DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITTEN FEEDBACK FROM A WRITING CENTER AND AN ESL LAB By Hyojeong Kim A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages - Master of Arts 2013 ABSTRACT DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO WRITTEN FEEDBACK FROM A WRITING CENTER AND AN ESL LAB By Hyojeong Kim How is different instructional feedback for academic writing realized in two different tutoring contexts? What is the effect of these different approaches on Korean international students studying in the United States? This research observed the interactions between tutors and tutees in the writing center (WC) and the ESL lab (EL), which have different approaches. This research is a small case study that observed multiple tutoring sessions. Four Korean international students at Michigan State University visited the WC and EL both to receive feedback on their papers. The WC and EL have different purposes for helping student writers, and their different approaches show distinctive features regarding interaction. Tutoring sessions in the WC and EL resulted in several differences – structure of the session, types of feedback, and reflections on the sessions from the student writers. This research is expected to shed light on some of the differences between general writing centers and ESL-specific labs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for supporting me while conducting my research. First, I would like to thank the tutors from the Writing Center and the ESL Lab, and their directors. I would also like to thank the Korean student participants for their kindness and dedication while participating in my research. I especially like to thank my advisor Dr. Charlene Polio who encouraged me to start my study, kept me on the right track, and pushed me up to become a better researcher. I am very thankful that I met her during my MA program, and I will keep her teaching in mind. I must thank Dr. Wataru Suzuki for inspiring me with a lot of ideas in my research and his time to support me. His insight and opinions were incredibly helpful for my research. Rebekah Ewing had an essential role in this study. She gave me direction in editing my thesis and always cheered me on. Throughout my MA program, I was so happy to have a friend like her. Finally, I would like to thank the faculty and my colleagues in the MA TESOL who supported me to finish my study. I am sure that I could not have completed this research without them. I will remember their enormous help.   iii   TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................vii CHAPTER 1   INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................3 Sociocultural Theory............................................................................................................3 ZPD in L2 Writing...............................................................................................................5 Writing Center Pedagogy...................................................................................................10 Research Questions............................................................................................................12 CHAPTER 3 METHODS....................................................................................................................................13 Participants.........................................................................................................................13 Student writers………………………………………………………………...…13 Julie………………………………………………………………………14 John………………………………………………………………………14 Jae……………………………...…………………………………...……15 Ann…………………………...………………..…………………...……15 Writing consultants………………………………………………………………16 Tina………………………………………………………………………16 Amy………………………………………………………………………17 Procedure...........................................................................................................................18 Materials…………………………………………………………………………19 The sessions and interviews……………………………………….……………..19 Data description…………………………………….……………………………20 Revisions…………………………………………..……………………….…….20 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS......................................................................................................................................21 RQ1....................................................................................................................................21 Structure of the tutoring sessions………………………………………………...21 Aspects of writing………………………………………………………………..25 Determining the focus……………………………………………………………29 Identifying and dealing with problems………………………………………..…30 Oral and written feedback………………………………………………..31 Direct feedback and repetition…………………………………………...32 Giving options……………………………………………………………35 RQ2………........................................................................................................................37   iv   Student writers’ perceptions……………………………………………………..37 Revisions…………………………………………………………………………39 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION……………………………………........................................................................42 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………………...50 APPENDIX A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTEES (AFTER THE FIRST TUTORING SESSION)......................................................................................................................................51 APPENDIX B INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTEES (AFTER THE SECOND TUTORING SESSION)................................................................................................................52 APPENDIX C INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTORS........................................................53 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................54   v   LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1 ESL Writers’ Background.............................................................................................14 TABLE 2 Consultants’ Background……………………………..................................................16 TABLE 3 Schedule of Sessions.....................................................................................................20   vi   LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1 A Model of Dyadic Interaction (from Storch, 2002).....................................................5 FIGURE 2 Tutoring Structures in the WC and the EL…………………………………………..21 FIGURE 3 Example of Coding from the EL………………………………………………….…31 FIGURE 4 Regulatory Scale – implicit (strategic) to explicit (from Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994) ………………………………………………………………………………………….………..44     vii   CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Writing skills are essential for success in academic fields, and this is true especially for international students because unlike their speaking skills, in writing, international students can express their ideas without the fear of face-to-face interaction with native speakers. They have more time to organize their ideas and possibly reduce grammar errors. Even though matriculated international students received minimum TOEFL scores to enter the university where they want to study, when they arrive in the US, they encounter difficulties with writing academic papers. At Michigan State University, there are two different facilities to help students, the Writing Center (WC) and ESL Lab (EL). The EL is for international students exclusively and is staffed by ESL instructors, but many international students also use the WC to receive support from native peer tutors. In the About page of the WC website, they write that “… the practice of consultative teaching recognizes students as knowledgeable individuals with valuable ideas and experiences to contribute to the learning situation, teachers as model students committed to learning for and with their students, and both students and teachers as learners responsible for sharing their developing understandings and talents with one another and with the broader community” (“Our Philosophy,” n.d.). The WC is available for both native and nonnative speakers. Through the philosophy of the WC, I assumed that the purported focus is on helping students become better writers, and the tutors are expected to focus on writing for meaning instead of editing and fixing grammatical errors. On the contrary, the EL is for non-native English speaking students. "... offering free tutoring for the students in all aspects of their writing assignments such as reading comprehension, understanding class content, gathering ideas, planning essays, drafting essays and proofreading” (“Our Philosophy,” n.d.).   1   Based on this information, because of their different philosophies, we would expect differences in tutoring sessions in the WC and the EL – structure of the sessions, focus on aspects of writing, and students’ perceptions. This study will attempt to characterize the two types of sessions, and it will consider the views and expectations of the participants in evaluating the success of the sessions.   2   CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW First, I will review fundamental studies that were helpful in conducting this research. These studies concern sociocultural theory, the zone of proximal development, and writing center pedagogy. Sociocultural Theory Sociocultural theory (SCT), conceptualized by L.S. Vygotsky, has many implications for Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. Vygotsky (1978, 1986) suggested a sociocultural perspective of learning that states that learning is social in nature, and constructed in the process of collaboration, interaction, and communication. There are two major concepts that are fundamental to understanding SCT – the mediated mind and the zone of proximal development (ZPD). According to Lantolf (2000), the mediated mind is the most essential concept that Vygotsky suggested, which means that we use symbolic tools such as numbers, music, and, most of all, languages “to mediate and regulate our relationships with others and with ourselves and thus change the nature of these relationships” (p.1). In other words, in SLA, the interrelationship with others and the intrarelationship within ourselves are mediated by the language. In this study, this concept of the mediated mind is related to the interaction during the tutoring session between the tutor and the tutee. During the session, the tutor and the tutee exchange ideas about feedback through the mediation of language, and from this negotiation of meaning, their relationship and also the learners’ perception of feedback will be transformed. In this process, the tutor and the tutee convey their knowledge of writing and language as well. This concept of the mediated mind is related to another essential concept, the ZPD. According to Lantolf (2000), this is a metaphor for the distance between what a learner can do   3   alone and what the learner can do with help. Vygotsky (1987) stated, children can do more and solve difficult tasks with collaboration and assistance. In an ESL context, this is applicable to the teacher-student, expert-novice, and even peer interactions while considering the view of ZPD. Storch (2002) conducted a study examining different patterns of interactions. In her study, 10 pairs of adult ESL students participated and performed written tasks. The patterns of students’ dyadic interaction were analyzed to show the role relationships. Equality and mutuality were used as two indexes for these patterns of interactions. Equality refers to the equal control of controlling a task, and mutuality describes levels of engaging interactions between pairs in a task in terms of sharing feedback and ideas. From Quadrant 1 to Quadrant 4, patterns are labeled “collaborative,” “dominant/dominant,” “dominant/passive,” “expert/novice.” This study showed that the collaborative pattern of interaction was the predominant pattern of the four interaction types. Figure 1 indicates the model of dyadic interaction.   4   Figure 1 - A Model of Dyadic Interaction (from Storch, 2002) In my study, dyadic interaction between tutors and tutees will be analyzed. Thus, considering the ZPD different patterns of interaction are expected to be observed between the tutors and tutees while conferencing in students’ papers. Then, how the ZPD is constructed in L2 writing? There are many studies that consider the ZPD in L2 writing. ZPD in L2 Writing In L2 writing research, the Vygotskian notion of SCT is patent in collaborative writing. Donato (1994) and Storch (2002) stated that in collaborative writing, the role of the expert is mediated while helping the learners to co-construct the text and to provide scaffolding to their partners. Brooks and Swain (2009) stated that the interaction in collaborative writing accelerates the learners’ acquisition of new language to help learners to solve problems with peers, and in   5   this process, the learners “scaffold their language learning, creating their ZPD” (p.60; 62). Peer interactions scaffold language learning in L2 writing in the practices of collaborative writing. Brooks and Swain (2009) studied languaging in collaborative writing. In their research, four adult ESL learners participated, and different tasks related to their writing were implemented to see the different types of expertise in these collaborative activities, and the quantity and quality of the expertise. The participants wrote a story collaboratively in pairs, and then they compared their story to a reformulation of their original story. While comparing the two texts, they noticed differences between their own story and the reformulation, and the researcher asked the learners why those changes were made. Their writing and noticing tasks were video recorded, and while watching the video recordings of their tasks, the learners had augmented stimulated recall sessions. One week after these tasks, the students were given their original texts, and asked to make changes of what they discussed and noticed during the initial tasks. In their study, the researchers analyzed the data from each task. In the collaborative writing task session, they categorized the problems which the learners encountered, and divided them into three types of resolution in terms of lexis-based and form-based as well as resolved correctly, resolved incorrectly, and unresolved errors. From this section, the researchers found that working with peers, the learners solved most of the lexis and form-based problems correctly. In the posttest section, through linking posttests to sources of expertise, learners were provided assistance from various sources of expertise – peers, reformulations, and the researcher – and these sources provided opportunities for students’ learning. With the analysis of the posttest results, regardless of the sources of the expertise, the expertise from the interaction facilitated opportunities for learners to improve.   6   From their research, Brooks and Swain concluded that “each successive layering of assistance or addition of mediation to the activity helped the participants construct a ZPD to resolve language difficulties that arouse (p. 79)”. In the process of task completion, the learners were able to construct the ZPD, and this would help learners to accomplish other takes alone later. According to Vygotsky (1987), this is what a learner “is able to do in collaboration today he [sic] will be able to do independently tomorrow” (p. 211). Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) applied the Vygotskian social cultural perspective and the notion of zone of proximal development (ZPD) to the effects of corrective feedback on students written texts. Taking this perspective, according to Aljaafreh and Lantolf, corrective feedback needs to be adjusted to the individual learner, and this adjustment “must be collaboratively negotiated on-line with the learner” (p. 466). In this view, they analyzed the data to see “how the negotiation of corrective feedback, or other-regulation, in the ZPD promotes learning” (p. 468). In their study, students in a ZPD group had tutorial sessions on their writing, and the sessions were audiotaped and analyzed later. Four grammatical features –articles, tense marking, use of prepositions, and modal verbs – were selected and corrected. In each tutorial session, the learners read their essays, underlined and corrected their errors. After that, the tutor drew students’ attention to the errors which the learners failed to correct, asked questions about the erroneous sentences, and after several trials of eliciting the learners’ ability to correct the errors, the tutor gave them the answers. As developmental criteria, the researchers searched for signals of improvement on students’ writings, and used five transitional levels which show students’ development. In the analysis of the data, by applying “the collaborative frame as a source of feedback (p. 471)”, Aljaafreh and Lantolf reflected on the stages of how the tutor facilitated learning   7   during the session. As a result, the tutorial sessions showed that the different ZPDs were constructed depending on the learners as well as the structures. Moreover, they also observed how the learners’ development possibly arose in response to the assistance from the tutor. While Aljaafreh and Lantolf argued that in the process of interaction with others, learning is promoted, the crucial characteristic of facilitation is that the expertise providing assistance under control which helps the learner themselves to develop their own capacity further in learning. In other words, this means that in the process of interaction with the novice, the expert should not provide the answers to the novice, but scaffold within the ability of learners to accomplish and advance within their ZPD. This conclusion has implications for the tutoring sessions in the WC and EL. Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) provided an important view of negative feedback and its interrelationship to the development of learning. With this view, Nassaji and Swain (2000) conducted a study to examine the difference between corrective feedback within a learner’s ZPD and feedback irrespective of ZPD. Two Korean female ESL students participated in this study, and one student received error treatment within her ZPD, and the other student received random feedback. During the four tutoring sessions, the interactions were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed. After the tutoring sessions, the students took tests about the knowledge of articles. The result of the study shows that feedback within the learners’ ZPD is more effective than random feedback. However, in these studies, researchers focused only on grammar, not on content of the students’ writing, and only small number of students participated in these studies. With a sociocultural approach, Storch and Wigglesworth (2010) investigated which feedback is effective in terms of uptake and retention. Most participants were in an MA program, and they were advanced learners of English. Participants took part in three different sessions in   8   pairs. In session 1, pairs wrote a text describing a graphic prompt for 30 minutes and their conversation was recorded. In session 2, for 15 minutes, the pairs received feedback on their writings with reformulations or symbols. Participants discussed the feedback and they received the original version of their writings without feedback. They revised their papers for 30 minutes, and their conversation was recorded. In session 3, each individual participant rewrote the text with the same prompt in session 1. In this study, Storch and Wigglesworth found that uptake occurred more when the students received editing than when they received reformulation. Also, they stated that because the focus of reformulation was at phrase and sentence level, and that of editing was at word level, it is difficult to analyze uptake from this data. In relation to learner engagement and uptake, the researchers concluded that the more the learner engaged with the feedback, the higher the uptake they achieved. Suzuki (2012) conducted research about students’ engagement in writing and its relationship to their revisions. In his study, 24 Japanese learners of English composed an essay and received direct written feedback on their writings. Students were asked to write down explanations about why their grammar and lexis were corrected, and then revised their papers while looking at their original papers. The findings of this study showed that learners’ written language episodes (WLEs) were more focused on grammar than lexis learners’ engagement. Also, WLEs integrated into their revisions, and accuracy of their writing improved in their revisions. Unfortunately, most of studies didn’t show the cause and effect of giving scaffolded feedback as they were not experimental studies. The exception is Nassaji and Swain (2000), but they had only two participants. The previous studies also focused on students’ learning without embracing multiple perspectives such as teachers’ perceptions of giving different types of   9   feedback, focuses of different aspects of writing, and various facets of interaction. Thus, this study will triangulate tutoring interactions with tutors’ and tutees’ perceptions of the sessions while focusing on various aspects of students’ writing. Because this study will observe the differences between the WC and the EL, now I will next discuss studies related to the WC. Writing Center Pedagogy Many studies have focused on writing centers (WC) and examined the effect of tutorstudent interactions on writing, different tutoring practices between peer and professional tutors, and the different types of interactions between tutors and nonnative speakers (NNSs) and tutors and native speakers (NSs). Williams and Severino (2004) suggested future research on WCs. They wrote that if students’ participation has an effect on revising their writing, “what are the specific discourse characteristics of sessions with greater student participation, and how can tutors foster them (p.169)?” Williams (2004) studied the interaction between tutors and tutees at the WC and the effect of it in the revision of students’ writings. The results of this study were 1) the focus of discussion was mostly the same as the focus of revision, 2) surface-level features were more revised than text-based problems, 3) explicit feedback was more revised than implicit feedback, 4) writer response to the tutor feedback had an impact on revision, 5) text-based revisions were related to the negotiations taking place during the tutoring session, and 6) even though students revised much from their first paper, they didn’t receive higher scores on their revision. However, the participants were generation 1.5 undergraduate students, and the tutors were peer editors, and she mentioned that with international students and professional tutors, the results might be different. Weigle and Nelson (2004) studied tutor roles and perceptions of tutorial success, and   10   concluded that peer editors are good for native speakers; for students who need to improve in English proficiency, professional tutors may be more helpful. They characterized the elements of good tutoring sessions as “student talk rather than tutor talk, a focus on content and organization rather than grammar, the negotiation of meaning, and tutor questions (p.203)”. However, even though there is a lot of literature about effective tutor roles, there is little research that specifies the contexts that are perceived as beneficial for NNS tutees and contribute to successful tutoring sessions. Goldstein and Conrad (1990) emphasized the value of conferencing and its effectiveness for students to “control the interaction, actively participate, and clarify their teachers’ responses” (p. 443). In this study, 21 advanced ESL learners wrote multiple papers, and had conferences to discuss their papers. The students also received the written feedback on their papers. The conferences were audio-recorded, and each draft of the students’ papers was collected. Goldstein and Conrad found that discourse features and the amount of input varied depending on students. Also, students who participated in conferencing and negotiation of meaning improved more in their revisions. They stated that even though there is a lot of research on conferencing as a role of initiating students to provide input, they didn’t find consensus on this issue. They concluded that depending on the student, the amount of contribution to input in conferencing is different. They also argued that the different teacher roles in the response of students’ individual differences would also need to be considered. Cultural diversity also will take a part of the different interactions between the teacher and the students. “In sum, instructional events such as conferences are dynamic, lending themselves to the myriad influences and interpretation of their participants” (p.456). Informed by the studies above and the perspective of SCT, in my study, Korean   11   international students as novice writers received help from the expert tutors through verbal interaction. Because of the interaction in the two different contexts – WC and EL, there may be a variety of different interactions between tutors and tutees constructing and developing student writers’ ZPD. From these previous studies, I observed several points that will be studied further about the interaction between tutors and tutees at the WC. First, there are no studies comparing different facilities –WC and EL– that have different stated approaches. Second, there are not many studies about how these different approaches affect international student writers. Thus, this study examines the differences in the type of feedback that students receive in the two contexts and the students’ perceived effect on their writing. Feedback in my study means tutors’ responses to the errors in students’ papers and their efforts to correct them. Based on previous studies, my research questions follow. Research Questions 1. What are the differences and similarities between the instructional approaches at the WC and the EL and how is different instructional feedback for academic writing realized in two different tutoring contexts? a. What aspects of writing are focused on? b. Who takes the lead in determining the focus? c. How are problems identified and dealt with? 2. What is the effect of these different approaches on Korean students studying in the United States? a. What are their perceptions of the sessions? b. How do they revise their writing in response to the tutoring?   12   CHAPTER 3: METHODS Participants Participants included four Korean international students enrolled in the fall 2012 semester at Michigan State University (MSU), and two tutors - one from the WC and one from the EL. Participants were recruited via e-mail to the WC tutors and through a Facebook message on the Korean Student Organization page. The tutors and the students voluntarily participated in this study by sending emails to the researcher. Each student used both the WC and the EL to receive feedback on their papers for their courses during one hour tutoring sessions. The papers were for one of the courses they were taking in the fall 2012 semester. In each session, students brought different papers that they were working on. Because students visited both facilities twice, four times in total for the entire semester, during this participation, they brought four different papers. Student writers. The student writers in this study included four Korean international students at MSU. There were three undergraduates and one graduate student. All of them are native speakers of Korean, with an age range from 20 to 25. All the student writers started studying English in Korea, which is normal because in Korea, every student studies English from third grade in elementary school. However, Korea is an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, and the purpose of learning English is not to use in the real world, but to study as one of other disciplines in the curriculum, and to get a high score on exams. Because of this, English instruction in Korea focuses on developing the skills of listening, reading, and grammar. Thus, in my experience, Korean international students have a hard time communicating and writing in an academic context, especially when they enter college in the US right after graduating from high   13   school in Korea. For this reason, Korean undergraduate students in the US are likely to be those who moved to the US during their high school years, and then enter college. This is the reason for a long period of stay in the US among undergraduate students as Table 1 shows. Table 1 shows the background of each student writers. Table 1. ESL Writers’ Background Name Gender (pseudonym) Julie John Jae Ann Female Male Male Female Major/Year Duration of stay in the U.S. Supply Chain management/Senior Packaging/Senior Psychology/Sophomore Communication/First year (MA) 8 years 6 years 4 years 3 months Julie. Julie was a senior undergraduate student in Supply Chain Management. She went to high school in Guam ad had been living in English-speaking countries including the US for almost 8 years. She had been visiting the WC often to receive feedback on her papers. She was used to interacting with the WC tutors, and looked comfortable while conferencing her papers. However, she had never used the EL, and she didn’t know about the EL and what it did for ESL students. She participated in this research actively by asking many questions to the tutors. She spoke English without hesitations, but wanted to learn native-like expressions in writing and writing skills during her participation. In the interview with her, she said that she wanted to speak in Korean with me. It seemed that she was struggling to accomplish high English proficiency. In her tutoring sessions, her focuses of revision were on grammar, organization, and transitions. John. John was a senior year undergraduate student in Packaging. He had been living in the US for 6 years. In the first interview, he said that he used the WC only once, and he had never heard about the EL before. This is what he said about the reason that he visited the WC   14   only once: When I used the WC before, the tutor was like a student, and changed the sentences which I thought were correct and didn’t give detailed feedback on my paper. She corrected minor errors without understanding the whole organization of the paper. That was my first experience using the WC. After that, I didn’t use the WC. [Translation from Korean] (John, Interview, October 8, 2012) While participating in this research, he tried hard to interact with the tutors and asked several questions about writing. In the WC, he was especially uncomfortable reading his papers aloud, and he said that he was disappointed with himself because it was difficult to read aloud. During the sessions, he wanted to focus on grammar, academic writing, and the organization of the paper. Jae. Jae was a sophomore undergraduate student in Psychology. He came to the US to enter high school and had been living in the US for four years. He had never used the WC or the EL before even though he had heard about both of them. He said that from one of his basic writing courses, the students were asked to use the WC to review their papers, and then they got stamps to receive extra credit for the class. However, he said that it annoyed him to go to the WC or EL. His focus of revision was to complete the professor’s assignment including every requirement, and to use variety of vocabulary by reducing the redundancy of using the same words in his papers. He said that this is the way that he could receive better scores on his papers. For him, receiving a high score affected choosing between the WC and the EL. He was reticent in interacting with tutors. Ann. Ann was a first-year graduate student in Communication. She had just arrived in the US, so she was trying to adjust to the new academic context. Before coming to the US, she obtained her MA degree in Korea, but she said she was doing her second MA here in order to   15   apply for a Ph. D in the US. Even though she had recently arrived here, she said she wrote her papers and master’s thesis in English in Korea, so her proficiency in writing seemed to be in the high-intermediate or advanced level. Because her papers were written within a specific academic context that contained field-specific terminology; during the tutoring sessions, she explained the words and some concepts to the tutors. Writing consultants. In the WC, writing consultants can be undergraduate or graduate students. The tutor in the WC said that for an undergraduate student to become a WC consultant, they must take courses to be a tutor, and graduate students do not have to take the courses, but they have ‘hands-on’ training in the WC. In the process of this training, graduate students observe sessions from other tutors and learn how to consult with tutees. From this training, tutors develop their teaching tactics and apply them to their clients. On the other hand, in the EL, consultants are experienced ESL tutors, so undergraduate students cannot tutor in the EL. Also, the consultants do not have training sessions beforehand. Two writing consultants, one from the WC and one from the EL participated in this research. Table 2 shows information about consultants. Table 2. Consultants’ Background Writing Name Gender Facilities (pseudonym) Major Year Consulting Experience WC Tina Female Sociology 2nd year doctoral 3rd semester EL Amy Female Teaching Certification for ESL K-12 NA 3rd semester Tina. Tina was a WC consultant who was a second year doctoral student in Sociology. She was joyful and laughed a lot during the sessions. Because of her bright personality, student   16   writers in this study looked comfortable communicating with her. She was in her 3rd semester in the WC, and she said that she had been reading a variety of writings both by native English speaker and nonnative speaker writers. Below is her teaching philosophy as a WC tutor for all students. …getting students try to.. think of words themselves rather than always giving them the words… I gave him a few to pick from.. and try to encourage them to make the choices you want them to have ownership in the process. So.. instead of saying, always, change this, fix that, you are saying.. um.. you know, make these corrections overall… I try to give them options as much as possible.. like you can make this singular and add ‘the’ or you can make this plural and leave it is that.. so that way gives them as much choices as possible… (Tina, first interview, October 8, 2012) Amy. Amy was an EL consultant who was working toward achieving her teaching certification. Besides working in the EL, she was teaching writing for international students at English Language Center at MSU. In her class and in the EL, she had been reading a number of international student writers’ papers, and she said that from a teacher’s perspective, she was trying to help problems in students’ papers (Amy, interview, October 16, 2012). From the interview with her, I could understand her teaching philosophy as an EL tutor. … It’s I am definitely trying make sure that I am more of an educational opportunity which is the goal for the writing lab.. is that you actually learn from coming in.. cause it’s.. you know.. specifically for ESL students to help them get better writing their own paper.. so.. um.. I don’t write any other corrections, so I   17   try to make it more teaching opportunity than just correcting your paper opportunity... (Amy, first interview, October 16, 2012) From the tutoring sessions, I found out that tutors’ philosophies did not always match with their practices. In the WC, Tina corrected students’ errors directly without giving them options, and this is different from what she mentioned in the first interview. This occurred when she gave feedback on students’ grammatical errors (e.g., “What you should do is just separate that out”, “I would make this ‘moreover’, “I would make a period and starting a new sentence”). In addition to the tutors’ philosophies, in the interviews, Tina and Amy told me about the training they had. Tina … there is a tutoring handbook that we endorse, but I don’t know who actually reads it cover to cover... undergraduates have to do a training... a course. Graduate students don’t have to do a course... but we do have to do like a mentoring system where.. for two weeks... sat and listened on sessions.. and learned from other... writing center clients and tutor interactions. Um.. so it’s like a very hands-on training. (Tina, first interview, October 8, 2012) Amy For training for the lab, mostly it’s kind of sitting down, and talking one on one with the Director… for half an hour or an hour.. which I did last fall… to kind of have a expectations of how all the lab works. (Amy, first interview, October 16, 2012) Procedure To analyze the interaction between the tutor and the student writers, in this study, four different sources of data were collected and analyzed – recordings of tutoring sessions, students’ papers with tutor’s feedback on them, revisions, and interviews of the tutors and tutees after each   18   session. Materials The WC and EL are facilities to help student writers. With the tutors in those facilities, student writers receive native peers’ feedback on their papers, and also they have chance to discuss their papers and concerns about what they wrote. In this study as well, the student writers visited the WC and the EL to receive feedback on their papers that they were working on that semester. Most participants had more than four papers they had to write during the semester. When they visited the WC and the EL, they brought different papers for each session. Julie, John, and Jae who were undergraduate students had less than five pages per paper which was shorter than Ann’s, a graduate student I limited the length of the paper two to five pages per tutoring session, which took thirty minutes to one hour, normally. Because the students’ papers were related to the classes that they were taking, the topics (e.g., psychology, management) and genres (e.g., research proposal, book review) of the papers were diverse. The sessions and interviews. Each tutoring session took thirty minutes to one hour. To record their interaction clearly, tutoring sessions were held in private rooms in the WC and the EL. Two recorders were set to record the conference between the tutor and the tutee. I sat in the corner of the room and read books or did something else to show that I was not concentrating what they were doing and to elicit natural interaction. Sitting with others in the same room is a common occurrence in the WC and the EL. When student writers receive feedback on their papers, they sit in a large room with other tutors and tutees. Thus, the interaction occurred within the usual context. To make an effort to counterbalance the order of visiting both facilities, among the four student writers, two of them visited the WC first, and the others visited the EL first. After each tutoring session, I interviewed both of the consultants and the student writers about the sessions (See appendix A, B, and C), and their interviews were conducted separately. Table 3   19   shows the schedule of sessions. Table 3. Schedule of Sessions Writer 1st Session/ Consultant Julie 10-9-12/Tina John 10-8-12/Tina Jae 10-23-12/Amy Ann 10-16-12/Amy 2nd Session/ Consultant 10-15-12/Tina 10-22-12/Tina 10-25-12/Amy 10-18-12/Amy 3rd Session/ Consultant 10-18-12/Amy 11-6-12/Amy 11-9-12/Tina 10-30-12/Tina 4th Session/ Consultant 10-30-12/Amy 11-13-12/Amy 11-27-12/Tina 11-12-12/Tina Data Transcription. Every interaction and interview both from the WC and the EL was recorded and analyzed. The interview data from the student writers were translated into English because the students were Korean native speakers. Even though they seemed to be fluent English speakers, they preferred speaking in Korean in their interviews. The translation was done by me, a native speaker of Korean. Revisions. Students’ papers that had feedback from the tutors were collected and copied immediately after each session. After the student writers finished revising their papers, they sent their revisions to me via email. The final versions of their papers were analyzed to see how they incorporated tutors’ feedback in their revisions.   20   CHAPTER 4: RESULTS RQ1 Tutoring sessions at the WC and the EL had numerous differences. Below are the results of my study in relation to my first research question, “What are the differences and similarities between the instructional approaches at the WC and the EL and how is different instructional feedback for academic writing realized in two different tutoring contexts?” Structure of the tutoring sessions The structure of the tutoring sessions was different in the WC and the EL. The figure below shows the distinct features of the structure of the WC and the EL. Figure 2 - Tutoring Structures in the WC and the EL The tutors from the two facilities followed different procedures, and these procedures were not   21   always the same. The stages before moving into students’ papers were flexible. The main differences between the structures are who reads the papers, and how to read and give feedback on papers. Below are two different examples of tutoring procedures and their moves from the WC and the EL. Tutoring structure in the WC Excerpt #1: Julie and Tina, Session 1, October 9, 2012 (Greeting) Greeting 1. Tina: What paper are you working on? Asking questions about the paper 2. Julie: This paper is about IAH class... 3. Tina: What did the professor… did the professor give you anything else in the prompt about what they wanted you to write about? 4. Julie: …There are some articles that I also read… 5. Tina: Okay. So your teacher wants outside sources? 6. Julie: Yeah... together… 7. Tina: Do you know how many you have to have? 8. Julie: Yes. Three. 9. Tina: Do you have all three there? 10. Julie: Uh-huh. 11. Tina: …You know when is this paper due? Just have curiosity. 12. Julie: Next week.   22   13. Tina: Okay. What do you specifically want to work on this paper… like what needs to be strengthened? Asking about the focus of revision 14. Julie: Probably grammar wise and content flow… 15. Tina: (Taking notes) … So have you been to the writing center before? 16. Julie: Yes. 17. Tina: …So you know that you read out loud and so the way I let you to stop every each paragraph and go through… so whenever you are ready, start. Explaining the procedure 18. Julie: (Reading a paragraph) Student reading aloud a paragraph (Giving feedback) Giving feedback (Asking about additional questions) Asking about additional questions (Closing) Closing After Julie read a paragraph, Tina and Julie corrected the errors on the paragraph. When they finished conferencing on a paragraph, Julie read another paragraph, and they repeated the same procedures. Tutoring structure in the EL Excerpt #2: Jae and Amy, Session 1, October 23, 2012   23   (Greeting) Greeting 1. Amy: Do you have the assignment? The professor’s assignment? Asking for the teacher’s assignment Figure 4 (cont’d) 2. Jae: Oh.. I am supposed to bring it? 3. Amy: Yeah, next time. You can bring it next time. 4. Jae: Cause I know exactly what is about… so… (Ellipsis) 5. Amy: Okay. What is this paper? Asking questions about the paper 6. Jae: It’s about my psychology paper for personality… 7. Amy: So, what’s your goal with the paper? Asking for the focus of revision 8. Jae: … mostly grammar error… repetition of words… 9. Amy: Okay. I will look at those when I go through. I normally do when I go through papers, I read one or two paragraphs, and I make little marks that we can go back to... and if anything doesn’t make sense that I wrote down, always ask me. Explaining the procedure 10. Jae: Alright. 11. Amy: (Reading a couple of paragraphs and putting marks on them) … Alright. Just a few minor changes here…   Tutor reading 1~2 paragraphs & Giving feedback 24   (Asking about additional questions) Asking about additional questions (Closing) Closing After this conversation above, Amy and Jae looked over the grammar and the word choices which Amy put marks on. When they finished correcting errors in some paragraphs, Amy read other paragraphs, and went through the same procedure over and over again. The most striking difference between the procedures of the WC and the EL is how tutors identified errors in the students’ papers. In the WC, the tutor made tutees read a paragraph of their papers out loud and gave feedback on it. Sometimes, student writers noticed and corrected their errors while reading aloud. After correcting the errors, they moved to the next paragraph, and then conducted the same process. On the other hand, at the EL, the tutor silently read a couple of paragraphs of the students’ papers, gave feedback on them, and then repeated the same procedure. Aspects of writing Aspects of writing focused on during the sessions were different depending on the purpose of papers and the writers’ main concerns about their writing skills. Student writers wanted to focus on grammar, sentence flow, transitions, style, organization, logical flow, content details, professionalism, following professors’ prompts, and clarification. However, sometimes, after tutoring sessions, tutors and tutees recalled their focuses differently. Below is a reflection from Ann and Amy on the same session. I wanted to focus on the general flow of my paper, especially logical flow, and grammar. However, the tutor focused on grammar… I had a part that I thought she would point out because I knew that the part was not good in   25   terms of organization, but she passed the part without saying anything. I think my professor will point out the part. So, I felt that she only focused on sentence structure and grammar, not content of my paper. I think this is my research proposal, and she doesn’t know about my field, so she focused on grammar. [Translation from Korean] (Ann, interview after first session at the EL, October 16, 2012) Ann reflected that her focus of revision and Amy’s focus was different. Ann mentioned that this discordance occurred because Amy did not understand the content of her field of study, and could not focus on the content of the paper, but rather on grammar and surface level issues. On the other hand, Amy reflected about what she focused on differently. … Not so much grammar as.. usually grammar is ended up with being fixed, but it was just kind of the clarity.. of the paper and then how can I help.. make sure that her ideas came through… clearly… which usually comes with fixing a little grammar… but it’s not so much my goal of “okay, how can I make this grammar correct.” (Amy, interview after first session with Ann, October 16, 2012) Amy said that she focused on the clarity of the paper and fixing grammar was for this purpose, not only for accomplishing a grammatically correct paper. Here, there was a discrepancy between the tutor and the tutee. Excerpt #3 shows the most frequent patterns of interaction between Ann and Amy. According to the marks that Amy put while she read the paragraph (which are underlined in Excerpt #3), Ann corrected the errors. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #3, Errors are underlined) In these days, suicide rate increases and becomes as a social problem. Especially, mental health   26   is paid attention from increasing adolescence and young adults’ suicide. In fact, suicide is the third leading cause of death among from teens to mid-twenties and the second among from midtwenties and mid-thirties in 2005… Excerpt #3: Ann and Amy, Session 1, October 18, 2012 1. Ann: (Looking at marks in front of suicide) um.. a?? 2. Amy: but for a, definitely it’s an article that’s needed, right? Um.. this is.. this is a specifi c rate, right? So, it’s specific, then we want… 3. Ann: the 4. Amy: the, good. 5. Ann: a 6. Amy: So, let’s look at this one, right? So.. Especially mental health…….. for right here, t his sentence.. what I am understanding is… um.. are you trying to show.. like a cause and effect… relationship? 7. Ann: yeah. 8. Amy: like.. we are paying attention to.. mental health… due to this, right? 9. Ann: hmm (positive response) 10. Amy: so right here, the word we are connecting these two ideas needs to be a word that will show us.. more of cause and effect. 11. Ann: hmm… because of? 12. Amy: Exactly. Good job. 13. Ann: is it single… 14. Amy: You’ve got the right.. agreement for.. the.. subject, I promise the reason I drew the line all the way.. down to 2005.. is..   27   15. Ann: Ah! was 16. Amy: You got it? Good. (laugh) After Amy read and marked up Ann’s paper, Amy had Ann correct the errors. When Ann had difficulties finding the answers, Amy helped her. In this session, they had this pattern of interaction, and as I mentioned above, Ann reflected that this session focused on grammar, not content, but Amy said that this session was for clarity of the paper. From the above interaction, it is obvious that Ann edited words, such as the, because of, and was. Ann seemed to think that because she edited and put those words in her paper, the focus of the session was on grammar, not content. On the other hand, Amy tried to help Ann to use right words to accomplish the clarity of the paper. This excerpt and reflection above show that the focus of editing was the content of the paper. However, student writers would think differently, especially when the correction was on the surface level of change and adding or deleting one or two words in a sentence. There were different reflections from the tutor and the tutee, thus I analyzed Ann’s paper after the tutoring session. Because on the paper Ann wrote words and some sentences, I could see the main focus of the tutor. From what she wrote on her paper, two thirds of corrections were related to grammatical errors, which were articles, plural, and word forms. This is why Ann thought that Amy focused only on grammar, which was different from Ann’s focus of the paper, on the general flow. Amy said that to enhance the clarity of the paper, grammar had to be corrected. Even though grammatical errors were corrected more than content errors, the aim of the correction was not correct grammar, but the clarity of the paper. However, still, it did not match with Ann’s focus.   28   Determining the focus In every session, Tina and Amy asked student writers about the focus of the paper or the focus of revision. Sometimes the student writers brought the professor’s assignment or stated their focus of the revision. In addition to the writers’ focus, while reading or listening to paragraphs from the students’ papers, both tutors corrected grammatical errors or commented on the content of the paper. Thus, determining the focus of the feedback depended on both the tutor and the tutee. Excerpt #4 shows the focus of feedback from both the tutor and the tutee. Excerpt #4: Julie and Amy, Session 2, October 30, 2012 1. Ann: What is your goal today? 2. Julie: Make sure readers feel the same way I felt? 3. Ann: Okay. So.. kind of make sure you convey your message from the service learning? 4. Julie: Yeah. In this session, Julie brought a paper about reflections she had after participating in a voluntary project. She wanted to focus on conveying her message correctly throughout her paper, and below is part of the feedback from Amy. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #4, Errors are underlined) I also have learned the criteria on choosing and evaluating companies based on the Service Observation Forms (SOFs) which were my weekly-homework for the class. SOFs needed us to fill out the companies’ name we went to, the reason why we visited, owner and employers’ behaviors, overall rate and improvement facts. Even though Julie’s focus was on the content of the paper, Amy focused on grammar as well as the meaning of the passage. This shows that determining the focus of the paper depends on both the tutor and the tutee.   29   Identifying and dealing with problems From the analyses of tutoring sessions of the WC where the tutor asked students to read aloud their papers, tutees noticed their errors while they were reading aloud. Thus, several times, when they found errors while reading aloud, they slowed the rate of their reading speed and corrected errors by themselves. In the retrospective interviews of tutoring sessions of the WC, Julie recalled reading aloud. Julie said that she noticed errors while she was reading aloud. On the other hand, John told me that he felt uncomfortable reading aloud, but while he was reading aloud, he corrected errors that had been pointed out by the tutor in the previous paragraph. In the interview, he did not mention self-correction while reading aloud, but below is what Julie recalled about reading aloud. Julie. … After the tutor pointed out something, while reading aloud, I erased my errors, and I thought like ‘Oh, I did this again.’… I also corrected errors that did not occur in the previous paragraph while reading aloud… I could find errors that I didn’t notice when I was writing…[Translation from Korean] (Julie, After second tutoring session with Tina, October 15, 2012) However, in the EL where the tutor read a couple of paragraphs first and then put marks on errors, tutees’ initiation of correcting errors was hardly seen. In relation to SCT, experts scaffold novices within the students’ ZPD, and then later, without teachers’ help, the novices can perform something that they couldn’t do alone before. In the EL, the tutor gave students feedback on their papers first, and then students corrected their errors later. However, students didn’t have chance to self-correct their errors first before the tutor gave feedback to them. If they had opportunities to read the next paragraphs, they could have self-corrected their errors because when there were consistent errors, students showed their understanding of errors and   30   immediately corrected their errors without the tutor’s help. Oral and written feedback. The most noticeable difference is the way of giving feedback in students’ errors. In the WC, the tutor gave oral feedback almost every time, and the student writers wrote correct forms in their papers. In contrast, in the EL, the students received written feedback as well as oral feedback. After Amy read a couple of paragraphs, she marked errors, and students corrected the errors by themselves. When the students corrected their errors looking at the marks, the tutor read the next one or two paragraphs, and then followed the same procedures. This is an example of the marks she used during the sessions. Figure 3 - Example of Coding from the EL (Passage from Jae and Amy, October 23, 2012) To make tutees understand her coding, during each initial session, she explained what the codes meant to the students. So, when I make.. a kind of ‘v’ mark, that’s usually some words need to go in there, to help make it make sense, either grammar wise, or… um.. clarity wise. Um.. and then if I have a word squared, it means that.. we maybe change the word choice.. to help understanding better. Alright. So… let’s go through.. kind of.. as you go through, if you have any question about it.. but otherwise if you say ’ah! yes’ and then just fix and go ahead.. write what needs to be fixed. (Amy,   31   first tutoring session with Ann, October 16, 2012) Direct feedback and repetition. Tutors in the WC and the EL used different types of feedback during the sessions. Tina, the WC consultant used direct feedback on grammatical errors and gave options for word choice. Excerpts below show instructional approaches which Tina and Amy used during her sessions. In Excerpt #5, John wanted to focus on professionalism and organization of the paper. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #5, Errors are underlined) Many students write to learn and memorize for their academic achievement, but they don’t write for their own pleasure or purpose. I was one of them; I never looked back and tried to remember how I improve my writing skills. This paper is going to focus more on the moments that have assisted me to overcome my weaknesses and mistakes. Excerpt #5: John and Tina, Session 1, October 8, 2012 1. Tina: ,, one of the tricks for professional writing that I would argue for is not to use contractions. So, what you should do is just separate that out. You can use pen on write on this. Like do not. And don’t isn’t wrong. And if you submit don’t on WRA it’s important to know that you can totally right don’t in WRA paper. But it does make it more professional when you take it apart. 2. John: Like cannot also? 3. Tina: Yeah, cannot… um, I like the use of semicolon here. This is nice nice in fact cause this is a short sentence but you can combine two together. So that’s good. Um.. I would say.. I am looking for …. (reading the paragraph).. Ah, here we go. This paper is going to focus more on the moments that have assisted me to overcome my weaknesses and mistakes. Instead of have assisted me to overcome I would change it to the progressive,   32   instead of to overcome, with overcoming so like, you know because it’s always overcoming weaknesses.. you see what I mean? 4. John: so.. hmm (showing not understanding what Tina said) 5. Tina: instead of to overcome, with overcoming 6. John: assisted me with overcoming oh yeah. 7. Tina: Yeah, right there. Because you know what I mean… by making it progressive you sort of .. I would make this progressive… cause it’s supposed to show ongoing, right? Cause your writing is ongoing. You are always writing and learning. 8. John: Yeah. Above, Tina pointed out the usage of don’t and the word form overcome. In giving feedback on those word forms, she gave correct forms of the word directly with an explanation of the reason for the change. In changing the word don’t, John understood well, and applied this to other words cannot. For using overcoming, he didn’t understand what Tina said, so she repeated the correct form again, and explained more about it. However, the problem of this explanation was that she used the wrong grammatical term for this. In this case, overcoming is gerund, not progressive. This might be because even though she is a WC tutor, she hadn’t studied grammar for teaching ESL students, so she might have confused the grammatical forms. On the other hand, in the EL, the tutor gave direct feedback on student writer’s errors only when the student didn’t understand what the tutor explained. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #6, Errors are underlined) Teens who have the problem need emotional support of peer group. However, few studies deal with social isolation in communication background. Excerpt #6: Ann and Amy, Session 1, October 16, 2012   33   1. Ann: um.. under? 2. Amy: Um.. under.. it make sense.. so I am trying to say if it doesn’t just make sense, but is.. what would work here.. (read the sentence) if you wanna change the background, you would use under for.. so like under communication.. and think about like a paper.. right.. so.. for.. in a paper you have something that’s going to explain.. everything and this is ca lled a… do you know? 3. Ann: (laugh) 4. Amy: It’s okay, if you don’t… I don’t have to expect you to pick words out of my brain, right? 5. Ann: hmm. 6. Amy: So, it would be like heading.. right? So if you want to say under, then would be un der like in a paper, under a communication. Heading. 7. Ann: ah… heading.. ah.. is it same as an aspect or area? 8. Amy: kind of.. um.. like a heading.. will.. relate the aspects that we are gonna talk about a paper.. so this heading tells us to talk about the introduction which is an aspect of your research. 9. Ann: hmm.. 10. Amy: or.. you could,. Um.. keep communication background, it’s just, you know, WITH … a communication background. So you are looking at it while you are looking at this to o. So it’s with 11. Ann: ah.. From the excerpt above, Amy tried to help Ann to find the correct word instead of using in. Even though Amy explained several times to elicit the exact answer from Ann, Ann failed to   34   understand, and finally, Amy suggested the direct answer to her. From other interactions, Amy tried multiple times not to give answers but to obtain correct forms from the students. Giving options. There are some moments when the tutors gave options for words that tutees could choose from. This happened mostly in the WC. In the EL, the tutor let students come up with the words by themselves. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #7, Errors are underlined) The discussion mainly themes with its relationship to philosophy, its composition and structure, and rhetoric writing and speech… Excerpt #7: Julie and Tina, Session 1, October 9, 2012 1. Tina: um.. How about a different word here? What were you trying to say with the discussion mainly.. mainly what? Relates? or… 2. Julie: uh-huh…um…. 3. Tina: How about… um… I can’t think about a couple of different word… Just because themes isn’t a bad word, but we need an.. active verb.. so an active verb gives.. more power and better flow of the sentence.. so the discussion mainly… focuses? Or.. demonstrates? Either those words.. and then you don’t need with. Discussion mainly FOCUSES its relationship to philosophy. Or Discussion mainly DEVELOPES or DEMONSTRATES its relationship to philosophy. Here, Tina asked for clarification about a sentence, but Julie couldn’t answer the questions. Thus, Tina gave the options for word choice in a sentence. Sometimes she and other tutees looked words up in the dictionary, thesaurus, or on the internet. This kind of interaction shows the nature of peer-peer tutoring and collaborative writing that the WC pursues in its philosophy. In terms of ZPD, at the EL, through the excerpt #6, Amy tried to scaffold the student   35   writers’ process of finding the correct answers. At the WC, it didn’t seem that Tina helped students by scaffolding during the sessions. She gave the direct feedback on the students’ errors, especially on the grammatical errors. On the errors in word choice, in the WC, the tutor and the tutee negotiated meaning of the sentence and they worked together to find suitable words using a thesaurus. On the content of the paper, the tutor, a peer co-constructed the meaning of the paper with the tutee. However, her feedback seemed to scaffold students to understand their errors, and help them correct their errors without tutor’s help. Below is the example of scaffolding within John’s ZPD. Excerpt #8: John and Tina, Session 1, October 8, 2012 1. Tina: awesome. You are great with writing. That’s awesome! So.. one of the tricks for professional writing that I would argue for is not to use contractions. So, what you should do is just separate that out. You can use pen on write on this. Like do not. And don’t isn’t wrong. And if you submit don’t on WRA it’s important to know that you can totally right don’t in WRA paper. But it does make it more professional when you take it part. 2. John: Like cannot also? 3. Tina: Yeah, cannot. John wanted to focus on professional writing, so Tina commented on contractions in his paper. After Tina explained about this, for next paragraphs, John self-corrected contracted forms while reading aloud. This would show that he understood what Tina explained to him, and this maybe because Tina’s explanation about contractions was scaffolding John to correct the same errors by himself. So far, I observed differences between the tutoring sessions in the WC and the EL. From   36   the perspective of SCT, both tutors scaffold the tutees by correcting errors and provided knowledge about academic writing in English. Even though the ways of giving feedback and the types of feedback were different, learners showed that they received help from the scaffolding of the tutors, and sometimes they corrected their errors without tutor’s help. SCT sees learning taking place in interaction with the mediation of language, so no matter what kind of interaction they experienced, it seems that students learn something from participating in the interaction itself. Thus, in this way, students gained knowledge of writing and language. Student writers told me that while interacting with tutors, they learned about correct grammar usage and how to write academic papers. From the interviews, after each tutoring session and from the students’ revisions, I could also understand the students’ perceptions of the sessions and how they revised their papers following the tutor’s feedback. RQ2 Regarding the second research question, “What is the effect of these different approaches on Korean students studying in the United States?” students’ interviews about the perceptions of the sessions and their revisions were analyzed. Student writers’ perceptions After finishing four tutoring sessions, student writers were asked about the general impression of the sessions from the WC and the EL. Meeting different consultants having different instructional approaches brought different reflection from the student writers. Among the four student writers, two of them chose to use the EL later on, and the other two wanted to visit the WC for their papers. Below are student writers’ perceptions about the sessions. Julie.   I think the WC is good for thinking creatively because the tutor gave me ideas 37   about my paper, so in general, the quality of my paper would be higher in the WC. The EL, in terms of the precision, is better. [Translation from Korean] (Julie, the last interview, October 30, 2012) Ann. I want to make appointments with Tina later on. In the EL, I felt like editing mistakes on my papers, so there was no ‘Aha’ moment. I think I can get the same feedback in Korea, but in the WC, I could learn the native-like expressions and receive comment on the content of my paper. [Translation from Korean] (Ann, the last interview, November 12, 2012) John. If I want to focus only on grammar errors, it is better to use the EL. I learned about grammar from the sessions in the EL. Here, it is annoying to think about the errors that I made, but I learn something here. Even though the tutor in the WC commented on the content of my paper, that was not a big deal. It was just adding a few sentences or changing the title of my paper. The comment on the content was not new, I already had thought about it before. If I have enough time to edit my paper, I will use the EL. [Translation from Korean] (John, the last interview, November 13, 2012) Jae. I got a good grade on my paper after a session in the EL, so I will use the EL later on. The grammar feedback that I got from the EL helped me to write another paper. [Translation from Korean] (Jae, the last interview, November 27, 2012) Interviews above show that half of student writers chose to use the WC for other papers. Even though they admitted that in the EL they could learn about grammar, they preferred the WC; however, the rest of the students thought that the EL was better to improve their writing skills. In   38   particular, Jae talked about the practical uses of the EL to get better grades on his papers. At first, he chose the WC to use in the future, however, in the middle of participating in this research, he received a high grade on a paper which had been revised in a tutoring session with the EL tutor, so he changed his mind to use the EL for his other papers. Revisions After the tutoring sessions in the WC and the EL, student writers revised their papers and sent them to the researcher. Their revisions showed improvement based on the feedback they received from the tutors. Because most feedback from the tutors was on surface-level errors, student writers revised papers in terms of grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. In textlevel revisions there were a couple of sentences added on the first drafts. In the retrospective interviews, the student writers told me that they would revise almost everything that the tutor pointed out on their papers. They told me that tutors are native speakers, and if they said something was right or wrong, it should be changed. However, those changes occurred mostly on the surface level, not the text level. In terms of the text level, even though tutors gave their opinions about adding or deleting some sentences, student writers did not follow the tutors’ advice. From the papers that I copied after each tutoring session, I found that students’ revisions were similar to the first drafts, but with fewer grammatical errors, better word choices, and sometimes one or two additional sentences. Below is an excerpt from a tutoring session between Amy and John, and his revisions following the feedback. When Amy read a couple of paragraphs from the introduction, she mentioned the main idea about the paper, and she recommended changing the introduction of the paper. (Passage discussed in Excerpt #9, Errors are underlined) I had American dream when I came here, and I experienced success and failure, moreover, those   39   experiences led me to read the article ‘The growing gulf between the rich and the rest of us’. This article tried to talk about gap between rich and poor, in other word, the United States have huge gap between urban and rural. The rich wants to leave with civilization for their safe and comfort, on the other hand, the poor lives in country side because of price of the goods and services… Excerpt #9: John and Amy, Session 1, November 6, 2012 1. Amy: The main point of the paper seems to be looking… from reading the intro.. that are main point should be talking about… are… the differences between.. the rich and the poor. But which so far, which seems focusing on the differences between the urban and the rural. So.. I mean either rewrite the intro to show more focusing on more urban and rural differences and less on economics.. or we can look to kind of find ways to get economics.. written into your descriptions of the city.. right? 2. John: Yeah. So.. description about more explain the urban side? … let people know about the urban side? … Like had a lot of things?... You want me to add like rural? 3. Amy: If.. not that I want. It’s your paper, right? So.. based on what I have on intro, I expected to read.. from reading the intro, which is like.. kind of road map… it’s kind of gives you an idea of what the paper’s about... so I just wanna suggest to rewrite the intro to focus more on.. what is like to live on urban area… Just depending on what you wanna add on your paper… From the excerpt above, Amy gave her opinion to change the introduction or add more information about the rural area to make paper consistent. Below is the revision which John sent to me. I had an American dream when I came here, and I experienced success and failure. Moreover,   40   those experiences led me to read the article ‘The Growing Gulf between the Rich and the Rest of Us’. This article tried to talk about the gap between rich and poor, in other words, the United States had a huge gap between urban and rural. The rich want to leave with civilization for their safety and comfort. On the other hand, the poor live in the country side because of the price of the goods and services. John did not change the introduction of his paper even though he corrected grammatical errors and word choices. In the rest of his revision, I could not find sentences where he had added more about rural areas. The analysis of the data showed that the tutors from the WC and the EL conducted different tutoring sessions with different philosophies. In the structure of the sessions, in the WC, student writers read their paper aloud, and in the EL, the tutor read a couple of paragraphs first and put marks on the errors. Both tutors asked the tutees what the focus of the papers was before the sessions, but during the sessions, they also focused on additional errors. In terms of giving feedback, the tutor in the WC gave oral and direct feedback; however, the tutor in the EL gave written, oral, and indirect feedback mostly, but sometimes also gave direct feedback. From the interview and the revisions, I could see the effect that the tutoring sessions had on the student writers. In the interview, students’ future preference for the WC or the EL was different depending on what they learned, their preferences of receiving feedback, and tutoring effects on their grades. In the revisions, students corrected grammatical errors mostly, and for the content of their papers, they added one or two sentences, so there was little difference with regard to the content of the papers.   41   CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION This study investigated the differences and similarities of the interaction between the WC and the EL. To find the answers for the research questions, I observed total 16 tutoring sessions in the WC and the EL. With different approaches between these two writing facilities, tutors in the WC and the EL gave divergent feedback on the students’ papers. First, the focus of the feedback depended on student writers’ purpose of writing. The student writers wanted to focus on the various aspects of writing based on each individual writer’s weaknesses and the professors’ assignment. However, tutees sometimes reflected that their expectations of focus were not realized. This might result from the tutors’ teaching philosophy and their priorities in developing academic papers with native-like accuracy. Below is about Amy’s philosophy in giving feedback on students’ papers. Amy … it was just a couple of word choices and mostly like articles that need to go in, and I didn’t go for perfect grammar... I went for understandable. It’s generally my goal... if she came back again and again and again, we work on getting the grammar perfect. Cause if I just try to make each paragraph perfect, I think it would be frustrating... for the student, and also we wouldn’t get very far. (Amy, interview after first session with Ann, October 16, 2012) Like Amy said, if students visit the EL repeatedly, they will improve their papers step by step because student writers cannot accomplish native-like academic papers during one visit, which represents her teaching philosophy. Thus, a single visit for a paper would not be enough for students who receive feedback from the EL. When student writers have more opportunity to interact with tutors, in the later visits they will be satisfied with the tutor’s feedback on their papers, which meet with their expectations.   42   However, sometimes I observed that tutors’ philosophies did not match with their practices. When Tina gave feedback on students’ grammatical errors. Even though she said that she was more likely to give options to the tutees not tell them to fix some words, in practices she usually gave direct feedback on grammatical errors. This mismatch between tutor’s philosophy and practices is described in Lee (2009). In her study, she investigated the differences between teachers’ beliefs and written feedback practice, and she found out that there were ten mismatches between what teachers believe and what they actually do. In addition, tutors’ practices did not match with the philosophies of the WC and the EL. From the philosophy of the WC and the tutor’s own teaching philosophy, it was expected that Tina would show the perspective of SCT, but in the real tutoring sessions she showed more of a cognitivist-interactionist view of teaching. Thus, she gave answers more than scaffolds, and the pace of her sessions was faster than Amy’s. Tina did not show much negotiation of meaning and forms with students. In this way, learners’ autonomy in revising their papers was less shown in the WC even though they corrected their errors autonomously while reading aloud. Similarly, Amy showed different approach from that of the EL. During the tutoring sessions, she took the perspective of SCT. Thus, in the EL even though it took more time for learners to acquire the knowledge of language and writing, she promoted learners’ autonomy while making students correct their own errors following the marks she put on them. Even though one could argue that Tina took more oa a cognitive-interactionist approach, from the perspective of SCT, each tutor’s help can be analyzed through the Regulatory Scale by Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) (see Figure 4).   43   0. Tutor asks the learner to read, find the error and correct them independently, prior to the tutorial. 1. Construction of a “collaborative frame” prompted by the tutor as a potential dialogic partner. 2. Prompted or focused reading of the sentence that contains the error by the learner or the tutor. 3. Tutor indicates that something may be wrong in a segment (e.g. sentence, clause, line): ‘Is there anything wrong in this sentence?’ 4. Tutor rejects unsuccessful attempts at recognizing the error. 5. Tutor narrows down the location of the error. 6. Tutor indicates the nature of the error, but tries not to identify the error (e.g. ‘There is something wrong with the tense marking here.’). 7. Tutor identifies the error (‘You can’t use an auxiliary here’). 8. Tutor rejects learner’s unsuccessful attempts at correcting the error. 9. Tutor provides clues to help the learner arrive at the correct form (e.g. ‘It is not really past but some thing that is still going on’). 10. Tutor provides the correct form. 11. Tutor provides some explanation for use of the correct form. 12. Tutor provides examples of the correct pattern when other forms of help fail to produce an appropriate responsive action. Figure 4 - Regulatory Scale - implicit (strategic) to explicit (from Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994) Figure 4 shows the levels of help from the tutors, which indicates more implicit (the lower numbers) to more explicit (the higher numbers). Learners who receive implicit feedback are more autonomous in revising their errors, and those who had explicit feedback are more dependent in performance. In other words, implicit strategies are considered to be low in learners’ ZPD, but explicit feedback is high in learners’ ZPD. In tutoring sessions from the WC,   44   Tina gave feedback that is considered to be explicit and direct, thus she used strategies low in ZPD (e.g., level 7 to 12). In contrast, in the EL, Amy’s feedback was more implicit and indirect, thus her strategies were high in the ZPD (e.g., level 0 to 6). Second, in terms of the leadership of the focus, both tutors asked student writers about their concerns about the papers starting tutoring sessions. Thus, the leadership of the focus was on student writers, and tutors had efforts to solve the problems according to the students’ focuses. At the same time, tutors led to choose the focus of the writing. Especially when student writers have problems frequently occur, tutors made students focus on those errors and helped them. In this process, most of the time, students were satisfied with the help from the tutors, but sometimes student writers thought that there was a gap between their focus of the paper and the tutor’s. Having leadership of the focus is related to the next research question, identifying and dealing with errors. In the WC and the EL, the way of identifying errors was different because of the distinctive tutoring structures. Reading aloud from the student writers was a noticeable feature that was only shown in the WC. Kim (N.d.) examined the effectiveness of reading aloud and the focus of writing while L2 writers were reading aloud their papers. The results of her study indicate that depending on the proficiency levels of the L2 writers, reading aloud has benefits. In her study, for students of higher proficiency levels, this strategy had a positive effect on revising their papers than lower level students. Also, highly proficient L2 writers easily noticed their errors in a wide range of aspects of writing while they were reading aloud. In the WC, the tutor made tutees read aloud their papers, and pointed out errors first. Sometimes, while reading aloud, student writers noticed and corrected their errors by themselves. On the other hand, in the EL, the tutor read a couple of paragraphs first, and marked on errors.   45   Thus, the tutor primarily took initiatives, but sometimes with the scaffold of tutors, the writers spontaneously corrected the errors that occurred relatively frequently. The students’ active participation of the correction and engagement in proofreading their papers relied on the tutors’ systematic help. This demonstrated the expert’s scaffolding considering the novice’s current stage of learning from the perspective of a ZPD. This showed in the interaction at the EL, which student writers gained assistant from the tutor, and later corrected the errors by themselves. In the WC as well, even though the tutor did not seem to scaffold much in correcting students’ errors, if the correction by the tutor was understandable, which means the help from the tutor was compatible within their ZPD, students showed their understanding and they took initiatives to correct similar errors in the later part of their papers. Different approaches from the WC and the EL brought different perceptions from the Korean students. In the retrospective interviews, students reflected that both tutors helped them considerably in terms of grammar. This is likely because grammar is markedly noticeable, thus, tutors corrected grammatical and surface errors more than other textual errors. This would have happened because student writers were concerned about their grammar, and almost every time, they mentioned grammar to be corrected. However, for deeper level of errors, text-level corrections were not done properly, so students were not satisfied with it. When it comes to the content, organization, and flow of the papers, there were contradictory reflections from the tutors and the students. For tutoring sessions, student writers brought their papers related to their major. For decent understanding of their papers, tutors would have had enough time to acknowledge concepts and terminologies, but 30 minutes to 1 hour per a tutoring session would not be enough to cover them properly.   46   As the student writers mentioned, they received correction on their grammatical and word choice errors, their revisions did not show difference in terms of the text level. This supports Williams (2004) that surface-level corrections were more than text-level revisions. However, both tutors recalled that they helped the content and the organization of the paper, and in the analysis of the tutoring sessions, there were several times of text-level feedback. This can be explained by the time that students had before they submit their papers. When student writers had tutoring sessions, they told me and the tutors that they should submit their papers by the next day or sometimes a couple of hours after the tutoring sessions. Revising grammatical and lexical errors took less time than correcting and reorganizing content errors, so they might have revised focused on surface level errors. If students have time to rewrite their papers, would it be possible for them to focus more on content level of their papers? It would be necessary for tutors to have more time to understand students’ papers before they meet student writers, and then tutors could understand global meaning of the students’ papers. This would be one possible way for tutors to focus on the deeper-level errors of papers. To do this, students should finish and submit their papers to the tutors one day or two days earlier than their paper due, or they should visit the tutors more than once per paper. However, finishing their papers earlier than usual would be a burden to student writers because as I mentioned above, students usually visited the WC and EL one or two hours, or one day before the paper due. There are some limitations to this study. This research is a small case study conducted during a short period of time, thus it is hard to generalize findings as an overall image of the WC and EL as well. There will be individual and gender differences among consultants of the two different places and also those of student writers who are from the same L1 background. In   47   tutoring sessions in the WC and the EL, patterns of interaction represented novice-expert tutoring, but peer-peer tutoring interaction occurred sometimes in the discussion of the content of the papers. This research provides implications for L2 writing instruction. Giving corrective feedback on students’ writing is one of the most controversial topics (Polio & Williams, 2009). In addition to this dispute on corrective feedback, this study suggests that the L2 learners’ perceptions of corrective feedback should be considered as well as the influence of corrective feedback on L2 development. There are some studies about teachers’ and students’ perceptions about corrective feedback. Schulz (2001) compared the teachers’ and students’ perceptions of explicit grammar instruction and corrective feedback. The findings of her study showed that in the role of formal grammar instruction, there were discrepancies between the perceptions of teachers and students. Mackey, AI-Khalil, Atanassova, Hama, Logan-Terry, and Nakatsukasa (2007) investigated perceptions about feedback in Arabic. They found that when feedback was focused on lexis and provided explicitly, teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of feedback matched the most, and the accuracy of perceived feedback was high when feedback was received by learners directly not indirectly by their classmates. However, still, research on perceptions from different instructional feedback is insufficient. This study has many implications for future research. Further research should investigate different instructional feedback and its effect on many L2 learners’ papers over a longer period of time to see the development of students’ writing proficiency and to generalize the different instructional approaches from the WC and the EL. Like the tutors in this study, there will be individual differences among consultants of the two different places and also student writers who are from the same L1 background. If there is future research with diverse participants with   48   different backgrounds, it would have better understanding of tutors and students generally. Also, like Storch (2002), different tutoring interactions might have an impact on students’ reflection. In tutoring sessions at the WC and the EL, patterns of interaction represented “expert/novice”, but “collaboration” occurred sometimes in the discussion of the content of the papers. These different patterns of interaction would need to be analyzed to see when the students feel more satisfied in interacting with writing consultants. Moreover, future research could consider L2 learners’ perceptions of corrective feedback as well as the influence of corrective feedback on L2 development. There is a lot of research on the effective corrective feedback on L2 writing, but not much about students’ perceptions of corrective feedback. There are some studies related to students’ perceptions of feedback as we have seen above. However, there should be more research done in this area. If there are types of feedback that student writers prefer, it would be helpful for teachers to implement corrective feedback considering students’ perceptions, and this would help learners develop their writing skills more. From this study, I observed that different feedback from different tutors have brought different perceptions from students. This study will have an effect on teaching writing and giving feedback on L2 learners’ written product. Moreover, this study is expected to shed light on some of the differences between general writing centers and ESL-specific labs.   49   APPENDICES   50   APPENDIX A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTEES (AFTER THE FIRST TUTORING SESSION) 1. What kind of feedback did you want to receive on your paper? 2. Did the tutor correct your errors? If so, how? 3. Were the techniques that the tutor used helpful for you? Why or why not? 4. To what extent, are you going to revise your writing? Why? 5. What is the general impression of using this center?   51   APPENDIX B INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTEES (AFTER THE SECOND TUTORING SESSION) 1. What is the general impression of using this center? 2. Did the tutor correct your errors? If so, how? 3. Were the techniques that the tutor used helpful for you? Why and why not? 4. To what extent, are you going to revise your writing? Why? 5. What do you think are the differences between the tutoring in the writing center and the ESL lab? 6. Which center do you think you are going to use later on?   52   APPENDIX C INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TUTORS 1. What aspects of writing were you focusing on? 2. What kind of instructional feedback do you think you used during the tutoring session? 3. Do you think the feedback you used was effective to the student? What kind of feedback was effective and what was not? How did you notice that? 4. 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