Self-Monitoring Foci, Speed, and the Relationship with Pausing Behavior in an EFL Context

Self-monitoring—the ability to detect and correct errors during speech production plays an important role in second language production. Despite its importance, it has received little attention within English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, particularly with regard to self-monitoring foci, speed, and its association with pausing behavior. This study aims to contribute to this area by investigating self-monitoring foci, speed, and the relationship between self-repair and pausing behavior within an EFL context. Sixty six EFL learners were recruited to perform picture-based description tasks. The research employed repeated measures and correlation analysis to address the research questions. The findings revealed that EFL learners frequently made more grammatical repairs compared to other repair types. Grammatical repair also took significantly longer to process than other repair types, implying that Grammatical repair might be challenging for EFL learners. Furthermore, the findings revealed a weak negative correlation between the frequency of Grammatical repair and pauses between clauses, suggesting that between-clause pauses in EFL speech might be associated with self-monitoring process. These insights shed light on the psycholinguistic aspects of self-monitoring in EFL contexts, carrying significant implications for research and theory.