#1050: When Understanding Breaks: Interaction Analysis of Knowledge Construction in Multilingual Science

Across India's multilingual classrooms, science is frequently taught in a language that differs from learners' home languages, producing friction at the concept-language interface that depresses participation and understanding. Studying how breakdowns are detected and repaired in real-time is essential for equitable access to disciplinary explanations. This paper argues that microgenetic "repair" sequences constitute the observable unit of progress in multilingual science discourse. Anchored in a Grade 9 semi-English biology lesson and complemented by student focus group discussions, the analysis identifies triggers for breakdown and traces time-stamped episodes in which understanding is restored through one-word student anchoring, peer-mediated refinement, and teacher-led reframing, alongside partial and no-repair cases. The resulting five-part typology specifies how repair unfolds in whole-class interaction and where it fails from learners' perspectives, yielding designable principles for lesson pacing, visual scaffolding, and question reframing that are feasible under time pressure and redistribute participation authority.