Read Tutoring Second Language Writers Online
Authors: Shanti Bruce
Tutoring Second Language Writers (23 page)
I interviewed Libbie Morley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who requires research of the undergraduate tutors enrolled in her required course, Issues in Tutoring Writing. Most of the students in the class have never tutored before, although some have done
tutoring in high school. The students are required to observe tutoring sessions in the writing center and read selections from
The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring
, several articles such as “The Idea of a Writing Center” and “Peer Tutoring and the Conversation of Mankind,” and a book on grammar. Then she requires them to come up with research questions based on their reading. Morley explains,
I ask students to think about questions they have after reading for their training course and observing sessions. I emphasize questions rather than topics so they begin from an inquiry stance. The biggest obstacle to this project is the students’ background in library research because this more qualitative project confuses and frightens them. (However, they love it once they get started.) That’s why starting with questions disrupts their comfortable patterns of research. About half of the students also bring questions from outside the Writers Workshop itself—people they know or from other interests such as working with people with disabilities.
After the students have come up with research questions, Morley asks them to do a literature review and to create an annotated bibliography. She encourages them to do
case-study
research and to use the methods of interview and observation to collect data. She told me, “I don’t want them to get so hung up on the methods that it affects their choice of research questions.” Students read a chapter from
Fieldworking
(
Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater 2011
) about interview techniques. They audiotape tutoring sessions and are asked to transcribe and code two pages of text. Students use general qualitative coding rather than any special methodology. Students also look for themes rather than doing a technical discourse or conversation analysis in which they would look at turn-taking, word choice, qualifiers, grammatical constructions, and so forth. They are not introduced to theory at this point because Morley wants them to simply gain experience with the methods, do a straightforward qualitative analysis, and develop a thesis.
Morely told me that the “research projects have gotten them [the students] more invested in tutoring as opposed to thinking of it as a job.” Many of her students are English majors and are not used to this type of research. She reported how one “anthropology major ‘got it’ and was helping teach the others.” She went on to tell me that “a stumbling block is making generalizations from interviewing only two people! They need to come up with some sort of analysis without overgeneralizing.” She and her teaching assistant work closely with the students over the semester to help them frame their research and understand their data. All of these students present their projects at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on campus in the spring and at a meeting for all Writers
Workshop staff. Fourteen projects have been presented at the Midwest or East Central Writing Center Association conferences, and one student presented at the International Writing Centers Association conference.
Undergrads have published research on L2 tutoring before, and with interesting results. Issue 32.1 of the
Writing Center Journal
focused specifically on undergraduate research and contained two papers on L2 writers (
Brendel 2012; Nan 2012
). However, in these studies, the authors published their results without enough attention to the methods of data collection or analysis. Both Frances Nan and Christian Brendel interviewed research participants but did not present research questions in the article. In this same issue, Jennifer
Nicklay (2012)
presented a more traditional research report in which she included her research questions, methods, and results. Although not a study of L2 writers, the format Nicklay used can serve as a model for researchers.
I interviewed Nicklay, a former consultant at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities writing center, about her research. Before she began tutoring in the writing center at the University of Minnesota, she had already been working as a tutor for five years. She started working in a writing center at Normandale Community College while she was in high school and went on to work in a more general academic tutoring center at the university, tutoring students in subjects varying from politics to calculus, from microbiology to global studies. She told me, “Throughout this time, I’d had some training in tutoring strategies, but the U of M writing center training course was by far the most extensive.”
I asked Nicklay how she came to this research, which focused on consultant guilt in the writing center.
The discussions in this course led to my interest in researching why writing consultants often feel guilty following consultations. I actually can’t remember ever personally feeling guilt about sessions—frustrated, disturbed, or exhausted yes, but not guilt. So, all of us new consultants were having discussions in class about sessions that hadn’t gone well, about situations with students that we wish we had handled better, I was really shocked at how much guilt my fellow consultants felt.
Thus, when it came time for us to conduct research, I knew that exploring what caused this guilt—which I really felt actually hampered our ability to work with students effectively—was going to be the focus of my research. I worked a lot with other consultants—both my fellow new consultants in the class, and more experienced consultants in the center—to come up with the questions I asked.
While the focus on consulting principles and methods, and feelings of guilt in relation to these, remained my central focus throughout the research, my goals changed. At first, I hoped to compare the Writing Center consultants’ experience of guilt with the consultants in the general academic tutoring center I also worked in, but I did not receive any responses to the survey from the other center. Then, I focused really heavily on exploring writing center literature—but, right at the end of the project, I discovered a new thread that I really wish I could have explored. There’s this subtle link between how consultants experience guilt, inequities in power, ideals of individual authorship, and the tenants of academia. I only spent a paragraph exploring this in the final article—but I really, really wish I could explore it more, because it is a link that both needs and deserves more attention.
I went on to ask Jennifer how she chose her methods and what role mentors played in her research process:
Kirsten Jamesen, our writing center director, was a source of amazing support and guidance throughout my research. She had all the new consultants conduct research because she firmly believed that, as consultants, we should take part in the writing center discourse, even from the very beginning of our work in the writing center. I discussed my ideas with her often, and she provided wonderful feedback. Katie Levin, the assistant director, was also pretty amazing at listening to my ideas—and then pointing me to great resources.
My methods—to have the questionnaire—were largely determined by three factors.
• First, the topic of guilt lent itself to asking questions. Observing consulting sessions would have been interesting, but I would have had to sit in on too many to happen upon one that the consultant might feel guilty about. It could have been interesting to get the perspective of our students, but I wasn’t sure how to tactfully and effectively go about that. Therefore, questioning consultants seemed to be the best approach.
• Second, as I mentioned, I had originally hoped to compare the writing center responses to those from another academic tutoring center I worked in. The sheer number of people between the two was too large to interview each person personally.
• Finally, I was limited in time. I had hoped to further interview some of the respondents, but the amount of time I had to complete the project—in conjunction with the two other jobs and course load I had—prevented me from actually conducting those interviews.
Finally, how I actually wrote up the report, using APA style, was just the most natural way for me to write it. I was a biology major in the College of Biological Sciences at the U of M, and, as a result, writing scientific research papers has become second nature to me. When it comes to writing up any kind of research—qualitative or quantitative—it is a structure
that makes sense to me. I was very excited in my writing center research, though, to be able to bend the rules of such a style, though. For example, it was a rare pleasure to put myself into the paper—to be able to use the word ‘I’ and include my own, personal observations.
I asked Nicklay about the process of writing up research for publication as an undergraduate and she told me that writing up her research for publications was “so exciting!” She added, “I think I literally bounced off the walls of the center when I found out that I had been accepted for publication.” She further explained to me that
this was, of course, nearly a year after I had actually completed my research, and to get it ready for publication, I had to go back to my research and back to my writing, and basically learn it all over again. I worked really closely with Kirsten and Katie to revitalize and restructure the whole paper, largely because my audience was now the wider writing center community, rather than just my fellow new consultants. The final version for publication had to be a lot shorter and a lot more to the point than the original—in other words, I had to get it to pack a lot more “wallop” in a lot less space. It was a really phenomenal experience to go through the editing, review, and submission process.
Finally, I asked Nicklay for any advice she had for other undergraduate researchers.
My advice would be to really be open when you start analyzing your research. Go in with your question, be focused—but be ready to find connections you would never expect. I ended my project in a place I never anticipated, and that I wish I’d left myself more time to explore. Also, talk to people—the best ideas come from being able to bounce your ideas off people. Finally, the writing center literature has great breadth and is pretty easily accessible—utilize the knowledge that’s already there, and then use it to branch out and bring us new ideas!
Also, relish your time in the writing center! I was lucky to work in such an amazing environment for the time I did, and I will consider myself blessed if I ever find myself in such a supportive work and learning environment again in the future.
Terese Thonus, the writing center director at the University of Kansas, did her dissertation research in response to the question, what is a successful tutorial? This study spawned several articles, and the one she decided to discuss with me is “Triangulating the Key Players: Tutors, Tutees, Instructors, and Collaboration in the Writing Center” (
Thonus 2001
). As part of her data collection she wanted to investigate all perspectives of all roles in the tutoring system. She explained it this way.
One of the hardest things about this study was narrowing the research topic. As a new researcher, I wanted to know what each person in the triangle thought about the role of every other person in the writing process. I soon realized I had to focus on what everyone thought about the role of one person, the writing tutor—and I could find more discussion and even research about this role.
Because I’m basically an introvert, I really looked forward to recording, transcribing, and analyzing tutorials much more than I did the interviews, especially because I had not met most of the instructors. But the combination of solo and interactive work ended up being great, keeping me grounded in interaction myself while I was analyzing others’ interactions!
I asked her what prompted her to do this research and she responded,
I was working at Indiana University Writing Tutorial Services as a Graduate Assistant and was enchanted by all of the possibilities for research on speaking and writing that surrounded me. I decided I would write a dissertation using the everyday learning conversational data these interactions provided.
I asked Thonus how she went about collecting her data.
I collected data for over a year, amassing many more than 10 tutorial transcripts as well as hours of recorded interviews. As a researcher, I’ve always been fortunate to collect more data than I could possibly use for one project! At some point I made the decision to exclude the instructor voice from the dissertation data analysis and write-up.
Here are the details of the study from the informed consent form.
• This study is based on the tutorial and three separate conversations between the researcher and the student, the tutor, and the student’s instructor.
• Within 5–7 days of the tutorial, you will be asked to meet with the researcher at your convenience for a 60-minute session to discuss your impressions of the tutorial.
• Within several weeks of the tutorial, you will be asked to meet with the researcher again to read and comment on her report of your earlier interview.
• Ten students, their tutors, and the students’ instructors will be participating in the study.
• The tutorial and all three of the conversations will be taped, although only the tutorial will be transcribed in its entirety.
• The research study will “triangulate” systematically for the first time the opinions of students, tutors, and instructors about the “success” of specific tutorials.
• It will also for the first time permit students to participate in the definition of “success” and its consequences.
• Results of this research study may inform colleges and universities in the training of tutors, implementation of writing tutorial centers, and administration of academic writing programs.
I then asked Thonus about any findings related to L2 tutors and tutees. She explained that she studied two international tutees, one from Thailand and one from Malaysia.
Tutee D was male, 20 years old . . . a junior majoring in computer science. In addition to English, he spoke Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, and Bahasa Malaysia. Tutee E was female, 20 years old, from Thailand. . . . She spoke only Thai and English. Both tutees had visited the writing center before, and one (Tutee E) was making a repeat visit to the same tutor.
Thonus found that in tutorial D, the tutor had misunderstood the content of the student’s paper. In this tutorial, both tutor and student had “high rates of overlap and self-suggestion” and “high incidence of evaluations and suggestions.” Both tutor and tutee were Asian, and Thonus thought perhaps there were cultural factors involved when the student received a bad grade on a paper and then stated that he did not “blame” the tutor for this outcome but felt that it must have been his fault.
Thonus went on to tell me that “tutorial E was a pleasure to observe because the tutor and tutee were obviously comfortable with each other” as this was the second time they had worked together. Tutor E also introduced laughter into the tutoring session, prompting Thonus to investigate laughter in another study (
Thonus 2008
).
When I asked Thonus what advice she had for researchers, she responded:
• Find allies and support in your research context.
• Try new research methods in an attempt to answer perennial questions.
• Choose methods that match your personality and interactive strengths.
• Don’t be afraid to critique ideas of other researchers.
• Be acutely aware of how research participants’ perceptions of you will (not might) influence your access to and the quality of data you collect.
