DISCOURSE UNITS THAT SIGNAL CONVERSATION BREAKDOWN DURING GROUP GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING SESSIONS

Counselling programmes in high schools in Kenya are communicative events organised in group or individual sessions to remedy social or academic issues affecting students. Particular breakdowns often arise in such conversation settings due to their informal nature and turn control necessitating conversation repair among the participants. It is therefore imperative to study the conversational nature of guidance and counseling so as to identify inconsistencies that may lead to breakdown and misunderstanding and also the effects of the repair strategies used to address them. With regard to conversation repair, the existing literature has mainly focused on a one on one conversation and classroom setting and not on a highly interactive group counseling sessions. This study, therefore, sought to examine effects of conversation repair strategies employed by teacher-counselors and student-counselees during counseling sessions in selected secondary schools in Kenya.