Other-initiated repair (OIR) sequences have received a lot of interest in the field of ELF; nevertheless, there has not been much in-depth examination of OIR sequences from the perspective of the communication strategies employed by participants to overcome communication difficulties. This study attempts to broaden our understanding of the participants' strategies, namely, the repair initiation and operation methods used for fixing the broken surface of interactions in ELF, particularly in the case of extended repair sequences with multiple OIRs. By using conversation analysis as a research framework, this study investigated the first encounters of 20 dyadic exchanges in an ELF setting performed via Zoom between Japanese students and non-Japanese interlocutors. Our preliminary findings reveal that when a repair is launched by an interlocutor on basic vocabulary without identifying the type of trouble, the recipient of the repair initiator makes a judgment on it. Furthermore, the repair initiating party also demonstrate their assessment of a repair method offered to them. By doing so, both parties take on being a novice or a more knowledgeable expert in terms of linguistic and communicative knowledge in relation to their conversation partner, while also weaving interculturality. Such findings imply that explicit instruction on communication strategies for reducing interactional barriers would assist learners in resolving such issues.
Kuroshima et al. (Sat,) studied this question.