential for
illuminating four areas of second language acquisition (SLA)
research. First, it can advance our knowledge of the psycholinguis-
tic processes of L2 speech production and provide a basis of
comparison with L1 self-repair research (van Hest, 1996a;
van Hest et al., 1997). Second, the psycholinguistic analysis of
self-repairs might promote the testing of different psycholinguis-
tic models of L2 learning and the development of automaticity.
Third, this perspective can also contribute to the integration of
speech monitoring with cognitive theories of consciousness,
awareness, and noticing in L2. Finally, a unified psycholinguistic
framework such as Levelt’s (1989, 1993) model would enable
researchers to integrate findings from discourse analysis, speech
processing, and SLA theory.
It has to be noted, however, that self-repairs have been
studied from other than psycholinguistic perspectives. Studies
conducted in this vein have analyzed the functions of repairs in
the interactional structure of conversation (e.g., Schegloff, Jeffer-
son, & Sacks, 1977; Schwartz, 1980; White, 1997) and classroom
discourse (e.g.,Kasper,1985),as well as in situations where negotiation
Kormos 305
of meaning takes place (e.g., Tarone, 1980; for a comprehensive

review of negotiation of meaning see Pica, 1994). Another direction
of research has involved the exploration of the relationship of
individual difference and self-correction behavior (e.g., Dietrich,
1982; Fathman, 1980; Lennon, 1990; Seliger, 1980). Although these
fields of investigation also constitute an important area of SLA
research, their review is outside the scope of the present article.
I will first review the main psycholinguistic theories of moni-
toring and their relevance for research on L2 production and
acquisition with special regard to theories of noticing and con-
sciousness. This will be followed by the presentation of the findings
of empirical research on self-repairs organized according to a
number of key issues. Upon analyzing the results of L2 self-repair
research to date, I will discuss what these results reveal about
mechanisms of L2 speech processing and learning. I conclude the
paper by outlining potential future research directions.
Main Psycholinguistic Theories of Monitoring
Because several recent studies in the L2 literature have

described the existing models of both monolingual and bilingual
speech production (e.g., de Bot, 1992, 1996; de Bot, Paribakht, &
Wesche, 1997; Dörnyei & Kormos, 1998; Poulisse, 1997a) in detail,
the following discussion of psycholinguistic theories will be re-
stricted to analyzing the different theories of monitoring. To start
with, three key terms need to be defined: monitor, filter, and editor.
Berg (1986b) envisaged monitors as “mental eyes” that observe
the ongoing utterance planning and processing (p. 134). The fact
that the monitor is only able to “watch” what is going on implies
that the monitor does not have the power to interfere with the
processes. As opposed to monitors, filters are endowed with the
power of “vetoing the material prepared for articulation” (Berg,
1986b, p. 134). Editors complement filters by “replacing a vetoed
item by a more acceptable or appropriate one” (Berg, 1986b, p. 134).
In the following, three main theoretical approaches to monitoring,
which were originally set up for L1 speech production, will be
reviewed—editor theories, the spreading activation theory of

monitoring, and the perceptual loop theory—with a special focus on
their ability to explain the self-correction behavior of L2 speakers.
The Editor Theories of Monitoring
As their name suggests, editor theories of monitoring postu-

late the existence of an editor that sees to the vetoing and replace-
ment of the incorrect output of the speech production processes.
The main question regarding these theories is from where the
editor derives its processing power, and where it is located in the
system.
One possibility is that the editor has its own system of rules
against which the output is checked. Baars, Motley, and MacKay
(1975) and Motley, Camden, and Baars (1982) formulated a model
in which the prearticulatory editor tests the utterance before
articulation using the criteria of lexical legitimacy, syntactic and
semantic appropriacy, situational context, and social appropriate-
ness. It is obvious, however, that if this mechanism worked per-
fectly, it would not allow for the occurrence of errors at all; thus,
to match the theory with reality, it must be assumed that either
the system of rules it uses is degenerate (e.g., Garnsey & Dell,
1984) or the rules used at a given moment must vary (e.g., Motley
et al., 1982). In the latter case, the application of a particular rule
would depend on, among other things, the context and the avail-
able attention. Garnsey and Dell (1984) claimed that the assump-
tion that the prearticulatory editor intercepts faulty output could
account for four phenomena observed in the research of experi-
mentally elicited slips of the tongue (Baars et al., 1975; Motley et
al., 1982): (a) output biases in speech errors, that is, certain
tendencies underlying the production of slips of the tongue (e.g.,
lexical bias, which predicts that nonword strings are produced less
frequently than words as a result of slips); (b) the rapidity of error
detection; (c) the use of editing terms in speech; and (d) physiologi-
cal correlates of editing. The drawback of this type of model is that
the monitor can only inspect the outcome of the processes and is
Kormos 307
unable to intercept erroneous output at intermediary levels. In

addition, the knowledge necessary for the decision about the
appropriateness of the prearticulatory output needs to be redupli-
cated in the editor, which is highly uneconomical (Berg, 1986b;
Levelt, 1989).
To eliminate some of the problems the theory of prearticula-
tory editing poses, several researchers (e.g., Laver, 1980; Noote-
boom, 1980; cf. Postma & Kolk, 1992) postulated that there should
be a specialized monitor at each level of the processing system,
which would see to the appropriateness of the outcome of each
process. This version of editor theory is called the production
theory of monitoring because the monitor has access to the differ-
ent stages of production. Nevertheless, in this case again, the
monitor would have to contain the same or almost the same
knowledge as the processing component. In addition, only a flow-
through monitor would allow for nonserial processing, because if
the monitor halted the process of speech production at each level,
it could only proceed serially, which would considerably slow down
the speed of processing (Berg, 1986b; Blackmer & Mitton, 1991;
Levelt, 1989). The very short (30–50 ms) cutoff times found in
Blackmer and Mitton’s (1991) study did not lend proof to the
existence of distributed editors, because in these models, detection
is assumed to take at least 180 ms, and parallel processing is not
allowed.
The Spreading Activation Theory of Monitoring
Stemberger (1985) and Dell (1986) devised the first compre-

hensive model of interactive activation spreading in speech pro-
duction. Their theory was based on an interactive network of units,
such as words, morphemes, and phonemes, as well as generative
rules that create slots for the units. In this model decisions are
made on the basis of the activation levels of the nodes representing
these units; that is, units with the highest level of activation will
be selected for further processing. Dell assumed that activation
could spread bidirectionally: top down, that is, from words to
morphemes and from morphemes to phonemes, as well as bottom

up. He also argued that speech perception proceeds through the
bottom-up flow of activation, and this mechanism is in operation
when speakers monitor their own speech. Therefore, in this theory,
monitoring is assumed to be an inherent feature of the perception
and production processes, and the existence of a separate moni-
toring device is not postulated. In parallel interactive frameworks
of speech processing, monitoring is “an automatic by-product of
bottom-up activation spreading” (Berg, 1986b, p. 139). However, in
a later version of their model, Dell and O’Seaghda (1991) permit-
ted only local backward priming, which left monitoring unac-
counted for.
Drawing on the work of Berg (1986b) and adapting the main
tenets of spreading activation theory, MacKay (1992a, 1992b)
devised the node structure theory, which was based on research
carried out on awareness. MacKay claimed that if a node formed
a new connection with another “uncommitted” node, prolonged
activation could come about, and this would be capable of trigger-
ing awareness and thus contributing to the detection of the error.
Node structure theory postulates that only three conditions are
necessary for awareness: novelty, pertinence, and strong conver-
gent priming. Using the terms awareness and consciousness as
synonyms, MacKay (1992a, 1992b) assumed that these three
conditions can explain why one usually becomes conscious of what
is new, rather than of what is familiar. This theory has one major
shortcoming, as pointed out by Levelt (1992), namely, that it
predicts that all the errors will be detected, which does not seem
to be true.
The Perceptual Loop Theory of Monitoring
Another influential model of speech production has been

formulated by Levelt (1989, 1992) and Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer
(in press). This theory assumes that speech processing is modular;
that is, it can be described through the functioning of a number of
processing components that are relatively autonomous in the
Kormos 309
system. Five principal components are distinguished: the concep-

tualizer, the formulator, the articulator, the audition (later rela-
belled as the acoustic-phonetic processor), and the speech
comprehension system (relabelled as the parser), as well as three
knowledge stores: the lexicon, the syllabary (containing phonologi-
cal information), and the store containing discourse models, situ-
ational and encyclopedic knowledge. The basic mechanisms of
speech processing are conceptualized by Levelt and his associates
(in press) in a fairly straightforward manner: People produce
speech first by conceptualizing the message, then by formulating
its language representation (i.e., encoding it), and finally by ar-
ticulating it. With regard to speech perception, speech is first
perceived by an acoustic-phonetic processor, then it undergoes
linguistic decoding in the speech comprehension system (i.e., the
parser), and it is finally interpreted by a conceptualizing module.
The unique feature of the model is the integration of the two
processes into one comprehensive system and the incorporation of
the stores of situational knowledge and the discourse model into
the theory of speech production, which makes it possible to discuss
the discourse and psycholinguistic aspects of language processing
within one comprehensible model.
Drawing on the main tenets of the theories of prearticulatory
monitoring and activation spreading, Levelt (1983, 1989; later
further elaborated by Levelt et al., in press) devised a new model
for intercepting erroneous output, which Levelt et al. (1989) re-
ferred to as the perceptual loop theory. From the theory of pre-
articulatory editing they adopted the assumption that prearticu-
latory output can be inspected. On the basis of spreading activa-
tion theory, it was proposed that the same mechanism could be
applied for checking one’s own message as for the perception and
checking of other speakers’ utterances. To avoid the necessity for
reduplication of knowledge, in Levelt’s (1989) model the speech
comprehension system is used for attending to one’s own speech
as well as to others’. In the model, there are three loops for
inspecting the outcome of processes. The first loop is the phase
when, before being sent to the formulator, the preverbal message
is compared to the original intentions of the speaker. The second

loop is when the message is monitored before articulation, which
is also called covert or pre-articulatory monitoring (see also
Postma & Kolk, 1992, 1993; Postma, Kolk, & Povel, 1990). Finally,
the generated utterance is also checked after articulation, which
constitutes the final, external loop of monitoring.
The modular and spreading activation theories of speech
production differ in one main point, which is whether interaction
or feedback between different levels of processing is allowed.
Modular models (Levelt, 1989, 1993; Levelt et al., 1991a, 1991b;
Levelt et al., in press) postulate distinct levels with indirect
interaction, which can only be a top-down process. Stemberger’s
(1985) and Dell’s (1986) models permit feedback and feedforward
between adjacent and nonadjacent levels, whereas Dell and
O’Seaghda (1991) assume the existence of local feedback only. At
present, the consensus in psycholinguistics seems to be that the
system of speech production shows signs of modularity as well as
evidence of interconnectedness. Recent research that is based on
reaction times rather than on speech errors, conducted in the Max
Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, seems to sug-
gest that models that only permit feedforward between the differ-
ent levels of encoding are successful in accounting for the majority
of the findings gained in this way (for a review see Levelt et al., in
press).
Based on recent research on reaction times in self-monitoring,
Wheeldon and Levelt (1995) have further investigated what prear-
ticulatory monitoring entails. Levelt (1989, 1993) and Levelt et al.
(in press) assumed that phonological encoding consists of three
phases: (a) the activation of phonological segments, (b) the produc-
tion of the phonological word, and (c) the generation of the pho-
netic-articulatory plan. To find out at which of these stages
“internal speech” is parsed, Wheeldon and Levelt conducted a
series of experiments, which suggested that speakers could self-
monitor without having access to the phonetic-articulatory plan.
They also found that prearticulatory monitoring was sensitive to
syllable structure, which becomes available in the second stage of
Kormos 311
phonological encoding, that is, upon the production of the

phonological word. These results indicate that speakers are able
to monitor at the level of abstract phonological representation
before the phonetic-articulatory plan is encoded.
Due to the similarity of the comprehension and error-detection
processes postulated in this model, it can be assumed that
phonological errors will be noticed earlier than lexical or gram-
matical slips of the tongue, and the detection times of inappro-
priacies will be higher than those of linguistic inaccuracies. The
results of van Hest’s (1996b) large-scale research project suggest
that phonological errors are indeed detected and interrupted
faster than lexical errors, whereas inappropriate words seem to
be recognized with the slowest speed. These findings also lend
support to Levelt’s (1989, 1993) and Levelt et al.’s (in press) model,
where the correction route of phonological errors is the shortest,
as all the other types of errors or inappropriacies need to be
checked in the conceptualizer against the original communicative
intention.
The Relevance of Theories of Monitoring for Research on L2

Acquisition and Use
As can be seen from the theoretical considerations and evi-

dence from empirical research presented above, at present Levelt’s
(1989, 1993) and Levelt et al.’s (in press) perceptual loop theory of
monitoring seems to be the most viable model of error detection
in L1 speech production. Recent theories of L2 speech processing
(e.g., de Bot, 1992; Poulisse, 1997a) have also adopted this model
and do not postulate qualitatively different mechanisms for moni-
toring in L2. To date, the only study that has made an attempt to
test empirically, both for L1 and L2 use, the three basic models of
monitoring described above was carried out by van Hest (1996b).
On the basis of her results, van Hest concluded that apart from
the quantitative difference in repair times in the two languages,
perceptual loop theory could be adopted to explain monitoring in
L2 without any qualitative changes. This model, however, leaves
several questions unanswered, many of which are of special im-

portance in the study of L2 acquisition and use.
One of the most important questions perceptual loop theory
does not address concerns how it is possible that certain errors
remain undetected, and what type of errors are not likely to be
noticed. It frequently occurs that despite the fact that L2 speakers
have the underlying linguistic knowledge (e.g., know the argu-
ment structure of the lexical entry, or the particular linguistic rule
to be applied under the given conditions), they still do not notice
the errors they make (see James, 1998, for the review of L2 studies
on lapses and mistakes). It can also be observed that certain types
of errors do not tend to be detected, a phenomenon that was found
to be particularly frequent in L2 production (e.g., Poulisse &
Bongaerts, 1994; van Hest, 1996a). Upon discussing the level of
automaticity in the various components of his model, Levelt (1989)
himself states that monitoring involves controlled processing, that
is, requires attentional control. It is well known from studies of
divided attention, however, that attention has capacity limita-
tions, and performance will deteriorate if there is not enough
attention available for the execution of a task. (For a review of the
different theories of limited attentional capacity see Robinson,
1995.) Therefore, it has to be assumed that these attentional
limitations will affect the efficiency of the monitoring processes
and, as a result, the number and type of errors noticed by the
speaker. Because in L2 speech processing a considerably lower
number of processes are automatized, and in turn, they require
more attention than L1 encoding mechanisms, it is likely that
these limitations will have more noticeable effects in monitoring
in L2. From this line of argumentation, it can be seen that the
terms noticing and attention are of central importance to further
specify mechanisms involved in speech monitoring. Therefore, in
the following, we will make an attempt to relate recent research
on attention, consciousness, and awareness to theories of monitoring.
Two main factors can be identified that affect the allocation
of attention in L2 speech processing. First, because available
attention is affected by working memory capacity, individual
Kormos 313
differences in this respect (Harrington & Sawyer, 1992) can influ-

ence to what extent speakers attend to their own speech. Second,
the demands of the task to be performed also determine the
amount of attention available for monitoring. Although the rela-
tionship between individual differences in working memory capac-
ity and monitoring in an L2 has remained unexplored, attentional
limitations due to task complexity have been discussed by several
researchers studying how task familiarity (Bygate, 1996a, 1996b;
Plough & Gass, 1993) and task characteristics (Brown, 1991;
Foster & Skehan, 1996; Robinson, 1995; Robinson, Ting, & Urwin,
1996; Skehan & Foster, 1996) affect L2 performance. (For a com-
prehensible review see Skehan, 1998.) In these studies, features
of tasks that reduce the amount of attention necessary for concep-
tual planning (i.e., familiarity with the task itself, familiar dis-
course domain, time for conceptual planning) were found to
contribute to the reallocation of attention for linguistic encoding.
Nevertheless, only Bygate’s (1996b) study analyzed how the re-
duced cognitive load at the conceptual-planning level influences
the L2 monitoring process. He found that when subjects performed
a task in L2 for the second time, they tended to correct themselves
more frequently, which indicates that upon repeated task perfor-
mance more attention is available for monitoring. Due to the small
number of subjects involved in Bygate’s study, these results cannot
yet be regarded as conclusive.
Further investigation of how task characteristics affect the
amount of available attention for monitoring processes can yield
several new insights into L2 acquisition and use, and can have
potential implications for L2 teaching. Based on research on the
frequency and distribution of self-corrections in different types of
tasks, methodological recommendations can be made for second
language pedagogy concerning which are the tasks that can com-
pel L2 learners to focus on linguistic accuracy or the appropriacy
of their own output.
The amount of available attention for a particular encoding
process has been found to contribute to successful SLA by re-
searchers studying the role of consciousness in second language
learning (e.g., Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990, 1993, 1994). Fur-

thermore, output, that is, producing speech, has also been assumed
to be essential for L2 learning. Because monitoring involves both
attention and conscious processing as well as producing output, it
can enhance the efficiency of acquisition in several ways, outlined
below.
1. Because L2 monitoring involves the checking of both inter-
nal and external speech against the learner’s existing linguis-
tic system, and in the perceptual loop theory (Levelt, 1989,
1993; Levelt et al., 1991a, 1991b, Levelt et al., in press) it is
assumed to be similar to the processes of comprehension, L2
learners can resort to “receptive knowledge, which is assumed
to be more stable and reliable than productive knowledge” (de
Bot, 1996, p. 551). This can contribute to improved perfor-
mance and more accurate and appropriate output.
2. The receptive knowledge called for upon monitoring, how-
ever, may not always be stable in L2 use; for example, the given
linguistic rule or item of vocabulary may not be fully acquired
yet, or it may not be sufficiently automatized. In these cases
the L2 speaker sometimes cannot decide with certainty
whether the output is error free (see rephrasing repairs exam-
ple (8) below). This can contribute to noticing the gap in one’s
knowledge, and it can trigger further acquisition processes
(Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990, 1993, 1994; Schmidt & Frota,
1986; Swain, 1995; Swain & Lapkin, 1995).
3. Not only perceiving a gap in one’s L2 knowledge but also
simply noticing an error can promote L2 learning. Robinson
(1995) argued that noticing involves “detection plus rehearsal
in short-term memory, prior to encoding in long-term memory”
(p. 296). In the case of monitoring this means that the errone-
ous item is detected and the error-free solution is rehearsed
before it becomes stored in the long-term memory. The memory
trace left in this way can contribute to the proceduralization
of declarative knowledge (see Anderson’s, 1995, ACT-R theory)
Kormos 315
or to creating memorized solutions (e.g., Logan’s, 1988, in-

stance theory), and in turn it can facilitate L2 acquisition.
4. Making a self-initiated and self-completed repair in L2 is
basically executed in a similar way as the process of making
repairs upon the confirmations or clarification requests of the
interlocutor (Schegloff et al., 1977). The difference between the
two processes is only that in the former case, it is the speaker,
whereas in the latter case, it is the conversational partner who
perceives the error. Instances when corrections or rephrasings
are elicited by the L2 learner’s interlocutor have been termed
pushed output, and they are believed to contribute to success-
ful L2 acquisition considerably (Pica, Holliday, Lewis, & Mor-
genthaler, 1989; Swain, 1985, 1995). Thus, just like pushed
output, self-initiated self-repairs also serve to test hypotheses
about the L2, trigger creative solutions to problems, and ex-
pand the learners’ existing resources (Swain, 1995; Swain &
Lapkin, 1995).
Results and Implications of Empirical Psycholinguistic

Studies on Self-Repair
In the following, studies exploring different aspects of self-

repair behavior from a psycholinguistic perspective will be re-
viewed. Self-corrections are overt manifestations of the monitor-
ing processes. A self-initiated self-completed correction comes
about when the speaker detects that the output has been errone-
ous or inappropriate, halts the speech flow, and finally executes a
correction. In many cases, however, the speaker either notices the
error prior to articulation and repairs it before the utterance is
articulated (covert repairs) or decides not to correct the mistake
in the utterance. It must be noted in advance that these two
phenomena cause serious problems for studying monitoring via
the investigation of self-repairs. Covert repairs can only be ex-
plored reliably under laboratory conditions or with the help of
verbal reports, whereas the decisions of the speaker not to correct
an error can only be analyzed with the help of retrospection or by

means of investigating recognition of errors rather than their
production. As the following review will show, research on L2
self-repairs has made limited use of these research methods. These
methodological issues affect to a great extent the generalizability
of the studies discussed here. The scarcity of research conducted
in the field of L2 self-correction behavior and the fact that most of
these investigations can be considered replications of previous L1
studies often makes it necessary to elaborate on results of L1
self-repair research in detail.
Taxonomies of Self-Repairs and the Psycholinguistic Processes

Underlying Different Types of Self-Corrections
The main types of self-repairs have been of great interest in

speech production research because without a reliable system of
classification, no systematic analyses of the collected data can be
carried out. Early research on L1 self-repair did not classify
repairs according to the speech processes that are involved in
erroneous or inappropriate formulation, but rather according to
the type of the reparandum (e.g., Nooteboom, 1980). In later L1
studies, researchers were concerned with establishing a reliable
system of categorization based on the underlying psycholinguistic
mechanisms. The main issues included the differentiation of re-
pairs of different lapses in grammatical and lexical encoding, as
well as the subdivision of corrections concerning the information
content of the message. Levelt’s (1983) taxonomy, which addressed
these issues, has been widely adopted in L2 speech production
research, despite the fact that repair mechanisms in L2 might be
not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different from those
in L1. However, as will be shown below, the most elaborate systems
of classification of L2 self-corrections have made attempts to
modify Levelt’s taxonomy to explain the idiosyncrasies of L2
self-repair behavior.
As all the taxonomies of L2 self-corrections have drawn on
Levelt’s (1983) system of classification, it is necessary to explicate
Kormos 317
its details. The first type of repair in this taxonomy is related to

the speaker’s problem in conveying information. Because in this
case the current message is replaced by a different one, Levelt calls
this type of repair different repair (D-repair). D-repair originates
from an error in the conceptualizer, which is the module responsi-
ble for planning the informational structure and content repre-
sented in the so-called preverbal plan. In this case, the
conceptualizer either does not order the information appropriately
or encodes inappropriate information, both of which result in an
inadequate preverbal plan. The next type of repair concerns the
manner of expression and is called appropriateness repair. Levelt’s
(1983) framework distinguishes three types of appropriateness
repairs. The first one is ambiguity repair, which corrects ambigu-
ous reference. Appropriate-level repairs aim at specifying the
informational content of the original message more precisely.
Finally, coherence repairs correct the terms that are not coherent
with previously used terminology. Brédart (1991) added a fourth
type to the class of appropriateness repairs, namely, repair for good
language, which involves the replacement of an utterance or part
of an utterance either because it is not in accordance with the
perceived canonical rules of “good language” or because it is
socially inappropriate. (Table 1 contains examples of the most
widely used taxonomy of repairs in L1, which is Levelt’s, 1983,
taxonomy complemented with Brédart’s, 1991, system of classifi-
cation.)
The next comprehensive category of repairs in Levelt’s (1983)
taxonomy is error repair. In the case of errors the preverbal plan
is appropriate, but in the course of the formulation either an
erroneously activated word, or an inappropriate syntactic struc-
ture, or a wrong morpheme or phoneme is selected. Levelt labels
these lexical, syntactic, and phonetic repair, respectively, corre-
sponding to the three main levels of processing in his model. He
defines lexical repair as the correction of “any lexical item, color
words, direction terms, prepositions, articles, etc.” (p. 54), and he
assumes that in the case of a lexical error the wrong lexical entry
is activated and, in turn, articulated. Color words and direction
Table 1
Taxonomy of repairs in L1
Name of Self-Repair Example
Different repairs We gaan rechtdoor offe . . . We komen binnen via

rood, gaan dan rechtdoor naar groen.
We go straight on or . . . We come in via red, go
then straight to green. (Levelt, 1983, p. 51)
Appropriateness repairs
Ambiguity repairs We beginnen in het midden met . . . in het midden
van het papier met een blauw rondje.
We start in the middle with . . . in the middle of
the paper with a blue disc. (Levelt, 1983, p. 52)
Appropriate-level repairs met een blauw vlakje, een blauw rondje aan de
bovenkant
with a blue spot, a blue disc at the upper end
(Levelt, 1983, p. 52)
Coherence repairs Ga je een naar boven, is uh . . . kom je bij geel.
Go you one up, is uh . . . come you to yellow.
(Levelt, 1983, p. 53)
Repairs for good language C’est qu’un con, un idiot pardon.
He is nothing but a damn fool, an idiot sorry.
(Brédart, 1991, p. 127)
Error repairs
Lexical repairs Rechtdoor rood, of sorry, rechtdoor zwart.
Straight on red, or sorry, straight on black.
(Levelt, 1983, p. 53)
Syntactic repairs En zwart . . . van zwart naar rechts naar rood.
And black . . . from black to right to red. (Levelt,
1983, p. 54)
Phonetic repairs Een eenheed, eenheid vanuit de gele stip.
A unut, unit from the yellow dot. (Levelt, 1983,
p. 54)
Covert repairs Dan rechtsaf, uh grijs.
Then right, uh grey. (Levelt, 1983, p. 55)
terms were specifically mentioned in Levelt’s definition because

in his study participants were required to describe visual patterns
Kormos 319
consisting of colored dots that were connected by arcs. In his

taxonomy, syntactic repair involves the correction of a syntactic
construction. Unfortunately, Levelt failed to give a definition of
phonetic repairs.
All the above mentioned repair types have been overt repairs,
but several researchers (e.g., Berg, 1986b; Blackmer & Mitton,
1991; Levelt, 1983, 1989; Postma & Kolk, 1992, 1993; Postma,
Kolk, & Povel, 1990) have pointed out that inappropriate or
erroneous output can also be repaired before articulation. These
studies unequivocally claim that covert repair proceeds in the
same way as overt self-repair. Because the reparandum is not
articulated, one can only infer the existence of this process from
its indirect manifestations such as word or phrase repetitions,
blocking, prolongation, syllabic repetition, or silent pauses
(Postma & Kolk, 1992).
The main strength of Levelt’s (1983) taxonomy is that it
classifies L1 self-corrections in a detailed and psycholinguistically
plausible manner. The fact that Levelt’s (1983) and Brédart’s
(1991) taxonomies include not only the corrections of lapses in
performance but also repairs of inappropriate information, style,
and register indicates that discourse and psycholinguistic per-
spectives are inseparable in speech production, and that Levelt’s
(1989, 1993) theory of speech production can incorporate both of
these perspectives. Nevertheless, several problems can arise when
this system of classification is applied. On the one hand, the
definitions of the subtypes of error repairs are not precise enough,
and therefore, it might be difficult to distinguish certain instances
of error repairs, especially lexical and syntactic error repairs. In
addition, Levelt (1983) does not explain in which category repairs
of morphology would belong.
Similarly to L1 self-repair researchers, analysts of L2 speech
production have also investigated the types of self-corrections.
One of the most systematic and reliable taxonomies of self-repairs
in L2 has been devised by van Hest (1996b). Based on a corpus of
4,700 self-repairs produced by Dutch speakers in their L1 and L2
in three different types of tasks (picture description, storytelling,
and personal interview), van Hest (1996b) complemented Levelt’s

(1983) taxonomy with several new classes of repair, the most
noteworthy of which is conceptual error repair, which is applied
when the speaker has selected a wrong concept. The problem with
this new type of self-correction might be that without retrospec-
tion it can prove to be difficult to distinguish lexical error repairs
from conceptual error repairs. Another innovation in van Hest’s
(1996b) taxonomy was that she included appropriateness syntac-
tic and tense and aspect repairs in the category of appropriateness
repairs (A-repairs). In this case again, it seems to be difficult to
decide whether the speaker repaired erroneous or inappropriate
syntax or tense or has resorted to restructuring due to limited L2
competence.
A recent study that has attempted to address some of the
above mentioned unresolved issues in classifying self-repairs was
carried out by Kormos (1998). On the basis of a corpus of self-
corrections obtained from 30 participants of varying levels of
proficiency and the participants’ retrospective comments, Kormos
also suggested that Levelt’s (1983) taxonomy of L1 self-repairs
needed to be modified so that it could be applied for the analysis
of repairs in L2. She argued that for the analysis of speech samples
elicited under less control than in Levelt’s (1983) study, the cate-
gory of different repairs should be further subdivided into ordering
error repairs (1) and inappropriate information repairs (2). She
also identified a new class of different information repair: message
replacement repair (3), in the case of which the speaker completely
gives up the originally intended message. Within the class of
appropriacy repairs, the study divided Brédart’s (1991) group of
repair for good language into two types of self-corrections: prag-
matic appropriacy repairs (4) and repairs for good language (5).
The former concerns the modification of meaning in context, and
the latter the manner or the eloquence of expression.
(1) Uhm well there’s a big dining table for forty
person. And then we’ve also got er well it’s well the dining
table occupies half of the room.
Kormos 321
Retrospection: I thought, I did not tell you first how big the
room was, so I said that the dining table occupies half of
the room, and then I said what I originally wanted to say.
(Kormos, 1998, p. 54)
(2) you have to we have to make a contract
Retrospection: I realized that it is stupid to say that you
have to make a contract; it’s the restaurant who has to
write it. (Kormos, 1998, p. 54)
(3) we have some er er v—maybe you have vegetarians in
your group
Retrospection: Here the idea of vegetarians suddenly
popped up, and I abandoned what I was going to say
because I would not have been able to list any more types
of food anyway. (Kormos, 1998, p. 55)
(4) it doesn’t it’s not a problem
Retrospection: First I wanted to say “it does not matter,”
but I realized that in a business deal you cannot say “it
does not matter.” (Kormos, 1998, p. 57)
(5) thirty-five per people
Retrospection: First I wanted to say “persons,” but I had
used “persons” several times before, so I said “people.”
(Kormos, 1998, p. 58)
Kormos (1998) also argued that psycholinguistically more
plausible results could be obtained in speech production studies if
error repairs were not classified on the basis of their surface
representations, that is, based on the nature of the reparandum,
but according to the locus of the lapse in the message-processing
phase. Accordingly, an attempt was made to delineate lexical and
grammatical repairs more distinctly. She proposed that the crite-
rion for assigning repairs into these two categories should be
whether the given lexical entry is accessed via the syntactic
building procedures or via lexical access, that is, when the lexical
entry corresponding to the concept specified by the preverbal plan
is retrieved. In the first case, the instance of self-correction should
be classified as grammatical repair (6), and in the second case as
lexical repair (7). Finally, a new category of repairs, rephrasing

repair, has also been proposed. As opposed to error repairs, where
the same preverbal plan is issued, this type of repair involves the
modification of the preverbal plan but leaves the content of the
message unaltered. Kormos suggested that rephrasing repair is,
in many ways, similar to communication strategies (Tarone, 1980)
and is employed when the speaker is uncertain about the correct-
ness of the utterance (8). Consequently, rephrasing repairs indi-
cate underlying competence problems, whereas error repairs
signal lapses of performance.
(6) you have to er rent it er for 35 person uhm it’s
max—minimum minimum yes
Retrospection: I realized that I was not using the right
word. It’s not “maximum,” but “minimum,” since it is a
room for 40 people. (Kormos, 1998, p. 59)
(7) you don’t you aren’t interested in Hungarian food
Retrospection: I realized that another grammatical struc-
ture had to be used here. (Kormos, 1998, p. 62)
(8) we will er reflect er to you in another letter we will
answer you
Retrospection: What happened here was that I was not sure
whether “reflect” really means “answer.” I knew what
“reflect” means, but I do not know whether you can use it
for writing as well, that is, whether it means the same in
writing as in speech that you “reflect on something.” (Kor-
mos, 1998, p. 63)
The Distribution of Self-Repairs
The study of the distribution of self-repairs constitutes an

important field of psycholinguistics because it provides indirect
information about the functioning and the sensitivity of the moni-
tor toward different types of errors. Research in this area in L1
suggests that the monitor is particularly sensitive to lexical errors
(e.g., Brédart, 1991; Levelt, 1983; van Hest, 1996b). The results
Kormos 323
also indicate that the frequency of appropriateness repairs both

in L1 and L2 is affected by task characteristics and the situational
variables of the interaction. Under conditions requiring more
precise expression, such as spatial descriptions, speakers tend to
produce more corrections if they fail to provide accurate informa-
tion (e.g., Levelt, 1983). The results of the studies investigating the
distribution of L2 self-repairs suggest that no considerable differ-
ences can be detected between the general frequency of the various
types of self-repairs in L1 and L2.
Similarly to studies in L1, Fathman (1980) found that for L2,
lexical corrections (50% of all the repairs) outnumbered any other
types of correction in the speech of 75 L2 English-speaking chil-
dren who were asked to describe a cartoon and talk about them-
selves; morphological repairs made up 20%, syntactic repairs 12%,
phonological repairs 3%, and semantic repairs 15%. This she
interpreted, on the one hand, as a result of problems arising from
lack of available time for planning the utterance and, on the other
hand, as a consequence of the tendency for L2 learners to be more
concerned about giving incorrect or inadequate information than
about making structural errors. Although this explanation is
intuitively acceptable, only the ratio of corrected and uncorrected
erroneous lexical items could support it empirically. Fathman also
observed that the most frequent form of repair was substitution
(73% of all the repairs). Lennon (1984) found a similar distribution
of L2 self-repairs in a research project in which 12 German
university students were asked to retell a story in English that
they had previously listened to. The findings suggest that these
advanced learners corrected themselves 23 times only, and that
73% of all the repairs were lexical, 13% phonological, and 13%
syntactic and semantic. In van Hest’s (1996b) study, appropriate-
ness repairs made up 39.7%, error repairs 22.4%, different repairs
10.1%, and covert repairs 15.5% of all the L2 self-corrections. The
remaining L2 repairs, 12.3%, could not be classified in one specific
category with certainty. In comparison with the L1 self-corrections,
error repairs were found to constitute a higher proportion of
self-repairs in the L2 corpus than in the L1 data. Van Hest also
concluded that in tasks requiring more precise expression

(e.g., storytelling) more A-repairs can be found than in tasks with
a less rigid structure (e.g., informal interview).
One of the few studies that have investigated the ratio of
errors and their corrections was carried out by Poulisse (1993).
She differentiated between lexical, morphological, syntactic, and
phonological slips of the tongue, and their corrections found in a
corpus of speech samples produced by Dutch speakers of English.
This database was originally created as part of the Nijmegen
project, which investigated the use of compensatory strategies in
L1 and L2 production (Poulisse, 1990; Poulisse, Bongaerts, &
Kellerman, 1984). The comparison of the different types of slips in
Poulisse’s (1993) study seems to support the results of previous
research that lexical slips are repaired frequently, but, in her
corpus, phonological slips were also often corrected. The latter
finding can be explained with reference to lexical bias found in L1
research on slips of the tongue (e.g., Baars et al., 1975; Garnsey &
Dell, 1984), which predicts that nonexisting words are more fre-
quently corrected than existing ones (Poulisse, 1993).
What Does Error Detection Depend On?
The explanation for the findings described above concerning

the frequency and distribution of the different types of self-repairs
lies in the psycholinguistic mechanisms of error detection. Several
factors such as the availability of attention, the accuracy demand
of the situation, the type of error, and the place where it occurs, as
well as various listener-based discourse constraints, can affect the
detection processes. L1 research in this field has established that
errors are corrected most frequently at the end of the phrasal
constituents (Levelt, 1983). It was assumed that at the beginning
of the phrase the speaker’s attention is occupied by conceptual
planning, but that toward the end of the phrase more attention is
available for monitoring. The investigation of the detection of
errors in L2 speech has taken a different direction. Although
Krashen (1982) envisaged a limited role for monitor use in L2
Kormos 325
production, the influence of his monitor theory cannot be ne-

glected. In pursuit of empirical evidence for and against this
theory, a number of studies focused on the necessary conditions of
noticing inaccuracies. The effect of the cognitive load of the task
and the ease with which the correction can be executed and the
information content of the erroneous word have also been studied.
There are several unresolved issues in this respect. Researchers
disagree on whether efficient monitoring is only possible under
certain conditions, and opinions also differ on what kind of errors
learners attempt to repair.
Research on error detection has been greatly influenced by
the monitor theory (Krashen, 1982), in which Krashen claimed
that monitoring can only be effective under certain limited circum-
stances, that is, when the learner is focused on form, knows the
rule to be applied, and is not restricted by time constraints. In
accordance with Krashen’s assumptions, recent research on task-
based language learning has found that the cognitive complexity
of the task to be executed influences the availability of attention
both on grammatical accuracy and on monitoring (e.g., Foster &
Skehan, 1996; Skehan & Foster, 1996).
On the other hand, in a study conducted with German learn-
ers of English, Green and Hecht (1993) found that although merely
13% of all the errors made by the students were corrected, 81% of
the attempted corrections were successful, which they interpreted
as incompatible with Krashen’s (1982) assumptions. Reacting to
Green and Hecht’s study, Krashen (1994) argued that the high
success rate of self-corrections does not indicate the effectiveness
of monitoring but the tendency for L2 speakers only to attempt to
repair mistakes they find easy to correct. Lennon’s (1994) results
also seem to support Krashen’s argument, as they indicate that
phonological and morphological errors (43%) as well as proform
errors (20%) are corrected most frequently. The high correction
rate of these types of errors can be explained by the fact that these
repairs do not require a major restructuring of the utterance, and
that they can be corrected by applying simple rules of grammar
or memory retrieval of the phonological or morphological forms of

the lexical entries.
Error detection and repair depend not only on available
attention and the ease of correction, but also on the nature of the
inappropriate output. Studies in this field have also analyzed
whether the semantic features of the erroneous word influence
error detection and correction. Both van Hest (1996b) and Poulisse
and Bongaerts (1994) found that content words were more often
corrected than function words. They explained these results by
arguing that due to attentional limitations, the monitoring pro-
cesses of L2 speakers focus more on content words than on func-
tion words, because the former carry more information.
The results concerning differences in the detection of errone-
ous words with low and high information content indicate that in
tasks where the emphasis is on successful communication, the
available attention for monitoring in L2 speech tends to be di-
rected toward meaning rather than form. This implication of
studies on L2 monitoring is also supported by research examining
the accuracy of various aspects of learners’ output in form-focused
and information-centered tasks (e.g., Tarone & Parrish, 1988;
Young, 1988). The findings described above concerning the sensi-
tivity of the monitor are relevant for SLA research in two interre-
lated aspects. First, if monitoring proceeds in the same way as
mechanisms of comprehension as assumed by the perceptual loop
theory, it can be presumed that L2 learners’ attention in monitor-
ing will be distributed in a similar way as upon listening to the
interlocutor’s speech. Second, as comprehension and input proc-
essing are closely related, by knowing what L2 speakers tend to
monitor for in a given type of interaction, one can predict what
aspects of input will be noticed and will become intake (Schmidt,
1990, 1993, 1994; VanPatten, 1994, 1996). This line of reasoning
seems to be supported by the fact that both of the two relevant
principles established by VanPatten (1996) for input processing in
this respect are analogous to the tendencies observed in studies
on L2 self-repairs. Principle 1 states that learners process input
for meaning before they process it for form. According to Principle 2,
Kormos 327
learners can process nonmeaningful form (e.g., third-person sin-

gular -s) only if the processing of informational or communicative
content requires little attention for them. As the results of studies
on the distribution of self-repairs suggest, these principles seem
to apply for the processing of the learners’ own output as well.
The Placing of Cutoff Points in Making the Repair
Besides the issue of error detection, the decision of where to

stop the flow of speech upon the detection of trouble has also been
investigated by several L1 studies. The placing of cutoff points can
be influenced by several factors, such as the well-formedness of
the syllable to be interrupted, the type of the inappropriate output
and the necessary correction, as well as listener-based discourse
constraints. Nooteboom (1980) claimed that the timing of the
command to stop speaking was determined by two competing
forces, “one stemming from the urge to correct the error immedi-
ately and the other from the urge to complete the word in the
process of being spoken” (p. 94). On the other hand, Berg (1986a)
argued that certain linguistic rules determine where speakers
would interrupt their speech. Levelt (1983) and Brédart (1991)
observed that in their corpus of L1 repairs speakers tended to
finish inappropriate words, whereas in other cases they inter-
rupted the erroneous word signalling the error.
The only study investigating L2 self-repairs in this respect
has yielded similar results. Van Hest (1996b) examined how the
language and the type of self-repair influence the time when the
speech flow is interrupted upon the detection of trouble. Interest-
ingly, the analysis of 4,700 self-repairs indicated that L2 speakers
tend to interrupt the erroneous or inappropriate words earlier
than in L1. She assumed that owing to the more controlled nature
of L2 speech processing, L2 learners speak more slowly and, as a
result, have more opportunity to monitor their output. Lacking an
exact measure of corrected versus noncorrected errors, this pre-
sumption would need further support. The frequently made claim
that due to the less automatic nature of L2 speech production
learners have limited attention available for monitoring also

seems to contradict van Hest’s (1996b) argument. One of the
plausible explanations for van Hest’s (1996b) finding can be that,
due to the effects of formal language instruction, where linguistic
accuracy is highly emphasized, her participants seem to have
given preference to the urge of correcting the error quickly over
the urge to complete the inaccurate structure.
Similarly to Levelt’s (1983) and Brédart’s (1991) study, van
Hest (1996b) also found that erroneous words were interrupted
significantly earlier than inappropriate words, which seems to
lend support to the assumption that there are no qualitative
differences between monitoring in L1 and L2 in this respect.
The Structure of Repairs
Another question that has been subject to investigation is

whether the structure of repairs is influenced by any rule-based
constraints. Levelt (1983) and van Wijk and Kempen (1987) pro-
posed several rules to outline the syntactic structure of repairs in
L1 speech production. The first rule, called the constituent rule,
says that “speakers restart their speech at a phrase boundary or
constituent boundary” (Levelt, 1983, p. 75). The second, the well-
formedness rule, elaborates on the first one and describes the
well-formedness conditions of repairs by claiming that an original
utterance <O> plus repair <OR> is well formed if and only if there
is a string of zero or more words <C> to complete the utterance so
that the string <OC or R> is well formed, where C is a completion
of the constituent directly dominating the last element of O
(Levelt, 1983). In other words, this rule says that the utterance
and the repair in L1 have to adhere to the rule of syntactic
coordination (1). Van Wijk and Kempen, however, found that there
are certain exceptions to this rule. In the case of the repair strategy
of lemma substitution—that is, when the syntactic structure
remains intact but an erroneous word is replaced with another
one—the well-formedness rule does not always apply (2).
Kormos 329
(1) to the right is a green, a blue node (Levelt, 1983, p. 79)

(2) the man with the glasses pushes, with the mustache
pushes away the clown (van Wijk & Kempen, 1987, p. 412)
The only study conducted on L2 self-repairs in this respect
(van Hest, 1996b) has investigated the rate of well-formedness of
corrections and the exceptions to the well-formedness rule both in
L1 and L2 speech. Van Hest (1996b) found little difference in the
rate of well-formedness of L1 and L2 self-repairs. Following
Levelt’s (1983) rule of classification, 70% of the L1 self-repairs and
80% of the L2 self-repairs were well formed in her corpus. She
explained the higher proportion of well-formed L2 self-repairs by
presuming that the L2 structures that the participants used might
have been less complex than the L1 structures. Due to the lack of
exact complexity measures, however, this assumption needs fur-
ther support. On the other hand, van Hest’s (1996b) study in the
case of both L1 and L2 self-repairs failed to reproduce the excep-
tions to the well-formedness rules established by van Wijk and
Kempen (1987). She argued that the fact that in van Wijk’s and
Kempen’s study self-repairs were elicited under laboratory condi-
tions by means of a task where there was limited time for monitoring
might have caused the high number of ungrammatical repairs.
These results indicate that the self-repair behavior of L2
learners is also governed by the well-formedness rule. In psychol-
inguistic terms, this suggests that, as with L1 speakers, L2 learn-
ers are able to store the original syntactic structure of their
message in working memory when making the repair. In addition,
they can implement the correction by not only substituting one
lemma with another without reproducing its syntactic environ-
ment, but also by grammatically encoding the relevant part of the
message anew. This also implies that in the majority of cases when
repairs are executed, the whole speech plan is processed again;
that is, speech production does not start from intermediary levels,
such as lexical or phonological encoding (Levelt, 1989).
The diverse results concerning the rate of well-formed re-
pairs in studies with different research designs (e.g., Levelt, 1983;
van Hest, 1996b; van Wijk & Kempen, 1987) are probably a
consequence of the fact that the well-formedness of corrections is
not only a speaker- but also a listener-based discourse phenome-
non. The well-formedness rule says that the reparatum (and a
string of zero or more words) and the reparandum need to be in a
coordinative relationship with each other. Rules of syntactic coor-
dination further specify that only identical phrasal categories can
be conjoined (Radford, 1988); thus upon making the repair, the
speaker signals to the listener which phrase is intended to be
substituted. Without this help, listeners are at a loss in speculating
how far they should go back when implementing the change in the
interpretation. Therefore, speakers will strive to produce well-
formed repairs not only because their original speech plan needs
to be encoded again, but also because they want to aid their
interlocutors. This suggests that the nature of interaction in the
different studies, that is, the presence or absence of the inter-
viewer and the sensitivity for the listeners’ needs, will also affect
the rate of well-formed repairs.
Self-Repairs as Indicators of L2 Learning
Several studies have been carried out to compare the number

and nature of self-repairs with the development of competence and
metalinguistic awareness in L1 (e.g., Evans, 1985; Rogers, 1978)
and in L2 (O’Connor, 1988; van Hest 1996a, 1996b; Verhoeven,
1989). The results indicate that the distribution of self-corrections
is similar in both L1 and L2 learning. Due to limited metalinguistic
awareness at the beginning of the acquisition processes, learners
make more errors and correct a smaller proportion of these mis-
takes than more advanced speakers. On the other hand, with the
general development of language skills, metalinguistic awareness
also increases and speakers make fewer mistakes, and are as-
sumed to have a higher correction rate of their erroneous output.
Owing to a higher degree of automatization, learners’ attention
also seems to shift from lower level lexical, grammatical, and
phonological mistakes to problems arising at the discourse level.
Kormos 331
In a longitudinal study, Verhoeven (1989) investigated the

relationship of L2 self-repairs and the language learning process
of 55 Turkish children living in the Netherlands who were ob-
served for a period of 2 years. The findings of Verhoeven’s study
indicated that the number of phonological corrections and restarts
sharply decreased between the ages of 6 and 7, but later the
number remained constant. He also found a significant positive
correlation between restarts and semantic corrections with L2
proficiency at any age, whereas the number of syntactic correc-
tions only increased between the ages of 6 and 8. The results of
Verhoeven’s study seem to confirm Evans’s (1985) findings for L1
self-repairs, namely, that the number and type of self-corrections
is related to the children’s metalinguistic awareness and oral
language proficiency.
Several studies applied a cross-sectional design to compare
the self-repair behavior of L2 learners at differing levels of profi-
ciency. O’Connor (1988) analyzed the speech of three beginning
and three advanced American speakers of French studying in
France. She hypothesized that less proficient speakers would use
more corrective repairs, whereas the self-corrections of advanced
learners would tend to be anticipatory in nature; that is, they
would be used to avoid possible breakdowns or communication
difficulties, and they would involve discourse-level corrections.
Her hypotheses were borne out by the analysis of the data.
O’Connor also found that it was indeed the nature of the repair
that differed in the case of the two groups of learners and not the
number of repairs themselves. She interpreted these results by
arguing that the lack of automaticity in the speech of beginners
reduces their ability to employ preplanning techniques to avoid
problems. In the case of advanced learners, however, the increase
of automaticity frees the attention for the employment of this
strategy. A study by Lennon (1990) yielded somewhat different
results. He found that after six months’ residence in England, the
L2 speech rate of the participants of his research project went up,
and the number of pauses in their speech decreased, but they
produced more self-corrections at the end of their stay than at the
beginning. Lennon (1990) explained his findings by assuming that

with the increase of language competence, more attention becomes
available for monitoring and self-repairing, and this might result
in an increased number of self-repairs. Van Hest (1996a, 1996b),
on the other hand, found that beginning and intermediate learners
produced about the same number of self-repairs, whereas ad-
vanced learners corrected themselves significantly less frequently.
She claimed that as opposed to advanced speakers, whose produc-
tion had become more error free, both the beginning and interme-
diate group were still in the trial-and-error stage. The results of
these three studies show that with increasing L2 proficiency there
is a shift from simple error repairs to more complex discourse-level
repairs, but the global frequency of self-corrections does not seem
to be affected by the level of L2 competence.
The findings of studies investigating the effect of proficiency
on self-repair behavior have special relevance for theories of
automatization in SLA. On the one hand, owing to the fact that
advanced speakers have more declarative knowledge of the
L2—that is, know more lexical entries, rules of grammar, and so
on—they make fewer errors due to lack of competence than
beginning learners, and as a result, a smaller number of low-level
linguistic error repairs can be found in their speech. On the other
hand, not only do advanced learners know more about the L2, but
they can apply this knowledge in a more efficient way. With the
development of language skills, conscious controlled knowledge,
which is prone to errors when put to use, is gradually replaced by
automatic unconscious rule- or memory-based procedures, which,
if stored correctly, are error free (deKeyser, 1997; Robinson, 1997;
Robinson & Ha, 1993). Moreover, with practice, the strength of
connections between stimulus and response becomes stronger
(McKay, 1982), which is especially relevant in lexical retrieval. The
increased strengthening of links between the conceptual and
lemma level can contribute to the fact that lexical slips of the
tongue due to the erroneous activation of lemmas are less frequent
in the speech of proficient learners (Poulisse, 1993). As a result of
the various mechanisms of the development of automaticity,
Kormos 333
advanced learners make fewer errors, which explains the de-

creased frequency of low-level linguistic error repairs in their
speech. This line of reasoning suggests that error repairs indicate
not yet fully automatized processes; thus they can serve as good
indicators of automaticity in L2 speech production.
The development of automaticity upon L2 acquisition not
only accounts for the fact that L2 learners make a decreasing
number of linguistic error repairs due to the declining frequency
of errors. As mentioned above, automatic processes do not require
attention, so attentional resources are freed for other phases of
speech processing. Therefore, advanced learners can have more
attention available for monitoring at the level of discourse and
content than their less proficient peers, which is reflected in
O’Connor’s (1988) and van Hest’s (1996a, 1966b) finding that
advanced learners produce a higher number of appropriacy re-
pairs.
Implications and Directions for Further Research
This article has attempted to present a state-of-the-art re-

view of the research on self-repair and monitoring processes in L2
acquisition and use. It has been argued that the examination of
these phenomena in a comprehensive psycholinguistic framework
has special relevance for SLA research, because it can reveal new
aspects of consciousness and awareness in language learning as
well as shed light on processes of automatization in speech pro-
duction. I have pointed out how this psycholinguistic perspective
can illuminate differences between processes of L1 and L2 speech
production, monitoring, and self-correction, as well as unite dis-
course and speech processing aspects of L2 production.
The review of the different theories of monitoring in speech
processing has shown that Levelt’s (1989, 1993) and Levelt et al.’s
(in press) perceptual loop theory of monitoring has gained the
most empirical support in L1 research in recent years, and there-
fore seems to account for L2 speech production as well. Research
on L2 self-repairs suggests that mechanisms of L1 and L2
monitoring and self-repair behavior share a number of similari-

ties, in that the distribution and the detection of self-repairs
display an analogous pattern in the processes of both L1 and L2
acquisition and production. Nevertheless, to provide a full account
of monitoring and self-correction in L2, the perceptual loop theory
needs to be complemented with theories of consciousness and
awareness. It has also been pointed out that due to lack of auto-
maticity in L2, monitoring in L1 differs from monitoring in L2 as
regards the amount of attention available for error detection.
Further differences between L1 and L2 processing can be found
in the repair times and the frequency of self-corrections. In addi-
tion, the facts that the L2 speakers’ system of knowledge is
typically incomplete and L2 speakers’ production mechanisms are
not fully automatic result in the use of certain repair mechanisms
(e.g., message replacement repair and rephrasing repair; Kormos,
1998) that are not—or only very rarely—observable in L1 speech.
Several directions for further research can be outlined. One
of these concerns the examination of the allocation of attention
upon monitoring. In the review of the literature on error detection
it was pointed out that without the examination of the ratio of
corrected and uncorrected errors one cannot draw well-founded
conclusions about how L2 speakers’ attentional resources are
divided between monitoring for content and monitoring for form.
More detailed investigation of this issue, which would involve the
analysis of errors and self-repairs at the same time, would be
important for several reasons. First, it can be expected that in
different types of language learning tasks L2 learners allocate
their attentional resources differently, and research in this field
could provide useful insights for second language pedagogy. Sec-
ond, it would be worth examining whether the type of instruction
an L2 learner receives (i.e., form focused vs. communication cen-
tered) and the learning environment (i.e., naturalistic vs. foreign
language setting) influence whether learners pay more attention
to monitoring the form or the content of their message. Third, by
means of experimental research, the effect of teachers’ instruc-
tions on how students should allocate their attention upon
Kormos 335
performing a task could also be studied. The investigation of this

issue would be important, as in this article I have argued that
self-repairs can promote the development of L2 skills in several
ways. Therefore, it would be important to reveal whether the
allocation of attention in a given task can be influenced by aware-
ness raising or focused instruction. Fourth, further research would
be necessary on how the level of L2 competence affects the way L2
speakers manage their attentional resources in monitoring, as the
results of the studies in this field are not yet conclusive.
A comprehensive study of the relationship between self-
repairs and other output variables (e.g., hesitations, the number
and distribution of different types of errors, the complexity of the
learners’ output, etc.) could also provide new insights into how
general characteristics of performance are related to the quantity,
distribution, and structure (e.g., well-formedness) of self-repairs.
By means of the comparison of various measures of fluency and
the distribution and frequency of the different types of self-repairs
more information could also be obtained about the relationship
between processes of automatization and mechanisms involved in
self-correction behavior. In this respect Riggenbach’s (1991) study
on fluency would also be worth replicating with a higher number
of participants.
From the point of view of research methodology it has to be
noted, however, that the correction rate of errors only indirectly
reflects the sensitivity of the monitoring processes, because other
factors such as the difficulty of the implementation of the correc-
tion, the existence of covert repairs, and conscious decisions not to
repair an error also influence what proportion of the erroneous
utterances is corrected. Therefore, another potential direction for
future research can be the study of these aspects of self-repair
behavior under controlled laboratory conditions. One possibility is
inducing learners to pay special attention to accuracy, which could
help with learners not correcting certain errors despite noticing
them. Another possibility is asking participants to read out a
text that contains a number of different linguistic and discourse
problems that they need to correct while reading the text (e.g.,
Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1993).
Complementing the various methods of elicitation with dif-
ferent forms of verbal reports can also yield new insights. By
means of the analysis of the transcripts of retrospective interviews
conducted on the basis of the guidelines set up by Ericsson and
Simon (1993) self-repairs can be classified more reliably, given
that the researcher considers not only the surface representation
of the repairs, but also the speaker’s original communicative
intention. If the participants are asked to verbalize their thought
sequences while performing a task, more information can be
gained about covert repairs and decisions concerning error repair.
Thus verbal reports, if collected with the necessary methodological
rigor, can also prove to be useful complementary tools in the
analysis of self-repairs.
Revised manuscript accepted 30 October 1998
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Language Learning 49:2, June 1999, pp.

Monitoring and Self-Repair in L2

The aim of this article is to review the psycholinguistic

Speech errors have traditionally been seen as exposures of

Judit Kormos, Department of English Applied Linguistics.

language teachers, and psycholinguists during the past decades,

of meaning takes place (e.g., Tarone, 1980; for a comprehensive

Main Psycholinguistic Theories of Monitoring

Because several recent studies in the L2 literature have

reviewed—editor theories, the spreading activation theory of

The Editor Theories of Monitoring

As their name suggests, editor theories of monitoring postu-

unable to intercept erroneous output at intermediary levels. In

The Spreading Activation Theory of Monitoring

Stemberger (1985) and Dell (1986) devised the first compre-

morphemes and from morphemes to phonemes, as well as bottom

The Perceptual Loop Theory of Monitoring

Another influential model of speech production has been

system. Five principal components are distinguished: the concep-

is compared to the original intentions of the speaker. The second

phonological encoding, that is, upon the production of the

The Relevance of Theories of Monitoring for Research on L2

As can be seen from the theoretical considerations and evi-

several questions unanswered, many of which are of special im-

differences in this respect (Harrington & Sawyer, 1992) can influ-

learning (e.g., Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990, 1993, 1994). Fur-

or to creating memorized solutions (e.g., Logan’s, 1988, in-

Results and Implications of Empirical Psycholinguistic

In the following, studies exploring different aspects of self-

an error can only be analyzed with the help of retrospection or by

Taxonomies of Self-Repairs and the Psycholinguistic Processes

The main types of self-repairs have been of great interest in

its details. The first type of repair in this taxonomy is related to

Name of Self-Repair Example

Different repairs We gaan rechtdoor offe . . . We komen binnen via

terms were specifically mentioned in Levelt’s definition because

consisting of colored dots that were connected by arcs. In his

and personal interview), van Hest (1996b) complemented Levelt’s

lexical repair (7). Finally, a new category of repairs, rephrasing

The Distribution of Self-Repairs

The study of the distribution of self-repairs constitutes an

also indicate that the frequency of appropriateness repairs both

concluded that in tasks requiring more precise expression

What Does Error Detection Depend On?

The explanation for the findings described above concerning

production, the influence of his monitor theory cannot be ne-

or memory retrieval of the phonological or morphological forms of

learners can process nonmeaningful form (e.g., third-person sin-

The Placing of Cutoff Points in Making the Repair

Besides the issue of error detection, the decision of where to

learners have limited attention available for monitoring also

The Structure of Repairs

Another question that has been subject to investigation is

(1) to the right is a green, a blue node (Levelt, 1983, p. 79)

Self-Repairs as Indicators of L2 Learning

Several studies have been carried out to compare the number

In a longitudinal study, Verhoeven (1989) investigated the

beginning. Lennon (1990) explained his findings by assuming that

advanced learners make fewer errors, which explains the de-

Implications and Directions for Further Research

This article has attempted to present a state-of-the-art re-

monitoring and self-repair behavior share a number of similari-

performing a task could also be studied. The investigation of this