Or-prefaced third turn self-repairs in student questions

•This study uses conversation analysis to examine student questions.•Or-prefaced third turn self-repairs do not forward substantively equivalent options.•Or-prefaced third turn self-repairs revise initial questions for correctness/relevance.•Participants orient to preference structure and convey distinct interactional goals.•Participants concurrently manage talk and bodily conduct to achieve interactional goals.

Analyzing video-recordings of university-level writing conferences, this conversation analytic study identifies interactional practices through which participants orient to the preference structure of talk-in-interaction. In particular, the study examines students’ or-prefaced third turn self-repairs produced during the earliest moments of the teacher's possible dispreference projection (e.g., short pause, hesitation, and possibly, gaze shift). In addition to displaying their orientation to getting a preferred response via the or-prefaced self-repair, students show their orientation to the correctness and relevance of their initial question formulation. The analyses show the ways in which students as well as teachers establish their divergent institutional goals and approach the task at hand differently. This study has implications for conversation analytic work on turn design, repair, and action projection while broadening the scope of existing research on discourse markers and educational discourse.