Hesitation pauses in conversational interaction of the English Letters and Language Department's student's at the State Islamic University of Malang

The writer is interested in analyzing hesitation pauses used in conversational interaction produced by the English Letters and Language Department s Students at the State Islamic University of Malang. This study is focused on the categorization of hesitation pauses and also the reason of producing hesitation based on the context of situation when the hesitation pauses are produced by the English Letters and Language Department s Students at the State Islamic University of Malang. The researcher hopes that this study gives contribution toward the psycholinguistics study especially on hesitation phenomena.

This study is a descriptive qualitative research as it concerns with the description of hesitation pauses founded in the utterances of English Letters and Language Department s Students at the State Islamic University of Malang used in conversational interaction, and the reason of producing hesitation based on the context of situation. The design requires data presenting form of word and utterances rather than numbers. In order to obtain the valid data, the writer applied observation instruments through recording the speeches of the English Letters and Language Departments students at the State Islamic University of Malang, listening carefully for every dialog or conversation to cross check with the scrip of the speeches, taking note of every possible hesitation pauses, tones and expression, and mostly the utterances are categorized into silent pause and filled pause. The writer found that hesitation pauses take an important role in natural conversation, especially in turn-taking in English conversation. They used silent and filled pauses as a signal to open the conversation, to take place for the speaker in turn-taking, to think first before continuing their speech, and to hold the floor .

Based on the data analysis, the writer has some suggestions that useful for the speakers in speaking. The writer suggest to the speakers to minimize the usage of silent and filled pauses when the speakers wanted to hold the floor, because thus will give bad effect in speech production. The writer also suggests for the next researcher who studied this topic would investigate pauses in turn-taking from speeches of native speaker. So that we can find out more reasons using hesitation pauses.