The Answering Processes of Japanese Learners in Oral Proficiency Interview

The discourse in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI) has been studied from various perspectives. The purpose of this study is to examine the answering processes of Japanese learners in OPI. The OPIs of learners from novice to advanced level were analyzed in this paper focusing on requests for clarification. The results are as follows; 1. The novice learners, analyzed in our data, used many requests for clarification. However, the testers did not recognize that the novice learners wanted them to repeat again. 2. The intermediate learners maintained their communication with testers by repeating their utterance. 3. The advanced level learners used requests for clarification to confirm or clarify what testers intended to ask