Originally as a linguistic student I am more interested in speakers' actual language behaviour in social life than constructed sentences and abstract rules. That interest makes me preoccupied with the studies of conversation analysis - a subject at the intersection of sociology, linguistics, and communication. My previous research examined successive self-repairs in Mandarin conversation; that is, how participants alter or correct their talk in a successive way and the import of these practices in social interaction. I aim to systematically study sociology and conversation analysis at UCSB, and, with the knowledge to understand more about the organisation of talk-in-interaction in Mandarin and in general and some talk-related social issues in China. Stay tuned.