17.2 Full Issue Spring 2020

PR AXIS

a writing center journal

17.2: LANGUAGE & LEARNING IN THE WRITING CENTER

VOL. 17, NO. 2 (2020): Language and Learning in the Writing Center TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS From the Editors: Language and Learning in the Writing Center Tristin Hooker and Fiza Mairaj Centering the Writing Classroom: A Practice of the Dialectic Jeaneen Canfield

FOCUS ARTICLES Reading and the Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis Amanda Greenwell, Renée Lavoie, Gissel Campos, Sarah Gerrish and Mary Joerg Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk: Using Scaffolding Strategies to Support Language Acquisition in the Writing Center Sarah Patrick Grammarly vs. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center: ESL Student Writers’ Perceptions Jing Zhang, Havva Ozer and Raneem Bayazeed Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak: Enhancing Online Conferences Courtney L. Werner and Diana Lin Awad Scrocco The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic: A Bibliometric Analysis of a German Flagship Journal, 2010-2016 Pam Bromley and Andrea Scott

BOOK REVIEWS Review of Multimodal Composing: Strategies for Twenty-First-Century Writing Consultations, edited by Lindsay A. Sabatino and Brian Fallon Amber Kent-Johnson Review of Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, by Laura Greenfield Oksana Moroz

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Raneem Bayazeed is a Ph.D. candidate in the Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Multimodal composition and Digital Writing. Her current project aims to investigate the effectiveness of Multimodal Composition Pedagogy in EFL contexts.

Pam Bromley, PhD teaches writing and works with faculty, students, and writing tutors at Scripps College. She currently co-edits The Writing Center Journal, alongside Kara Northway and Eliana Schonberg. Her research explores the ways ideas impact individuals and institutions.

Gissel A. Campos just earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, where she majored in Child Study and minored in Psychology and Spanish. She is a former writing tutor for the Center for Academic Excellence and is currently seeking a position in an early childhood learning center.

Jeaneen Canfield, MA is a PhD Candidate in English, Rhetoric & Writing Studies at Oklahoma State University seeks to privilege student voices, thus empowering them as thinkers and writers. During her time at OSU, she has been awarded the following selected honors: "Professional Writing Scholarship" (2020), "Clinton C. Keeler Scholarship in English Studies" (2020), "Certificate of Outstanding Achievement in Writing Pedagogy" (2018); and "Excellence in Teaching and/or Consulting Scholarship" (2017). She has a forthcoming chapter "Teach from our Feet and not our Knees: Ethics and Critical Pedagogy" in a Peter Lang edited collection (Ellen Carrillo & Alice Horning, Eds.) and a published article in the 2013-2014 inaugural issue of the South Central Writing Centers Association Newsletter. Her research interests include forms of resistance in the classroom space, visual rhetoric, multimodal composition, digital literacies, and critical pedagogy.

Sarah E. Gerrish has just earned her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Saint Joseph, where she will continue her studies for her M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She has been a writing tutor for three years and currently works for Hartford Healthcare as a Resident Service Coordinator. Sarah is passionate about writing and looks forward to a career that incorporates both research and clinical practice.

Amanda M. Greenwell is an Assistant Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, where she specializes in English Education and Young Adult Literature. The former Writing Center Administrator at the University of Saint Joseph, her research interests include Children's and YA literature, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and Writing Center Studies. Her work has appeared in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship; Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures; and Children's Literature, and she has a piece forthcoming in The African American Review.

Mary E. Joerg just earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, where she majored in English and minored in Art History. She is a former writing tutor for the Center for Academic Excellence. Mary is passionate about writing and looks forward to a career that allows her to continue learning and developing in a professional environment.

Amber Kent-Johnson, PhD is a doctoral candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics. Before becoming a PhD candidate, Amber earned her M.A. in English at Cortland State University of New York, while also working as a Writing Consultant at SUNY Cortland’s Writing Center. She currently teaches both courses of a two-semester First Year Composition program and researches

learning style-based pedagogy, multimodal pedagogy, and embodied rhetorics. She has presented her work, “Framing Kinesthetic Learners: The Path to Self-Sufficiency and Self-Awareness” at UTK’s Nexus 2020 Interdisciplinary Conference and was accepted to present “Expanding the Norm: Including Kinesthetic Learners Through Digital Multimodal Assignments” at the 2020 CCCC Annual Convention. She is also a member of the WPA-GO Research Writing Group Committee.

Renée J. Lavoie is the Interim Center for Academic Excellence Coordinator at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, CT, where she oversees and educates 50 writing and content tutors. A proud alumna of USJ (then Saint Joseph College), she began tutoring as an undergraduate and has since worked in various roles within the tutoring center. She has also served as a classroom teacher and Reading Specialist in CT public schools. Renée is particularly passionate about support for first-year students navigating the adjustment to college learning, tutor development, and literacy's role in the university learning center.

Oksana Moroz, MA has earned her M.A. in English, French, and World Literature in Ukraine. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Composition and Applied Linguistics program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she has also earned her second M.A in TESOL under Fulbright Graduate Student scholarship. Her research interests include digital identities of multilingual students, gender and teacher identities, teaching writing with Wikipedia, and language ideologies.

Havva Zorluel Ozer is a PhD candidate in the Composition and Applied Linguistics program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She currently serves as the co-editor-in-chief for the journal, Inspiring Pedagogical Connections. Her research interests focus on second language writing, translingual pedagogy, and writing center studies.

Sarah M. Patrick has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She was an undergraduate peer mentor at the university's Writers’ Workshop for two years and has conducted research on the subject of multilingual writers in the writing center.

Andrea Scott, PhD is Associate Professor of Academic Writing and Director of the Writing Center at Pitzer College. She studies writing cultures at small liberal arts colleges and in the international community.

Scrocco, Diana Lin Awad, PhD is an associate professor of English at Youngstown State University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in professional writing, composition, and pedagogy. Her recent research has appeared in Journal of Argumentation in Context, Communication and Medicine, and Praxis.

Werner, Courtney L., PhD is an assistant professor of English at Monmouth University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in digital and multimodal composition, gender studies, linguistics, and writing program administration. Her work has appeared in various collections as well as College Composition and Communication and Computers and Composition, and she is currently studying digital rhetoric in the writing center.

Jing Zhang is a PhD candidate of Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her doctoral study in the United States, Jing founded and directed the SIS Writing Center at Sun Yat-sen University in China. She is currently the assistant director of the Kathleen Jones White

Writing Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Jing has been joyfully advancing her academic pursuit in writing center studies, second language writing, and translingualism.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17 No 2 (2020)

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: LANGUAGE AND LEARNING IN THE WRITING CENTER Tristin Hooker University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

Fiza Mairaj University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

We here at Praxis are proud to present our spring issue. Spring 2020 has been an unprecedented semester all across North American higher education (let alone the world), and has seen writing centers adopting new and often ad-hoc practices as we attempt to continue serving students and pushing the field during a global pandemic. Because so many of us were not able to meet face-to-face and many of us were not even able to meet synchronously, the consideration most of the pieces in this article give to pedagogy, adaptation, the importance of language, and the effect and affordances of digital pedagogies and technologies is more timely than we could have known when we began putting this issue together.

We are glad to be returning to you during these times, and we hope that the pieces here will continue the deep conversations our field has been building up to and during these times.

We open with Jeaneen Canfield’s column, “Centering the Writing Classroom: A Practice of the Dialectic.” Answering Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s call for empirical research in the field, Canfield reflects on data from her own IRBapproved classroom study, and on the ways that writing center theory and writing instruction praxis have influenced one another. This column begins our investigation into the adaptive pedagogies that weave in and through our writing center practices.

In “Reading and the Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis,” Amanda Greenwell, Renée Lavoie, Gissel Campos, Sarah Gerrish and Mary Joerg discuss how one writing center altered their tutor education course to include a focus on reading support. This article includes examples from both tutors and tutor educators to outline four reading-focused aspects of the tutor education

course. Greenwell et al. conclude their findings by especially discussing how the reading strategies can help the English as Second Language (ESL)/ second language writers (SLWs).

Continuing with the theme of facilitating and incorporating ESL writers in the writing center, Sarah Patrick draws our attention to an important population within second language writers (SLWs): Chinese international students. In “Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk: Using Scaffolding Strategies to Support Language Acquisition in the Writing Center,” Patrick undertakes a qualitative study to analyze the effects of several scaffolding techniques used in sessions with Chinese international students who were SLWs by the tutors. The results of the study provide insight into the do’s and don'ts of interpersonal techniques employed by the tutors, specifically with this population.

Jing Zhang, Havva Ozer and Raneem Bayazeed further include writing center participants' voices in their mixed methods study.

They examine the participants’ perceptions of Grammarly and face-to-face tutoring at the writing center and the comparison of the two. In “Grammarly vs. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center: ESL Student Writers’ Perceptions,” readers will find the interesting discussion of what the current available technology has the potential of replacing and what needs of the participants are being unaddressed by said technology. Zhang, Ozer and Bayazeed provide many recommendations and implications of their research as it relates to English as a second language writers and other writing center personnel.

We see another strand of digital pedagogy and analysis in the writing consultation in Courtney L.

Language and Learning in the Writing Center • 2 Werner and Diana Lin Awad Scrocco’s “Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak: Enhancing Online Conferences.” Through discourse analysis of the transcripts of four synchronous online writing consultation chats, Werner and Scrocco identify specific patterns in tutor/student interactions, and make recommendations for the most effective affordances of synchronous online tutoring--something that many writing centers are now unexpectedly working with for the first time.

We then turn to another kind of history-in-themaking. In “The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic: A Bibliometric Analysis of a German Flagship Journal, 2010-2016,” Pam Bromley and Andrea Scott invite us to observe the early development of writing studies--and writing centers--as a new field in German-speaking countries. Through a bibliometric analysis of citations in the first issues of the most prominent German-language writing center journal, Bromley and Scott shed light on what matters to the field as it emerges, both in its subject matter and in terms of authorship.

Finally, we close with two book reviews. In Amber Kent-Johnson’s Review of Multimodal Composing: Strategies for Twenty-First-Century Writing Consultations, edited by Lindsay A. Sabatino and Brian Fallon, we see a continuation of our pedagogical and technological themes.

Kent-Johnson finds this guide to designing and developing multimodal composition projects to be both helpful in training tutors and also likely to withstand repeated readings and technological developments. On the other hand, in her review of Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, by Laura Greenfield, Oksana Moroz finds Greenfield’s argument for radical transformation to be inspiring, but calls upon her own background to lay out the dangers of radicalism without the infrastructure and organization to implement new programs.

Finally, we here at Praxis want to take a moment to thank our readers and our most brilliant and diligent review board for their continued support, especially in these uncertain times. We

want to extend our thanks to the University of Texas at Austin for ensuring that the unexpected turn of events this semester, did not hinder our ability to bring this piece to you in a timely manner.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020)

CENTERING THE WRITING CLASSROOM: A PRACTICE OF THE DIALECTIC Jeaneen Canfield Oklahoma State University jeaneen@ostatemail.okstate.edu Notions of the writing conference have deep roots; we have discussed “the conversation of mankind (Bruffee), the “Burkean Parlor” approach in the writing center (Lunsford), and the move away from the writing center as a “fix-it shop” (North). Additionally, recent scholarship explores the fruitfulness of writing conversations (Reardon in 2019, and Corbett in 2015) within the writing classroom. These conversations, along with others like them, not only indicate an ongoing interest in merging writing center (WC) theory with writing instruction (WI) practice, but also an interest in a systematic examination of how WC theory influences WI pedagogy. In fact, Jackie McKinney (Strategies for Writing Center Research) sends a clear call for continued research in the field to consider the ways empirical research projects can “complement the existing work” (xvii) being done in and through the WC. Although her work focuses on writing centers, McKinney's call prompts me to consider the several questions in the context of the writing classroom: How might the knowledge we gain from writing center scholarship provide productive pedagogical implications for writing instruction? If commonalities exist between WC and WI, what does that mean for writing instruction? Through these questions, I reflect on the ways my WI has been influenced by my WC experiences and offer thoughts for how we might “center” writing instruction.

The idea for this research project began in the WC at my current institution after conferencing with a student several times during a semester. During the second consultation, the student said it was more “fun” to sit and talk through her paper instead of listening to me find problems and correct them (which is what she had at first expected). For this student, the WC consultation was no longer a “fix-it” appointment—it empowered her as a writer. A few semesters later, during a semi-structured interview in which a WI student (one of my research subjects in an IRB-approved formal study) strongly asserted that the single most influential teaching practice that contributed toward increasing his confidence in his ability as a writer was the one-on-one writing conference. This was a strong connection to the conversation I had had with my client in my institution's WC.

For context, it is helpful to describe the assignment sequence for my institution's second semester of first-year writing. It is a sixteen-week semester term divided into two eight-week segments.

During the first eight-weeks, students engage with a digital archive and learn to think and write from points of inquiry. The first four weeks is spent focusing on close readings of the archive, culminating with a composed summary of the archive. In the second four weeks, students continue engaging with the same archive from their first composition, but in this module, they compose an analysis and evaluation of the archive. The last eight-week segment of the semester is spent focusing on a student's own research question and research argument, which may or may not be connected to their archive from the first eight-week segment. The connecting, underpinning skills are 1) writing from a point of inquiry, 2) developing digital literacy, and 3) deepen thinking to productively impact writerly development.

For the formal study, I collected data from an anonymous survey, a semi-structured interview, student work with my feedback, and a teacherreflection journal. The instrument for the semistructured interview contained questions that allowed me to follow up on responses to the survey questions.

One particular question was designed as an openended question that allowed the interviewee to freely state any specific strategy from class instruction that strengthened writer growth. When I listened to the semi-structured interviews, I took particular note of one student's response when he said that the writing conference was the most beneficial pedagogical strategy. Note the following interview segment transcript: Interviewer: As far as all the different interactions I had you guys do in the class, are there one or two that stick out most in your mind that helped you be successful in the classwork?

Student: A hundred percent, going to seeing you in your office hours. [Interviewer: Oh, really?] A hundred percent . . . yeah, I like that cuz . . I'm not very good at Comp, I don't feel like . . . and working with you really helped me .. . . cuz when I work with other students . . . sometimes they just

Writing Center • 4 don't try . . . or you don't know 'em . . and [Interview: Yeah]. it's just annoying, you know, uh, like, your projects or whatever, some people slack . . . it's always annoying, [Interviewer: Right] but working with you, like, I actually have (student's emphasis) to engage . . . have (student's emphasis) to show up prepared . . . and I think that helps tremendously [Interviewer: Yeah] . . it's more personal. . . so I really like that [Interviewer: True, yep . . . more personal, ok ] . . .that was my favorite part [laughter] I always looked forward to going [more laughter] get help with my paper [laughter].

In this excerpt, this student states that the one outof-class activity (the writing conference in my office) was the most beneficial thing for him. Not only does this student unhesitatingly state his opinion, he barely lets me finish the question before responding. He further qualifies his statement by claiming that the office conversations helped “A hundred percent.” He states he does not really believe that peer review (an inclass activity) was of particular help to him, but that he enjoyed the personal connection with me, the instructor, during the conference. He also mentions that he had to be prepared and more engaged with the writing during the conference. This is a particularly salient point because, in my research, I was trying to ascertain which in-class lesson activities were most beneficial, not whether a writing conference—an outof-class activity—was beneficial. Because the student explicitly stated that the single-most beneficial teaching strategy for him was the writing conference, I returned to analyzing more of his data to ascertain what evidence there might be supporting his claim.

First, looking at the students’ work, there was an increase of sentence complexity from his first composition to his fourth composition. One example is his opening sentence for each composition: [From first written composition] This aviation archive is one that has a certain layout to help the viewer become more educated on specific information from aviation history.

[From fourth written composition] On February 12th, 2009 there was an accident that would completely change the ATP, otherwise known at [sic] Airline Transport Pilot certificate, [sic] requirements.

With the addition of the descriptive clause to provide clarification of “ATP,” as well as the use of an introductory clause, the student's writing is more sophisticated by the end of the semester. Further, throughout the fourth composition, there is strong evidence of the student's maturing literacy skills. He employs transition words to move smoothly between

paragraphs, which were used minimally in his first written composition, giving the overall composition a disconnected tone.

Second, the student was able to integrate outside source material in his fourth composition more completely than in the first composition. The first contained source references that were vague because the student never made an explicit citation for any of the information he retrieved from his source. There were explanatory sentences where the student talked around the information rather than making a direct reference. Below is an excerpt from the first composition: On the aircraft tab there are many articles of airplanes that include pictures and ethical information about the planes; from my background of being a pilot for many years I think the author of the archive does a great job describing them and conserving the history of the aircraft.

Rather than engaging with his source information, he seems to mention it from a distance because his reference is vague without attribution. In contrast, composition four indicates a different level of engagement: This power reduction greatly diminished the speed of the plane, in fact it got so slow the stick shaker was activated. (Collins) The way the student engages with source information is more sophisticated in composition four than composition one. He summarizes the information and closes the sentence with a parenthetical citation, which indicates his awareness of source paraphrasing and attribution. In this composition, the student's skill has matured enough to cite not only direct quotes, but also to cite paraphrases.

Third, the student became a more confident writer.

In my reflective teacher-journal, I noted he introduced himself at the beginning of the course as a “junior majoring in aviation . . . and . . . uh . . . I've waited to take Comp because I can't write.” His statement during the interview that he was not “very good at comp” reinforces what he said to introduce himself to the class and reveals his lack of self-efficacy. Interestingly, though, since he had “to engage and show up prepared” to the writing conferences in my office, the student spent extra time in the writing process. In my journal, I also note the specific things I wanted to bring up in our writing conferences, such as explaining how he might incorporate outside sources to support his own assertions and/or interpretations. We talked through his thinking and his writing, and I had him read some of his sentences aloud so that he could hear the disconnect between sentences and paragraphs, as

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Writing Center • 5 well as learn to self-correct LOC's. Also, he always had specific questions about his draft that he wanted to discuss, which increased his level of engagement with writing as he learned to embrace the process of drafting and revising, and suggests that his confidence as a writer increased.

The student's improvement came after our writing conferences, which further supports his claim that coming to my office was of great benefit to him. I also interpret the statement that he “always looked forward to going” as evidence of his increased sense of confidence as a writer. He never missed a conference appointment, and he even made additional visits outside of the writing conference. My conclusion is that the student's growth as a writer was positively impacted by the writing conference.

I admit, however, that this data does not provide enough evidence for generalizable knowledge regarding writing conferences. Nonetheless, the findings do indicate there is a connection between one-on-one writing conferences and these two writers' growth.

While I can speak confidently about these writers, there is room to further examine the impact of one-onone writing conferences upon student writers as a whole. I also must be mindful of instructors’ potential resistance to writing conferences as pedagogy.

Conversations with colleagues are, at times, characterized by a concern for adequate time spent in conferencing. The tension is caused, as Neal Lerner points out, by the rising number of students enrolled in writing courses, which limits the amount of time anyone can devote to writing conferences. He explains how “institutions were finding that the price of intimacy was too great” (191), and so the writing conference, as an integral step in the writing process, has been pushed aside. This mirrors conversations I have had with my colleagues, and yet data from my two students indicate the need for us to find the time.

A final point to consider comes from Laurel Black in her work Between Talk and Teaching: Reconsidering the Writing Conference. Black explains and complicates how “conferences help demystify the process of evaluation for students as the teacher reads through and responds in a variety of ways to the draft while the student listens and watches” (14). Through her identification of three specific types of writing conferences (teachercentered, student-centered, and text-focused), she provides valuable information for the evolution of writing conferences. I deem this “valuable” because the three approaches help us interrogate the power structure that is difficult to ignore—to grapple with tensions between what we want and what occurs.

Through the process of interrogating these three approaches to writing conferences, instructors might

work to create conference spaces that are opportunities for student's growth as writers: spaces where we “produce better writers” as the beginning point of instruction and future research. As for my writing student, the writing conference is what gave him the ability to confidently and profoundly write about the things he cared about (in this case, aviation certification procedures and requirements).

To deepen my exploration of the emerging phenomena from my research, I merged WC theory with composition theory and considered the ways theory informs practice. It is important that I continue to explore what my students are saying about what helps them to become effective writers. In fact, when Elizabeth Boquet and Neal Lerner (“Reconsiderations After “The Idea of a Writing Center'“) investigate the progress of writing center research, they also suggest a potential turn for our approach when we consider Stephen North's “Idea” that we make better writers, and that the conference is not “an endpoint, [but] rather . . . an origin” (171). Perhaps by blurring the boundaries between WC consultations and WI writing conferences--since both are locations of writing instruction--and by interrogating what is already happening, we can answer McKinney's call in Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers to “question the [writing center] grand narrative” (79) and productively explore the ways students are becoming better writers. In my pedagogical practices, I am continually interested to see what will happen when I approach the data with a listening ear to what students are saying, so that my goal of strengthening student writers is the beginning and not the end of my instructional goals. For me, this is what it means to embrace a pedagogy that “centers” writing instruction.

Works Cited Black, Laurel Johnson. “Conversation, Teaching, and Points in Between: The Confusion of Conferencing,” Between Talk and Teaching: Reconsidering the Writing Conference, UT State U Press, 1998.

Boquet, Elizabeth and Neal Lerner. “Reconsiderations: After ‘The Idea of a Writing Center.’”College English, vol. 71, no. 2, 2008, pp. 170-189.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” The Longman Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Ed. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blumner. Pearson, 2008.

Corbett, Steven. Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies. Perspectives on Writing. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC

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Writing Center • 6 Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspecti ves/dichotomy/ Lerner, Neal. “The Teacher-Student Writing Conference and the Desire for Intimacy.”

College English, vol. 68, no. 2, 186-208.

Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1991, pp. 3-10.

McKinney, Jackie G. Strategies for Writing Center Research.

Parlor Press, 2016.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp.

433-446.

Reardon, Kristina. “Adopting Writing Center Practices in Teaching.” The MLA Style Center, 16 April 2019. https://style.mla.org/adopting-writing-centerpractices/. Accessed 17 September 2019.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020)

READING IN THE WRITING CENTER: TUTOR EDUCATION AND PRAXIS Amanda M. Greenwell Central Connecticut State University1 greenwellamm@ccsu.edu

Renée J. Lavoie University of Saint Joseph rlavoie@usj.edu

Sarah E. Gerrish University of Saint Joseph sgerrish@usj.edu Abstract

Writing center scholarship’s recent interest in the role of reading in the writing center often includes calls for stronger praxis. This article details and reflects upon the ways in which our writing center altered our tutor education course to include a focus on reading support as well as the ways in which tutors applied such education to their practice. Composing from two perspectives—that of tutor educators and that of tutors—we discuss four reading-focused aspects of our tutor education course: readerly self-reflection and tutorly awareness, annotation practices, scenario-based interventions, and English Language Learner (ELL)-specific support. We conclude that our experiment with integrating reading support formally into tutor education has promising results for writing tutor praxis, and we also suggest further avenues for consideration.

Writing center scholarship has recently exhibited an increase in attention to the role of reading in the writing center. Scholars such as W. Gary Griswold, G. Travis Adams, Ellen C. Carillo, Muriel Harris, and Carolyne M. King have begun to theorize more specifically the ways in which writing centers are positioned to work with reading, and they have also made some practical suggestions about reading-focused interventions in tutorials and tutor training. We will review that work below, but here we emphasize one key thread that unites all of this work: the call for writing center scholars and practitioners to prioritize attention to reading in their work and then to share their reading-oriented interventions with the field (Adams 86-89; Harris 239241; Griswold 67-70, Carillo, “Letter” 1; Carillo, “Reading and Writing” 137-139; Carillo, “Reading With Purpose” 23; King 69). In her editor’s introduction to a special issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, the first of any writing center studies journal devoted to the intersection of reading and writing center work, Carillo makes such a representative call: “As you read this issue, I invite you to think about how reading is currently addressed in your own centers [...] and what you might contribute to the conversation about the role of reading in writing centers and writing center studies” (1).

This article is a response to such invitations. It details and reflects upon the ways in which our writing center altered our tutor education course to include a

Gissel A. Campos University of Saint Joseph gcampos@usj.edu Mary E. Joerg University of Saint Joseph mjoerg@usj.edu

focus on reading support, as well as the ways in which tutors applied such education to their practice. It is to our knowledge one of the first articles to include, at length, the voices of tutors who are “on the ‘front lines’” (Griswold 60), as they tutor students who are both writers and readers.2 To emphasize these voices, we have chosen to compose from two perspectives: that of tutor educators, and that of tutors. We make this division not because we see our roles as entirely separate within the mission of writing center work, but because we wish to honor the fact that student tutors enact a praxis that differs in focus and scope from that of tutor educators. Indeed, our overlapping yet distinct praxes constitute the foci of this piece, which presents a dualvoiced narrative of our developing responses to the call for stronger reading support in the writing center.

This dual-voiced discussion is divided into four parts, and each part corresponds with a newly conceived reading-focused aspect of our tutor education course: readerly self-reflection and tutorly awareness, annotation practices, scenario-based interventions, and English Language Learner (ELL)-specific support. In each section, we who are tutor educators discuss our design and implementation of these aspects of the course, and we who are tutors discuss our experience taking the course and applying our new knowledge to tutoring fellow undergraduate students in both one-onone tutorials and embedded course support settings. We conclude that our experiment with integrating reading support formally into tutor education has promising results for writing tutor praxis, and it is worth sharing as part of the charge to “secure a place for reading” in the writing center (Horning 7). Additionally, writing center professionals must continue to become mindful of the ways they position the role of reading in relation to writing.3

Institutional and Theoretical Contexts

The University of Saint Joseph (USJ) in West Hartford, CT is a small, liberal arts college located in a large suburban town bordering a major city. Its most popular majors are Nursing, Social Work, and

Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 8 Psychology. The Writing Center at USJ is one division of the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE), which also houses content tutoring services, academic success support, and accessibility services. Several years ago, the university allocated funds from a federal Title III/REACH grant to add a Literacy & Learning Coach to the CAE staff in response to a perceived need for reading support for our students. When Renée Lavoie, a public school-certified literacy specialist, began that position, she and Amanda Greenwell, the Writing Center Administrator, began discussing a potential overlap in services, especially since the same grant had already expanded our undergraduate staff in order to embed a writing tutor in every section of our first year writing courses.

Given that Alice Horning suggests that one way writing centers can work to include reading support is to invite reading specialists to work with their tutors (4), this collaboration seemed potentially fruitful. Amanda and Renée already had a good working relationship; furthermore, Renée understood writing centers well, having formerly been a writing center consultant herself, and Amanda, who educates pre-service secondary English teachers and who spent some time as an academic success specialist in higher education, had a practical understanding of reading support. We agreed that we should experiment with adding attention to reading support to our one-credit tutor education practicum course. Typically, students take this course concurrently with their first semester of tutoring, but we elected to invite experienced tutors to join their newer peers for the reading-focused sessions. Amanda and Renée’s voices make up the “Tutor Educators” voice in the body of this article.

Gissel Campos, Sarah Gerrish, and Mary Joerg comprise the collective “Tutor” voice. When they entered the tutor education course with seven other new tutors, they were undergraduate sophomores newly recommended to be writing tutors by their first-year professors. Each concurrently held regular writing center hours for one-on-one undergraduate tutorials and worked as an embedded tutor in at least one section of a first-year writing course. Gissel majors in Child Studies and minors in Psychology and Spanish, Sarah majors in Psychology and minors in Public Health, and Mary majors in English and minors in Art History, so they bring a range of disciplinary experience to our center.

Our center’s burgeoning plan to integrate attention to reading into writing tutor education dovetailed with the uptick in scholarly interest in the role of reading in the writing center. For instance, Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta’s much-acclaimed 2016 inaugural edition

of The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research, which we were already using in our tutor education course, devotes a small section to “Helping Writers with Reading.” Fitzgerald and Ianetta assert that: although helping someone with reading might not, initially, seem to be the job of a writing tutor, […] writing assignments often start with reading— including the instructor’s written instructions, the text or texts writers must respond to, and prior research to review and cite (94).

Several of the scholars mentioned above became guides for the ways we could extend this concept and make it more concrete for our tutors. For example, Griswold notes that while tutors often perceive a general need for reading support in their tutorials, tutors need guidance that helps them develop a praxis of writing support.

Acknowledging that many writing centers, for various reasons, may not have the resources to provide thorough theoretical foundations for reading support, he argues that tutors would still benefit from exposure to key reading concepts and practices that would help them tutor their students more appropriately and more confidently (67). Developing tutorly sensibilities to their own and to students’ reading practices—as well as helping tutors develop a language to discuss them—is crucial to expanding writing center work to include reading.

Carillo suggests that writing center professionals might borrow the concepts and practices necessary to perform such work from the fields of education, psychology, and composition, including Mike Bunn’s concept of “reading like a writer” and Horning’s suggestions for modeling expert reading practices (“Reading and Writing Centers” 137). In a companion piece, she isolates one approach and keenly adapts it for writing center use: reading with a purpose. Noting that it emerges as a key strategy across reading scholarship, Carillo makes the case for how tutoring students to read with a purpose can increase efficacy, mindfulness, and motivation in student readers (“Reading with a Purpose”), in addition to facilitating transfer of this skill to other settings (22).4 Carillo, whose scholarship on reading straddles the fields of composition and writing center studies, emphasizes in both contexts the need for visibility and mindfulness as we support student readers.

Adams and Harris underscore the importance of such support by providing insight into the intricacies of adding reading to the writing center repertoire. Adams reminds us that just as there tends to be a disparity between writing center tutors and students in writing practices, so also are there disparities between their reading practices (73). He also critiques how writing

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 9 center tutor guides tend to privilege strategies for reading literary texts, which are not matched well to the non-literary reading assignments with which many writing center students struggle (76). Harris takes up this charge, pointing out how often students who visit writing centers present with reading needs. From comprehending paper assignments to working through secondary sources they must cite in their papers, student writers frequently bring their reading into the writing center, and tutors are faced with deciding how to help them. Harris argues that “if tutors focus on discussing students’ writing skills without being aware of underlying reading problems, tutors are tending to only part of what the students need to learn” (229).

In order to remedy this gap—which echoes the “gaping hole in writing center scholarship” on reading (229)— we must experiment with tutor education strategies that equip tutors to support students as readers as well as writers. Here we present our experimentation, which was designed to raise tutorly awareness of reading support and to encourage the use of reading support strategies in our center’s tutorials.

Readerly Self-Reflection and Awareness: The Gallery Walk

Tutorly

Tutor Educators In introducing and framing the task of guiding writing tutors to develop a reading support praxis, we knew that our starting point had to address the concern that Griswold expresses: “[H]ow can we effectively judge what writing center tutors might know or not know about the teaching of reading to college-level writers?” (62). We, like Griswold, knew that we needed to anchor this inquiry in tutors’ own experiences with academic reading, fully aware that because of their strong academic abilities, writing tutors would likely have “no real memories of actually learning to read, but rather recall just being readers” (65). Adams’s strategy for mining tutors’ reading experiences is an individualized reading inventory (84), which asks tutors to rate their intellectual responses to and strategies for accessing the texts they encounter. He then uses that document “to spur conversations about reading and writing center work” (83). We drew upon and expanded this strategy by designing a collaborative activity that allowed us to create a communal rendering of tutors’ readerly practices as well as tutors’ assumptions about general students’ reading practices.

This collaborative activity took the form of a gallery walk, an active learning strategy that allows instructors to “gauge the depth of student understanding of

particular concepts and to challenge misconceptions” (“What”). Typically, a gallery walk fosters active participation in the learning process because the kinesthetic and visual nature of the activity prompts students to ask questions, share ideas, and formulate and revise conclusions about what they see as they create and “walk” along the gallery walls. As a tutor education method to access the potential role of reading in the writing center, the gallery walk proved to be a strong choice: it became, at once, a showcase for the key literacy ideas that we wanted to feature throughout the semester, a method of self-assessment and communal reflection regarding the tutors’ own literacy practices, and a categorization tool by which they could consider the literacy strategies they see their student writers employ.

To facilitate our gallery walk, we printed and hung on the walls of our “gallery” classroom space a series of statements pertaining to reading practices: • “Before I begin reading an assignment, I think about what I already know about the topic”; • “Before I begin reading, I set a purpose for why I am reading that is related to what I plan to do with or how I will be assessed on the information”; • “Before I begin reading, I scan the assignment to familiarize myself with the text features (headings, sub-headings, diagrams, captions, etc.)”; • “I divide my reading assignments into ‘chunks’ or more manageable parts”; • “I put off reading long assignments until I have a large chunk of time to read” and • “When I begin a reading assignment, I start at the beginning.”5 Below each statement was a matrix, one row of which invited tutors to categorize their own use of the reading practice (“always,” “sometimes,” or “never”), and one of which invited them to categorize their perceptions of their student writers’ uses of these practices. At the start of the session, we handed tutors a sheet of dot stickers and asked them to move about the room, consider the statements, and place stickers in the appropriate boxes under each, thus mapping our data for visual consumption by the group.

This visual inventory immediately threw our points of consensus and difference into sharp relief and launched a robust discussion about reading practices. A few trends were apparent: the “sometimes” boxes contained the most dots, and there were more “always” dots in the tutor self-perception row than in the student writer row of the matrix. Tutors explored the nuanced

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 10 contexts for their responses, often bringing up differences in discipline- and course-related expectations that drove their reading decisions as well as embodied experiences that inflected their practices.

They also expressed some uncertainty about whether their reading strategies were “right” or “appropriate,” revealing a lack of confidence in reading approaches despite having consistently employed strategies that had “worked” for them up to this point. This uncertainty allowed us to provide some direct instruction about the reading techniques we had showcased on the walls, which prompted some of our tutors to admit that they should begin using some of these strategies more mindfully themselves.

The tutors also concluded that they assume their efficient reading, like their strong writing, set them apart from their peers, and they were perplexed when confronted with a question about whether or not they could accurately “assess” the readerly practices of other students. A key realization for them was that since they had not often foregrounded reading practices in their tutoring sessions or informal discussions about writing, they had access to very little information about their peers’ reading practices. Thus, beyond just a discussion of who was using which strategies, the gallery walk created a forum for us to interrogate assumptions about reading at the college level and the extent to which “best” reading practices are uniform and universal.

Below, the tutors discuss their experiences, takeaways, and applications for praxis related to this discussion, and their narrative reveals the power of readerly selfreflection as a component of tutorly awareness about reading support.

Tutors Before the gallery walk, we had not made many conscious, articulable connections between writing and reading practices. This session allowed us to start talking about how we read for our college courses, and that was especially beneficial for helping us see how our reading processes played a significant role in our writing practices. As we discussed our strategies for reading, we agreed that we use many different strategies in various contexts, often aimed at understanding our reading in a certain way, which correspond to how—and often paid off when—we write about what we have read.

This discussion sparked our interest in making those types of strategies available to other student writers and coaching them about how to use them in context. Because the gallery walk gave names to strategies that we had been using for so long already, we found Renée’s formulation of a literacy “tool box” particularly helpful in this endeavor. The tool box

metaphor seems simple—and it is not an uncommon one in tutoring work—but the idea of creating a mental space which is reserved for techniques and strategies to support students as they engage with reading-focused work was a key shift for us as tutors, a threshold concept that helped us to expand our developing writing tutor praxis to include reading. Thus, the bridge between our gallery walk and the development of our tutoring tool boxes was our self-reflection: the ability to identify specific strategies we use in our own reading is critical to supporting students because as we become aware of our own reading practices, we can help students become aware of and add to theirs. We can use the language of reading to highlight the strategies they are using, as well as provide new strategies for them to use.

We also agree with Carillo that reading with a purpose is one of the foundational reading strategies we can encourage in our writing center praxis because it works in so many academic contexts. Mary, for instance, discussed the different strategies she employs in each of her majors. In Art History, she uses disciplinary concepts her professors emphasize in class as a guide to discern important information in her reading. In English, however, she focuses less on informationgathering than on interpreting characters, themes, plots, and patterns. Even within a discipline, reading purposes can differ, which we readily see in our writing center work. For example, if a student comes in with a not-yetdrafted assignment for their business class where they have to read an article and respond in writing to three post-reading questions, we are going to handle that consultation differently than one for another business student who is overwhelmed by the task of reading five to ten articles as sources for a longer research paper. In the instance where the student comes in with a short article and questions to answer, we might model for the student how to use the question prompts to set a purpose for reading, and spend the rest of the session in conversation with the student as they read the article and begin to formulate their responses. However, for the larger research paper, we will be discussing reading approaches the student can use as they read through articles on their own. For example, we would model or suggest reviewing abstracts for relevancy and finding connections and conflicts among the articlesn anticipation of developing an argument and outline, and then we would invite the student to return for an appointment where we can discuss their progress.

Beginning our reading support praxis with a focus on reading for a purpose helped us, as tutors, make explicit connections between reading and writing assignments for our students. For example, in the firstyear writing course in which Gissel was an embedded

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 11 tutor, students were working on a lens-artifact assignment. The assignment required students to identify the themes of one reading (the lens), and, through them, analyze the second reading (the artifact).

As Gissel worked with different students, she discovered that they were confused about how to approach this task. Their early drafts largely included comparisons and contrasts of the two readings, as opposed to lens-focused analysis. Carillo notes that “even if a student has, in fact, already completed the reading component of an assignment, her way of reading may not have been appropriate or sufficient to complete the related writing task” (“Reading with a Purpose” 19). In this case, Gissel realized that her students had not read the material in a way that was productive for the purpose of the paper.

This misunderstanding of the assignment signaled that the students were not approaching the readings with the appropriate purposes, so it was important to guide them in understanding how setting a purpose for reading could help them engage the assignment efficiently. To do this, Gissel focused her tutoring sessions on reading approaches. She pointed out that students needed to use two different reading strategies with each text, and she practiced them with students.

First, Gissel asked students to review the first reading with the purpose of looking for its main ideas. After identifying these main ideas, they could move quickly to the overarching themes that the reading addressed.

Next, she had students review the second reading with the purpose of identifying and discussing examples that connected to the themes they saw in the first reading.

Because Gissel implemented a guided reading scenario for students, they were able to apply the strategies that would help them locate and analyze the information they needed from each text. Once students could identify themes and examples from the readings, they were able to see the connections between the readings that they needed to address in their writing—and the connections between strategic reading and effective writing.

Annotation Practices: Making Reading Visible Tutor Educators As Rachel Ihara and Ann Del Principe note, “different purposes for reading shape reading behaviors” (1), and one behavior that can link reading strategies, such as setting a purpose, to writing, is annotation. Therefore, Carillo’s work on making reading visible via annotation was key to our next step as tutor educators. Carillo notes that while educators can access

students’ writing with ease since students often submit it in stages for us to review, we actually have very little access to students’ reading processes. But ignoring reading as a practice firmly linked to composing is problematic because it de-emphasizes the significance of reading development in ways that hinder writing students’ growth and writing teachers’ efficacy (Carillo, “Making” 37-38). In A Writer’s Guide to Mindful Reading, her open-access textbook written for a student audience, Carillo not only highlights the ways in which close attention to reading supports writerly development, but also details annotation as a key strategy students can use to become more writerly readers: When you annotate you are writing as you read. You make notes, you comment, react, and raise questions in the margins of your text. Reflections of your engagement with the text and its author, annotations represent the initial and preliminary ways you are participating in a scholarly conversation with the author of what you are reading (6).

Annotation practices, then, seem to be a key way writing centers are positioned to address the writing-reading connection —and not only because they prompt a critical conversation between reader and source text, but because they make students’ reading practices visible to tutors, who can then provide support.

As a literacy specialist and a former academic success specialist who each teach courses involving reading and writing regularly, we know that students often benefit from guided practice with annotating college-level texts. Readers at our university have shared that they were expected to annotate in high school, but not shown explicitly how to annotate, or if they were shown, that might have been sometime in late elementary to middle school. They were applying strategies developmentally appropriate for a fifth grader to college-level assignments. Indeed, many of them understood notetaking to be “something I should do” rather than a strategized choice for accessing their course materials or preparing to write about a text.

Essentially, they did not have a way to talk to themselves about the academic work they were doing. We needed to position our tutors to prompt annotating as a process of internal choice related to the purpose with which they were reading and not just a way to decorate a page.

Furthermore, students visiting our center reported annotating most often for English courses focused on literature. Indeed, Griswold points out this same trend at his university, and Adams notes that Gillespie and Lerner’s Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring provides close reading and annotation examples exclusively for

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 12 literary texts, discipline-specific strategies that break down when applied elsewhere (78-84). We wanted to work against the erasure of annotation as a key skill for reading in other disciplines; consequently, we designed sessions about annotation that explicitly position annotation as part of an academic reading process writ large, and a valid strategy to use with texts other than literature.

We also couched this work in terms of reading with a purpose, as annotations must proceed from directed reading. Thus, we discussed the variety of marginal comments a savvy reader might make, such as summarizing content, highlighting key “turns” in the argument, and articulating questions for further consideration. Such written commentary largely helps a reader track their interaction with the reading, “making visible” their metacognition via writing. This key concept underpinned our annotation sessions: annotating is not just a way to understand the text; it’s a way for readers to understand how they understand the text. Thus, annotating with a purpose has to do with the transaction between the student and the material, a transaction that is influenced by contexts such as discipline, genre, course, and aims.

Providing this tool to our writing tutors gave them a way to weave writing and verbal expression into tutorials requiring attention to reading so that they could combine reading support with writing skills. This was a big step for our tutors because many of these higherlevel literacy skills were so second nature to some of them, they didn’t know they were making these moves with such sophistication. In some cases, our tutors were making readerly moves in their heads but not in the margin, which means they had not yet made visible their own reading. Therefore, talking explicitly about the purpose and practice of annotation helped tutors make note-taking processes explicit for their students.

Tutors A main concept we took away from the annotation instruction was that annotation enables and documents the reader’s ability to engage with the text. This interaction between reader and text allows for a deeper understanding of the reading as well as of the reader’s intellectual response to that reading. We also admit that while some of us were already using annotation as a reading and thinking strategy, some of us were not. We non-annotators found that emphasizing annotation with other students helped us realize how important it is to annotate a text in order to think about and understand it in ways that we had not before. This made us even more motivated to support students as they figured out

the kind of intellectual moves that they can make when they interact with a text through annotation.

As we applied annotation strategies to our tutorials, we quickly realized that focusing on annotation was a way to open up a dialogue with our students about reading in connection to writing. For instance, Gissel worked with a student who came to an appointment with a reading from her religion class, which she would need to reference later in a writing assignment. The student had difficulty understanding the text, so Gissel knew this consultation would be reading-based. Gissel could not offer content support, but she could offer strategies to better navigate it. The student had read most of the text, so Gissel assessed the depth of the student’s comprehension by asking the student to explain what she thought the author was saying. Gissel noticed that the student had highlighted certain sections in the text, so she prompted her to talk about her highlights and marginalia. Despite these highlights and notes, the student struggled to articulate her reasoning for making them. This disconnect suggested to Gissel that the student was highlighting only because it seemed like something one does when one reads, not because she was consciously reading with a purpose or authentically engaging with the text. At that point, Gissel decided the student could benefit from a session about effective annotation techniques.

The specific techniques Gissel suggested included those we had discussed during our annotation session: navigating the text and summarizing the content. Gissel asked the student to read the passage out loud, one paragraph at a time. At the end of each, Gissel asked her to verbalize her thoughts and then turn those thoughts into notes on the page by summarizing the paragraph in a sentence and writing it down next to the text, as well as underlining the parts of the paragraph that guided her to that thinking. Additionally, Gissel suggested she take notes along the tops of each page to briefly summarize the main points on the page as a whole, since such notes could become a tool she could use to quickly locate the information she needed to reference while writing.

We found that such attention to annotating often prompted students to engage with the course content more deeply. For instance, as Gissel and her student discussed the reading at this careful pace, and with the purpose of summarizing the author’s argument, the student posed questions and drew connections she noticed to other readings in the class. Gissel pointed out that these comments were useful as well, and encouraged the student to track her own ideas in the margins. It also became clear that part of the student’s struggle was vocabulary-based, so whenever the student encountered a word she did not know, Gissel prompted

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 13 the student to look up the definition, jot it in the margin, and apply this new knowledge to her understanding of the paragraph.

At the ends of appointments like these, we recapped the strategies we introduced and encouraged our students to continue to use them. We also suggested, as Horning encourages writing tutors to do, that students write a brief summary at the end of the reading to capture the main ideas of the text, as this strategy encourages repeated readings and careful analysis of a text and ultimately can be a highly effective tool to improve students’ reading of assigned material as well as their reading of materials for their own writing projects (6).

In addition, we urged students to jot down any questions they still had so they could raise them during class or talk about them with their professors during office hours. These annotation practices transform overreliance on highlighting to metacognitive, selfmonitoring strategies, and in many cases, we saw students’ annotation practices become part of their writing strategies as we continued to work with them over time. The student discussed above, for instance, later returned to the writing center with a draft of a paper that required her to answer questions in relation to the text. During the appointment, Gissel had her pull out the reading and refer to it as they discussed her responses. Gissel noticed the student used the annotations to document her reading, consulting them to find additional points to include in her essay, and used some of the language from her annotations in her draft.

Those of us who had not often practiced annotation as a strategy to connect reading and writing found that when we began to do so, we discovered better ways to guide our students in similar practices. At one point, Sarah noticed that her first-year writing students struggled to put themselves into conversation with their readings, and she realized that she needed to adapt the way she was reading and taking notes in order to model this intellectual move for her students. The students in this course not only had to understand their assigned texts, but evaluate them as well: they also had to look beyond understanding in order to find the argument’s assumptions and limitations, assess interpretations involving the validity and value of the evidence the author presented, and pose questions that would contribute to the discussion they found themselves entering by reading the text. Annotating the text herself to make visible this type of readerly conversation allowed Sarah to exhibit some of her annotations as a way to guide her students’ notetaking in ways that moved beyond comprehension.

In particular, it took some time for Sarah to help her students understand that evaluating required them to look at the strengths, weaknesses and grey areas of the author’s argument. Many of the students struggled to discern the limitations of the argument; students often asserted that they had “found” limitations that were simply rephrasing an author’s own, e.g. low numbers of participants or trials. To help students consider more deeply the way their texts presented the studies they compared, Sarah guided them to read beyond the literal level and make meaning by annotating in a way that developed a sort of “conversation” among several sources. By writing down questions they developed in response to their sources, the students began to be able to identify limitations, gaps, and silences in their arguments. Noticing these trends allowed them to put these sources into a larger conversation that also included their own voices.

It is perhaps not surprising that many first-year students do not consider reading to be a crucial aspect of the writing process, so Sarah’s focus on annotation as a key writing strategy emphasized this connection for them. Teaching them to think and write critically via annotation practices supported them as they moved towards figuring out how an author makes a point rhetorically rather than just figuring out what that point is. Once the students did that deeper analysis of and transaction with the text, they were able to use their discoveries as the basis for their writing. Adding attention to annotation to our praxis augmented our shift towards integrating reading into writing center work. Rather than limiting our tutorials to looking at writing assignments and drafts, we were able to prompt annotation skills through which students could track what and how they read—and we encouraged them to transfer those skills to other disciplines or areas of their lives, which Carillo notes is an important undertaking for writing centers adding reading to their repertoires (“Reading and Writing Centers” 138). Furthermore, we were also looking more carefully at annotations students showed to us, which made visible the extent to which they needed further prompting in reading and annotation practices. Essentially, we had an expanded toolbox from which to draw when we discussed prewriting and revision strategies related to primary and secondary source work.

Scenario-Based Interventions: Developing a Praxis Tutor Educators Harris argues for increased attention to reading in writing tutoring because “tutors must learn to recognize

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 14 students’ need for the reading skills that are so integral to writing skills and then have strategies to help students acquire those skills” (239). We observed from their subsequent tutorials and workshops that the gallery walk and annotation sessions had successfully positioned our tutors to see and respond to reading needs, and because our tutors were clearly becoming active practitioners of reading support in our writing center, we were ready to proceed through a “gradual release” model of instruction (Pearson and Gallagher) in our tutor education practicum.6 While our earlier sessions had been largely instructor-led, characterized by our creating prompts for discussion and delivering direct instruction about strategies, our tutors were now ready to become collaborators in our shared mission to include reading in our praxis. Thus, our next sessions were tutor-led, taking as their raw material the work tutors were performing in tutorial and classroom spaces.

Scenario-based learning is a hallmark of tutor education, which is apparent from even a cursory review of popular tutoring guides and writing center publications. Leigh Ryan and Lisa Zimmerelli, for instance, often provide prompts that invite developing tutors to contemplate real tutoring scenarios, like “Tom” who sits down and says, “Here are my notes...I have a bunch of ideas, but I’m not sure which ones would be good to use” (6), or the “brand-new freshman” who can “barely speak above a whisper” (3335). They even devote an entire chapter to “Coping with Different Tutoring Situations” such as “the unresponsive writer” (100) and “the antagonistic writer” (101). Some of the scholars we have cited here also use scenarios to extend the nuances of their discussions (Adams; Harris), and Julia Bleakney’s survey about writing tutor education reveals that reflection, especially on tutorial sessions, is a “touchstone” of tutor education. Bleakney emphasizes, too, how “listening to tutors” is a key way to cultivate “tutor buy-in,” and we were particularly interested in providing a way for our tutors to feel truly invested in reading support in the writing center.

Thus, our next sessions were led by our tutors, whom we asked to come in ready to discuss real tutorial and embedded-classroom experiences that called for support of reading practices. They presented their scenarios as “case studies” to the group, and we discussed the efficacy of the tutor’s chosen interventions as well as alternative or future support strategies. The scenarios they share below detail practices that provide insight into the depth with which our tutors collectively reflected on and problem-solved ways to support our student reader-writers—often in conversations that spilled outside of the classroom into

the informal collegiality of our writing center space, which was testament to our successful integration of attention to reading in our writing tutors’ developing praxis.

Tutors These scenarios helped us think through our work with more nuance by workshopping the ways we were negotiating consultations that called for reading support.

These discussions also built our confidence in using reading as a writing center intervention, which was a really important step for us: as Kelsey Hixson-Bowls and Roger Powell find, increased self-efficacy about tutoring is crucial as writing tutors develop stronger praxis.7 Many new writing tutors contend with feeling inexperienced in their early tutorials, and that was especially true for us when we found ourselves confronted with reading and writing in disciplines we knew close to nothing about content-wise. Over time, however, we found that focusing on reading in these appointments—that is, discussing reading skills and asking students to try out some strategies—helped our students develop their writing and that helped us view our tutorials as effective.

Sarah, for instance, discussed with us a student who wanted assistance in preparing her lab report for organic chemistry. The student had listed all of the information in the appropriate order, but had trouble phrasing the information in full sentences within organized paragraphs. Because the student struggled with putting the report together for a reader, Sarah thought to coread a model lab report with the student, which entails one person reading aloud while the other follows along, the pair pausing frequently to discuss the text. Their purpose for reading was a strategy we learned from one of the assigned articles in our tutoring course, Bunn’s “How to Read Like a Writer.” Bunn claims that a writerly reading strategy is to work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing. The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing (72).

Co-reading the model lab report paragraph by paragraph and analyzing the ways the writer presented information and ideas to a reader prompted the student to turn to her notes and strategize stylistic choices appropriate to the lab report genre. This type of reading for a purpose gave the student inspiration for her own writing— specifically in the areas of transitions and voice—that fulfilled the requirements of the lab and also created a

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 15 much more readable final product. Co-reading also taught her to use “reading like a writer” as strategy, so that in the future she has a stronger way to approach model papers in service to her writing.

Another scenario we discussed became a helpful model for ways to implement a concept we first learned during our gallery walk: using textual features such as headings to navigate a text efficiently. Gissel supported a student on an assignment for her social work class that required her to identify different components in a journal article. She needed to identify the independent and dependent variables, the study’s sample size, and its focus question, as well as locate other specific details.

The student expressed that she did not know what some of those terms meant and she was not sure how to find them in the article. This appointment became focused on reading, as Gissel realized the student needed help decoding the journal article and navigating its structure.

After prompting the student to consult her course text to gain a general understanding of terms like “independent variable,” Gissel explained how journal articles in the social sciences generally have headings throughout —like “methods” and “results” —that tell the reader what each section contains. Together, they looked at the different section headings and used them to determine what information they might be able to find in each section. They then looked at her assignment questions to determine a purpose for reading, and the student was able to use the headings to locate the information she needed efficiently. The student not only finished her assignment, but also became more confident in her ability to use research studies as sources. When we discussed this scenario in class, we focused on how this approach to reading journal articles will now become a key component of the disciplinary literacy this student is developing as a social work major.

She learned to navigate a research study format, which she could later apply to future reading assignments as well as writing assignments, such as an article critique, a literature review, or a study design. Furthermore, those of us who were ourselves outsiders to social science reading strategies gained this insider knowledge that we now felt empowered to use and pass on during our own consultations.

The scenario discussions also prompted a discovery: as we encourage an emphasis on reading, it may be important to be patient and transparent with students about why we are integrating this surge of reading support into the work that we are doing with them.

Many of the students who come to the writing center do not expect to read or learn new reading strategies, especially if they arrive with a draft in hand. We must make our reasoning plain to students and cast the

strengthening of reading processes as integral to stronger and more effective writing processes is paramount. In response, one of our peers who was embedded in a first-year writing center course chose to facilitate a workshop for her students about the moves strategic writers make when they read. It was an effective way to normalize reading as an important feature in the writing classroom and the tutorial space.

It is also important to remind ourselves that the integration of literacy practices may have no immediate effects for some students because they still need to learn the skills that will enable them to benefit from stronger literacy practices. However, by introducing reading strategies to the students who come to the writing center, we are enabling them to understand and communicate with texts in a way that they may not have before, which will benefit their writing as well as their other academic work long term.

ELL Specific Interventions

Support:

Adapting

the

Tutor Educators Eliciting scenarios from our tutors also revealed their interest in finding ways to support English Language Learners more thoroughly as both writers and readers. Given that writing center scholarship has not yet built a strong archive about reading support, it was not surprising to us that little was available regarding ELL writers as readers, specifically. In fact, Adams actually cautions against the assumptions about ELL differences that can cause ELL students’ struggles with reading [...to] be quickly dismissed as due only to their ELL status (82): I do not see such a gulf between ELL readers [...] and readers with English as [sic] first language (L1) or native English speakers (NES) [....] I argue that, rather than perpetuating a gulf, we should...avoid simply saying ‘these’ students need different instruction (81).

Because Adams believes that “the reading help ELL students require is representative of the struggles NES and ELL students have,” he claims that “we would do well to approach that work [of supporting ELL readers] not as simply ELL work but as reading work” (82).

Indeed, when Jennifer E. Staben and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus promote several strategies for supporting ELL writers that are staples for writing center tutoring in general, two speak directly to the importance of reading support: close reading of writing assignments and co-reading the rhetorical features of model texts (81; 84-85).

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 16 With Adams’ cautions in mind, and because we were motivated by the excellent outcomes of our tutorled discussions of reading support scenarios, we elected to continue the conversation by providing our tutors with scholarship about supporting ELL writers, we chose from Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth’s edited collection ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. We asked tutors to draw connections among this scholarship, our previous coursework focused on reading support, and their experiences with ELL students in our writing center. What we learned with and from our tutors as they continued to develop their praxis reveals how reading support strategies can be implemented in ways responsive to the needs of ELL reader-writers, and that reading support may be a key feature of the ways writing centers can work with ELL students.

Tutors Largely, our work with ELL students became the “scenarios” for subsequent discussions that were now further enriched by a research base. Here, we review a few of those ELL-specific scenarios that underscore how we approached reading support for this population.

We view these interventions as only the beginning of our developing praxis for applying reading support for ELL writers.

A relatively significant population of ELL students visit our writing center, and Mary works with several of these students quite closely. Through her experiences, we have concluded that wait time, while important for any student who is trying to comprehend something they are reading, is especially crucial for ELL students.

Wait time, in one respect, means the tutor is willing to co-read slowly with student, and in another respect, means practicing with more frequency techniques such as asking questions that prompt understanding, or checking to be sure a student is following along. One particular student, an international English language learner, spends at least half of her appointments with Mary in silence. This silence is not awkward or disengaged, but purposeful. In her characterization of English language learners who visit writing centers, Ilona Leki notes that: international students take longer to process texts and may need to reread several times in order to understand what domestic students can grasp in a single read (8).

This particular student liked to take that extra time to consider the reading closely and plan how to articulate her thoughts before sharing them with the tutor. At first, silence in an appointment can be alarming to a new tutor; however, Mary knew that pushing too many

questions would confuse, overwhelm, and disrupt the student’s careful thought processes. Instead of being tempted to “fill the silence” by rephrasing the question (a strategy we might use regularly with domestic students) or hinting at what the reading is saying (which, based on our experience with ELL students, is likely to prompt a nod of agreement but not necessarily actual understanding), we pose a clear question and then leave time for a productive silence. It allows the students to develop their own understandings of texts and express those understandings after they have had adequate time to formulate the words in English.

Research and practice also inform us that cultural background is an important factor tutors must consider when working with ELL students. During one session, Gissel worked with an ELL student whose assignment required her to identify the themes of a reading. Initially, she tried to help the student understand theme by using the same strategy she had used with native speaking domestic students: choosing a well-known children’s story on which to practice determining theme and then prompting the student to transfer the skill to the assigned course reading. Though she had found success in this endeavor in the past by using “The Three Little Pigs,” Gissel realized she had made a mistake in tutoring strategy when she learned the ELL student was unfamiliar with the story. As Harris notes, ELL students often do not understand cultural references with ease (231), and Gissel was seeing first-hand what we had discussed in our tutor education course: our cultural backgrounds contribute to the prior knowledge we bring to our reading and influence how we navigate and understand it. They also influence how willing we are to convey our processes of (mis)understanding to our instructors and tutors, and in this case, the student had not readily expressed her unfamiliarity with the story.

Guiding a student through the process of identifying theme was itself an appropriate approach, but doing so with a culturally unfamiliar text added unnecessary complication to the tutorial, confused the student, and wasted time. Once Gissel decided to focus the strategy on the reading that was assigned, they found success in this shared context, and she was able to prompt the student to review the reading slowly while locating patterns and key points in order to identify theme. This scenario helped us realize that often, the strategies for reading that we promote can be successful when applied to ELL work, but we must take care in modeling and practicing those strategies in culturally accessible ways.

Another important discovery we made was that focusing on reading is a great way to shift the focus of an appointment for an ELL student—indeed, any student—narrowly concerned with fluency. Jennifer E.

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 17 Staben and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus point out that it is common for ELL students to begin a session by saying they want to focus on grammar because they see that as the most pressing concern for their work; however, many times grammar is not the primary issue the tutor sees in the piece (78). For example, one ELL student came in worrying that her short essay answers did not make sense because of her imperfect standard written English grammar. When Sarah read her work, however, she saw that the student had not responded to the content of the prompts in the assignment. After asking the student to explain the prompts in her own words, Sarah realized the student’s understanding of the questions was incomplete. Thus, they switched focus to decoding the professor’s questions together, much in the way Adams describes his support of ELL reading practice: We went through the article sentence by sentence, with the students saying back to me their understanding of each, discussing places that held them up, and looking up definitions of words (Adams 80).

Clarifying word meanings as they read together and prompting the student to highlight key phrases she might use later, Sarah drew on decoding and annotation as reading strategies appropriate to supporting this ELL writer. Sarah emphasized, too, that reading the prompts carefully would help her formulate stronger responses, especially since she could use some of the terms in the prompt to draft her responses. Privileging reading strategies that may not have been the original focus of the appointment can be difficult, but they often create a fruitful opportunity for students to strengthen their reading and writing skills.

Conclusion: Reading and Reading Support Education as a Process As collaborators promoting reading support in writing center spaces, all of us have come to understand reading as a key component of the writing process—and indeed, as a practice requiring a process in its own right.

It is the intertwined nature of these processes that requires tutor educators to support tutors as they work with students as reader-writers in states of continual becoming.

Likewise, writing center staff are also in states of continual becoming—as reader-writers ourselves, as well as reading-writing tutors, tutor educators, and researchers. We agree, for instance, that we now more mindfully implement and interrogate the efficacy of reading strategies in our own work, and we have found better, more nuanced ways to talk about our reading and

writing processes with students and colleagues. We are also reflecting on our reading and writing tutoring praxes and using that reflection to drive our next steps in professional development. In the case of our center, that means that we must now contemplate how to empower and create a formal structure for returning tutors to support new tutors in our ongoing literacy initiatives, which have proven to enrich the work we do with students as well as the sense of self-efficacy with which tutors and tutor educators approach reading and writing support.

Our experimentation with reading support has also led us to define a problematic implication of our tutor education methods and outcomes: in final course reflections, several tutors in the course exclusively discussed reading as a skill that must be in place before writing, as a foundation without which writing cannot happen. While it is certainly true that reading is foundational, it is not true that reading support—and the students who benefit from it—need only be characterized as remedial. For instance, disciplinary literacy, a high-level activity, involves “understanding both disciplinary content and disciplinary habits of mind,” which include “ways of reading, writing, viewing, speaking, thinking, reasoning, and critiquing” (Fang and Coatoam 628; italics ours). Reading practices are a key part of disciplinary literacy, practices that are often honed at the college level as students enter the discursive spaces of their majors, minors, and general education courses. Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Shanahan maintain that approaches to supporting disciplinary literacy go beyond prescrib[ing]...reading approaches that can help someone to comprehend or remember text better (with little regard to type of text)” in order to “descri[be]...unique uses and implications of literacy use within the various disciplines (8).

As several scenarios we discuss above suggest, reading support in college writing centers is often best implemented with discipline-specific contexts in mind.

Given that Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki found in their study of college writers that reading in a discipline plays a significant role in the development of writers in a discipline (128-129)—including reading in other disciplines as a way by which to understand differences in disciplinary practice (129)—then certainly writing centers, already doing the work of supporting writing in the disciplines, are well positioned to approach the work of reading in the disciplines as well.

Thus, going forward, we have become more careful about the ways we discuss reading and the processes by which we engage reading. Such care does not mean that we are moving entirely away from our earlier model;

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 18 rather, we emphasize that reading support for college students can be understood on a spectrum, from supporting readers with recognizable challenges, to supporting readers approaching mastery. We acknowledge that since our tutors were all embedded in first year courses, as a group we tended to focus on more entry-level and early college level literacies, and that, implicitly, we emphasized the importance of literacy support by using a sort of “lack” model—as in, if students lack this, they cannot do much else. Indeed, Harris also implies such a model when she mentions the ways writing centers can remedy “inadequate reading skills” (240), and so we must all take care to recast reading as an ongoing process—a discursive process— much in the way growth as a writer is ongoing and continual. Adding disciplinary literacy as a formal lens for our reading support work can help writing centers resituate reading as a companion to writing along the entire spectrum of development. We might also consider reading strategies as part of the pre-writing stage. Often in writing centers we understand “prewriting” to refer to practices such as brainstorming, concept mapping, and outlining, but reading strategies such as setting a purpose and annotating are also ways to prepare for the drafting stage.

It is our hope that the narratives we have provided in this piece support both tutor educators and tutors as they develop their approaches to reading in the writing center. We also hope that our models of tutor education and tutor praxis provide a platform for promotion and critique of the work we, as a writing center community, must continue to do to support student reader-writers.

We also echo Carillo’s call in “Reading with a Purpose” for empirical studies about the role of reading and reading support in writing centers, so that we can build a stronger picture of the ways that attention to reading enhances our practice and our scholarship.

Acknowledgement This article is dedicated to the memory of Tami Devine Fagan, Ed.D., whose enthusiasm for innovations in student support was unbounded.

Notes 1. At the time of the interventions discussed in this article, Amanda M. Greenwell was the Writing Center Administrator at the University of Saint Joseph, CT. 2. The special issue on reading of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship contains a tutors’ column by student tutor Amanda Fontaine-Iskra, in which she details how tutors can attend to notions of audience for

student writers by emphasizing the readerly practices of that audience. While the column does not, as we do here, discuss tutoring writers by way of promoting reading strategies, her contribution does represent the voice of a tutor discussing one viable way to work with reading in the writing center space.

3. We also refer our readers to King’s recent study of a single reading-focused tutor training workshop. King’s work was not available to us at the time of our own planning and training, but her work corroborates some of our motivations, experiences and insights. For instance, we agree that “reading can be profitably and explicitly addressed through tutor training” (66), and our extended rather than “brief but direct attention to reading” (66) answers her call for and provides to the field examples of ways that we can become “more explicit with the range of strategies available to students and tutors alike and work with our tutors to make reading knowledge unambiguous” (67).

4. For an incisive review of the scholarship on reading from the fields of composition, psychology, and english education, see Carillo’s “Reading and Writing Centers: A Primer for Writing Center Professionals.” For an extended discussion about reading in the field of composition, see Carillo’s Securing a Place for Reading in Composition: The Importance of Teaching for Transfer.

5. These statements resonate with several strategies widely underscored in reading scholarship. Boardman et al.’s brief for the Center on Instruction, for instance, identifies and explains habits of successful readers that promote strong reading comprehension as well as best practices in the field of reading instruction. Among them are setting a purpose, activating prior knowledge, previewing textual features, and monitoring understanding (21-26). Adams’s inventory also echoes the primacy of some of these concepts, and, as mentioned earlier, Carillo’s work has emphasized “reading with a purpose” as a foundational approach across several disciplines’ attention to reading.

6. The “gradual release” model was first introduced by Pearson and Gallagher in the context of literacy support in elementary schools and has since become a widespread method by which to scaffold student learning across levels and disciplines.

7. King also finds that stronger tutor confidence is a crucial result of reading-focused training intervention.

Works Cited Adams, G. Travis. “The Line That Should Not Be Drawn: Writing Centers as Reading Centered.” Pedagogy, vol.

16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 73-90.

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Reading in The Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis • 19 Bleakney, Julia. “Ongoing Writing Tutor Education: Models and Practices.” Digital Edited Collection: How We Teach Writing Tutors, special issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, 15 January 2019. https://wlnjournal.org/digitaleditedcollection1/.

Boardman, Alison Gould, Greg Roberts, Sharon Vaughn, Jade Wexler, Christy S. Murray, and Marcia Kosanovich. “Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling Readers: A Practice Brief.” Center On Instruction, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED521836.pdf.

Accessed 10 May 2019.

Bruce, Shanti, and Ben Rafoth, eds. ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors, 2nd edition. Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2009.

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 2, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zeliansky, Parlor Press, 2011, pp. 71-86. http://www.parlorpress.com/pdf/bunn--how-toread.pdf.

Carillo, Ellen C. A Writer’s Guide to Mindful Reading. The WAC Clearinghouse and UP Colorado, 2017. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/practice/mindful/.

—. “Letter from the Guest Editor.” Reading in the Writing Center, special issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 41, no. 7-8, March/April 2017, p.

1.

—. “Making Reading Visible in the Classroom.” Currents in Teaching and Learning, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring 2009, pp. 3741. JSTOR. —. “Reading and Writing Centers: A Primer for Writing Center Professionals.” The Writing Center Journal, vol.

36, no. 2, 2017, pp. 117-145. JSTOR. —. “Reading With a Purpose in the Writing Center.”

Reading in the Writing Center, special issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 41, no. 7-8, 2017, pp. 17-25.

—. Securing a Place for Reading in Composition: The Importance of Teaching for Transfer. Utah State UP, 2015.

Fang, Zhihui, and Suzanne Coatoam. “Disciplinary Literacy: What You Want to Know About It.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, vol. 56, no. 8, May 2013, pp. 627-632. doi:10.1002/JAAL.190.

Fitzgerald, Lauren and Melissa Ianetta. The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research, Oxford UP, 2016.

Fontaine-Iskra, Amanda. “Tutors' Column: Making Audience Visible: Readership and Audience In Writing Centers.” Reading in the Writing Center, special issue of WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 41, no. 7-8, 2017, pp. 25-29.

Griswold, W. Gary. “Postsecondary Reading: What Writing Center Tutors Need to Know.” Journal of College Reading

and Learning, vol. 37, no. 1, 2006, pp. 59-70. doi: : https://doi.org/10.1080/10790195.2006.10850193 Harris, Muriel. “Writing Centers Are Also Reading Centers: How Could They Not Be?” Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom, edited by Patrick Sullivan, Howard Tinberg and Sheridan Blau, Urbana, 2017, pp. 227-243.

Hixson-Bowles, Kelsey, and Roger Powell. “Self-Efficacy and the Relationship between Tutoring and Writing.”

WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, edited by Karen Gabrielle Johnson, Ted Roggenbuck, and Crystal Conzo, 15 January 2019.

Horning, Alice S. “Reading: Securing Its Place in the Writing Center.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 36, no. 2 (2017), pp. 2-8.

Ihara, Rachel and Ann Del Principe. “What We Mean When We Talk about Reading: Rethinking the Purposes and Contexts of College Reading.” Across the Disciplines, vol. 15, no. 2, July 2018, pp. 1-14.

King, Carolyne M. “Tutors as Readers: Reprising the Role of Reading in the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 2008, pp. 63-74.

Leki, Ilona. “Before the Conversation: A Sketch of Some Possible Backgrounds, Experiences, and Attitudes Among ESL Students Visiting a Writing Center.” ESL writers: A guide for writing center tutors, pp. 1-17.

Pearson, P. D., and M. C. Gallagher. “The Instruction of Reading Comprehension.” Contemporary Educational Psychology, vol. 8, no. 3, 1983, pp. 317–344.

Ryan, Leigh and Liza Zimmerelli. The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

Shanahan, Timothy, and Cynthia Shanahan. “What is Disciplinary Literacy and Why Does It Matter?” Topics in Language Disorders, vol. 32, no. 1, Jan.-March 2012, pp.7-18. Doi: 10.1097/TLD.0b013e318244557a.

Staben, Jennifer, and Kathryn Dempsey Nordhaus.

"Looking at the Whole Text." ESL writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors. 2nd ed., edited by Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth, Boynton/Cook, 2009, pp. 78-90.

Thaiss, Chris, and Terry Myers Zawacki. Engaged Writers and Dynamic Discipline: Research on the Academic Writing Life.

Heinemann, 2006.

“What is Gallery Walk?” Starting Point--Teaching Entry Level Geoscience. Science Education Resource Center @ Carlton College, https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/gallerywalk/what.h tml. Accessed 15 March 2019.

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CHINESE INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ REACTIONS TO TUTOR TALK: USING SCAFFOLDING STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN THE WRITING CENTER Sarah M. Patrick University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign smpatrick98@gmail.com Abstract

This research contributes to our knowledge about second-language writers and their writing center experiences. This study applies the cognitive and motivational scaffolding coding schema set forth in Jo Mackiewicz and Isabelle Thompson’s Talk About Writing (2015/2018) to second-language writers—a student population that was excluded from their study. Drawing on data collected from observations and post-session semi-structured interviews with ten undergraduate Chinese international writers and experienced graduate tutors, this study sought to qualitatively analyze which scaffolding technique was most effective in supporting students’ language acquisition. Trends in the results indicate that secondlanguage writers’ perceptions of tutoring techniques may be more important than tutors’ intentions. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that second-language writers may perceive tutors’ use of sympathy and empathy to be inauthentic. Finally, students’ representations of their linguistic self-confidence should impact tutors’ choice of scaffolding strategy. The implications for writing center practitioners include utilizing the opening stages of the session to more strategically adapt both verbal and nonverbal scaffolding strategies to the needs of the writer.

“The essential means humans have of making themselves known is through language. Without control of language, an individual may feel unable to make themselves seen.” (13) — Ilona Leki, “Before the Conversation.”

The demographics of writing centers have changed with the over one million international students now attending U.S. universities (Institute for International Education). This growth of international student enrollment has affected writing center demographics and impacted the needs of the writers that are using the writing center. Because writing centers provide one-toone tutorials where a tutor can engage with a writer and their language background, writing centers can be a crucial site for second-language writers’ (SLWs’) language development and acculturation to U.S. academic expectations (Leki, “Before”). Previous scholarship has demonstrated how a tutorial relationship that emphasizes effective communication and comfort can ease the anxiety about English fluency many SLWs experience (Shukri). Additionally, studies of linguistic self-confidence demonstrate how SLWs’ anxiety can impact their perception of their own fluency

and competence (MacIntyre, Noels, & Clément). Peter MacIntyre, Kimberly Noels, and Richard Clément’s findings on linguistic self-confidence may imply that, because SLWs’ perceptions of themselves can affect their fluency, SLWs’ perceptions of tutors’ engagement may also be integral to the effectiveness of a session and to SLWs’ language acquisition. Studies such as these led me to design a project that adds to the emerging body of scholarship incorporating the experiences and perceptions of SLWs, so we can better understand writing center strategies that support these student populations.

The rise of international and second-language students at U.S. universities has caused other scholars to think more seriously about how to work with this new population, including a small number of studies that use interviews to elicit these students’ views of writing and the writing center. Ben Rafoth, former president of the International Writing Centers Association, stressed the need for tutors to be better prepared to work with international students in his 2015 work on SLWs in the writing center. Writing scholars like Terese Thonus and Ilona Leki have questioned the effectiveness of canonical writing center practices in sessions with SLWs and suggested that administrators should train tutors to work specifically with SLWs so writing centers can better meet their needs (Thonus, “Tutoring,” “What”; Leki, “University”). Talinn Phillips’ recent study about graduate SLWs expands this call for change in pedagogy to incorporate the “perceived needs” of a SLW on a more individual basis. Yet, it is still rare to find research that directly incorporates the reactions of SLWs and their reception of particular techniques.

A recent writing center publication that is quickly gaining canonical status is Jo Mackiewicz and Isabelle Thompson’s Talk About Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors. Mackiewicz and Thompson have expanded the field of writing center research to include empirical evidence regarding how to categorize scaffolding into separate techniques and how to use these techniques to address writers’ individual learning needs (133). Scaffolding refers to a range of tutoring techniques that are used to guide writers

Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 21 towards a stronger understanding of their writing process and a greater level of independence. In their analysis, Mackiewicz and Thompson categorize tutoring discourse into three subgroups: instruction strategies, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding.

Mackiewicz and Thompson themselves acknowledge that they conducted this study without including SLWs in the sample (41) or considering student reception or reciprocity of tutor talk (179-180). Therefore, this study incorporates the voices of undergraduate Chinese international students to better understand their perceptions of scaffolding techniques and these techniques’ influence on their self-confidence and language acquisition.

In what follows, I will first review scholarship about writing centers and international students, then I will narrow my focus specifically to Chinese international writers, who comprise the majority of international students at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. I will share results from an IRB-approved study that adapts the coding schema set forth in Mackiewicz and Thompson’s Talk about Writing to the context of SLWs in the writing center. I will conclude with the conceptual and practical implications of my main finding that a SLW’s perception of a scaffolding technique and of their own fluency level may be more important than a tutor’s intentions. I suggest that tutors need to be fluid in their pedagogical approach, utilize the opening stage of a session effectively, pay attention to students’ reception of a technique and perception of themselves as writers, and create a comfortable tutorial environment. Overall, my results contribute to writing center scholars’ understanding of how tutors can be more strategic about the techniques they employ to make SLWs more comfortable within sessions and more confident in their fluency and writing ability.

Writing Centers and International Students Writing center sessions with SLWs have been proven to assist with both writing and overall language acquisition (Leki, “Before”, “University”; Fraiberg, Wang, and You; Yan and Berliner). Often, sessions with SLWs are integral to their development as both English speakers and English writers due to the individualized attention they receive in the writing center that they may not receive from professors or teaching assistants (Yan and Berliner; Leki, “University”). Kun Yan and David Berliner’s study on the causes of graduate Chinese international students’ anxieties included interviews that revealed how relationships between faculty and students are strained by language barriers. As one participant recounted,

The limited command of English negatively affects my academic performance. The first semester, my advisor even suggested that I quit the doctoral program. He said that he did not see any potential from my papers.

Writing becomes even more complex for SLWs when they are presented with the challenges of inadequate teacher feedback, or when they encounter what Lee Anne Carroll calls “faculty fantasies,” or misconceptions that “students ought to know ‘how to write’ before they get to college” (26) and that writing centers are correction centers (8). Though SLWs may experience unsupportive interactions with instructors, scholars have identified that quantity and quality of social and cognitive interaction is associated with linguistic selfconfidence (Wong). This finding suggests that SLWs’ anxieties can be eased, and their writing performance and confidence improved, through less stressful classroom environments (Shruki) and making full use of the writing center (Williams and Takaku).

SLWs’ anxiety about being understood is directly related to their perceptions of their writing and their confidence in their own fluency; therefore, students’ perceptions of their writing in a non-native language is as relevant as the writing skills themselves. In their work on linguistic self-confidence, MacIntyre, Noels, and Clément have discussed how SLWs’ anxieties can affect their self-ratings of competence in literacy tasks. The results of their study demonstrated that anxious students did not “perceive their competence to be as high as a more objective analysis reveal[ed] it to be;” whereas relaxed, or more confident, students tended to overestimate (278). Their results also show that overestimating one’s fluency may actually facilitate language learning, while low self-confidence impairs progress (279). In previous studies, motivational scaffolding has been defined as a major factor in achieving comfort for SLWs in writing center sessions (Thonus, “Tutoring”). As such, motivational scaffolding’s fundamental focus on a student’s affect may be a way improve SLW linguistic self-confidence and language acquisition.

Chinese International Students Nearly one-third of international students originate from China, and they are the majority by a large margin (Institute of International Education). Given the large number of these students in U.S. universities, several writing scholars have studied the specific anxieties and needs of this population (Fraiberg, Wang, and You; Heng; Nan; Severino and Prim). While writing assignments can pose challenges to any SLW, they pose

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 22 unique challenges to Chinese international students, whose writing conventions differ significantly from the U. S. writing curriculum. Tang Heng describes why Chinese international writers tend to struggle with the shift to U.S. academic writing styles, comparing Chinese writing conventions that emphasize elegant style, including proverbs and inductive argumentation, with the linear, logical process of U.S. writing conventions that emphasize original thought and critical thinking.

Heng is an education scholar who has studied the Chinese population and argues previous research involving both graduate and undergraduate Chinese international students is incomplete and does not encompass the entirety of students’ experiences in the U.S Research that incorporates both Chinese international students and the writing center is even more incomplete. A notable exception is Frances Nan’s “Bridging the Gap: Essential Issues to Address in Recurring Writing Center Appointments with Chinese ELL Students,” though Nan relies mainly on theorizing how to adapt to the needs of Chinese international students without including the voices of these students to substantiate her claims. Another exception is Carol Severino and Shih-Ni Prim’s work with online tutoring, Chinese writers, and tutors’ approaches to common errors. They have produced a comprehensive survey to gauge Chinese writers’ experience with English writing as well as demonstrated how monolingual tutors without a better command of the English lexicon may have trouble correcting nuanced grammar errors.

Writing is a component of adaptation to a new culture as well as language acquisition, and the conventions of the target language can also affect the ways students speak, think, and exist in the world (Fraiberg, Wang, and You 87). Steven Fraiberg, Xiqiao Wang, and Xiaoye You address the role writing centers can play in SLWs’ adaptation to a new culture in their discussion of guanxi networks, a Chinese cultural system of building and maintaining relationships. The idea of the guanxi network is important in understanding the role tutors play in Chinese students’ lives outside of the writing center as well as in their journey with language acquisition in general. If the writing center can create a sense of comfort and build a relationship with these writers, it can significantly influence Chinese students’ anxiety and confidence in their English fluency.

Research that examines language acquisition in postsecondary academic settings indicates that, like many international students, Chinese international students have high anxiety levels, but their anxieties are often overlooked because they tend to continue to achieve academically (Heng; Yan and Berliner). It is

therefore especially important for Chinese international students to have a support system, like the writing center, that eases their anxieties while they are working in a new language.

Though Mackiewicz and Thompson cite research about motivation in Talk about Writing that involved second language, as well as Asian-specific, writers, in their conclusion they acknowledge that the application of scaffolding techniques with SLWs contains obstacles that they have not considered (41). They also recognize that their study lacks the inclusion of student voices (179-180). The writing center has a unique opportunity to influence SLWs’ language acquisition, yet we know little about how tutors can use scaffolding techniques to support this process. As such, it is possible that the framework Mackiewicz and Thompson created in their study is subject to change when applied to the context of writing center sessions with SLWs.

Methods In this study, I sought to better understand the experiences of undergraduate Chinese international writers in the writing center and how scaffolding techniques can influence language acquisition. Like Mackiewicz and Thompson, I analyzed ten writing center conferences involving undergraduate writers and experienced graduate tutors; however, the undergraduate participants of this study were Chinese international students. I gathered data through session observations and post-session interviews. The sessions I observed occurred within the Writers’ Workshop on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, which conducts over 6,500 one-to-one tutorials a year.

During the year of this study, 32.5% of those tutorials were with undergraduate international students, of whom 55.6% were Chinese. The Writers' Workshop employs about 50 tutors a semester, the majority of whom are graduate students. All tutors who participated in this study were graduate students with at least one semester’s experience. During their orientation and biweekly professional development meetings, tutors learn about second language writing acquisition (e.g., Ferris; Leki, “University”), recommended practices for tutoring second language writers (e.g., Bruce and Rafoth; Harris and Silva; Thonus, “Tutoring,” “What”), and scaffolding strategies (Mackiewicz and Thompson, “Motivational”; Nordlof).

I decided to focus on collecting qualitative data only, despite that Talk about Writing involved both qualitative and quantitative data, to better understand the perspectives and feelings of undergraduate Chinese international writers. I wanted to focus on students’

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 23 reactions to techniques, rather than draw conclusions from my observations. This decision was inspired by Diana Bell and Madeleine Youmans’s work with SLWs and tutors’ use of politeness strategies, where they theorized how tutors could tailor their approach to consider the needs of these writers but did not collect data that would allow them to consider students’ perception of and reactions to these techniques.

Additionally, I was strongly influenced by what Shanti Bruce says in her qualitative work with SLWs: “[T]alking with ESL students directly about their needs and experiences made my own study of abstract theories and pedagogical practices come alive” (218). I developed my post-session interview protocols with this previous research in mind, in the hope that I can contribute to writing center scholarship in a way that incorporates the voices of students and their perceptions of tutoring techniques. While this study does not aim to be representative or generalizable, its findings may be relevant to other large, public research universities that have also seen growth among Chinese international students.

I personally observed each of the ten sessions, which lasted fifty minutes on average. I took field notes to record specific instances of tutors’ use of scaffolding techniques and my own observations. I tailored semistructured post-session interviews to each individual session. I recorded each interview, then transcribed it later. I started each interview by asking about how these writers would rate their own English fluency, as well as what specific parts of writing they felt they did well or struggled with. This process allowed me to gauge the participants’ linguistic self-confidence, and its effect on their preferences, rather than their objective fluency level. The semi-structured interview allowed me to adjust my questions to be applicable to the individual session. I included questions about whether a student was visiting the writing center for the first time, whether a student had worked with the same tutor before, what specific assignment the student was working on, and which scaffolding techniques were present during a session. I referenced specific examples of when tutors had used techniques in order to prompt a better understanding of what I was asking. For example, some of the questions I asked included, • How did you feel when the tutor said they also struggle with being concise?

• How did you feel when the tutor said that the changes they were recommending were suggestions?

•

How did you feel when the tutor gave you feedback by discussing your intentions with a sentence?

To analyze the interview data, I used the coding schema developed by Mackiewicz and Thompson in Talk About Writing to better understand how students experienced cognitive and motivational scaffolding.

Mackiewicz and Thompson’s framework includes definitions of instruction, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding techniques. Instruction strategies are when a tutor attempts to convey information to students using negative politeness strategies and directive tutoring, for example telling, suggesting, explaining and exemplifying (33). Cognitive scaffolding strategies are used to encourage thinking about content and inspire better understanding and development of the writing process, which includes pumping, reading aloud, responding as a reader or listener, referring to a previous topic, forcing a choice, prompting, hinting, and demonstrating (36).

Motivational scaffolding techniques aim to build and maintain rapport, a sense of solidarity, and increase a student’s motivation. Motivational scaffolding techniques include showing concern, praising, reinforcing a student writers’ ownership and control, being optimistic or using humor, and giving sympathy or empathy (43). The following are extended definitions of the techniques that proved most relevant to my study, taken from Talk about Writing (Mackiewicz and Thompson 36; 43): 1. Pumping: when a tutor withholds “advice or part of an answer,” asks leading questions, and requires response from students.

2. Responding as a reader or listener: when a tutor reads a section, then tells the student what they take away as a reader or paraphrases what a student is saying.

3. Showing concern: when a tutor “build[s] rapport with students by demonstrating that they car[e],” such as when they check in with a student’s understanding or emotional wellbeing.

4. Praising: when a tutor points to a student’s successes with positive feedback 5. Reinforcing student writers’ ownership and control: when a tutor “increase[s] student writers’ developing self-regulation and selfefficacy by asserting that the student writer ultimately mak[es] the decisions.”

6. Being optimistic or using humor: when a tutor “reduce[s] student writers’ anxiety with lightheartedness and buil[ds] confidence by

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 24 asserting a student writer’s ability to persevere in the task.”

7. Giving sympathy or empathy: when a tutor “expresse[s] their understanding that the task was difficult.”

Results

I observed ten tutoring sessions involving graduate tutors and undergraduate Chinese international SLWs and conducted post-session interviews to better understand the role of the writing center in SLWs’ confidence and language acquisition. The ten undergraduate Chinese international students who participated in this study came from a variety of majors and varying levels of self-reported English fluency.

About half of my participants were working on course papers and the other half were revising personal statements for graduate school. Five of these students were female and five were male. More specific information about the students can be seen in Appendix.

My analysis of interviews with the ten undergraduate Chinese writers revealed four major trends: 1) The motivational scaffolding technique of praise tended to be preferred by students who perceived themselves as less fluent and cognitive scaffolding techniques, like pumping and responding as a reader, tended to be preferred by students who perceived themselves as highly fluent. 2) Motivational scaffolding and cognitive scaffolding were complex in practice, and often these techniques overlapped to guide students to their own solutions while establishing consideration for students’ emotional well-being. 3) Scaffolding extended beyond verbal techniques to nonverbal techniques, such as patience, that tutors used to create an environment of comfort for SLWs. 4) Sympathy and empathy may not have been interpreted by SLWs as the tutor intended.

Students’ Self-Reported English Fluency and Preference for Scaffolding Techniques Similar to MacIntyre, Noels, and Clément’s study on the biases of self-evaluation, self-reported fluency in the context of this study acted as an indication of SLWs’ linguistic self-confidence. Praise was the technique preferred by writers with lower linguistic selfconfidence, whereas more confident writers preferred cognitive scaffolding techniques, like pumping and responding as a reader. Writers with lower linguistic selfconfidence typically had writing concerns about grammar and clarity—meaning their primary focus was making sure that their audience would be able to comprehend what they intended. Suyin and Zhang, both

freshmen, self-reported lower English fluency and identified praise as the technique that made them feel the most confident and comfortable writing in English.

Lin, a junior who also self-reported low levels of English fluency, did not refer to praise as the technique that made her most comfortable, but specifically mentioned that praise made her feel like she did a good job.

Suyin reported that attempts to reinforce her ownership or use cognitive scaffolding made her feel even more insecure about her writing. She explained that her primary concern was reader comprehension and that she felt uncomfortable when the tutor used questions to prompt her to come to her own conclusions about what needed to be revised in her essay. When the tutor asked questions, such as “what did you mean by that?”, Suyin said she felt anxious “because I don’t know if my teacher can understand my writing.” Suyin said she would rather be affirmed about what she is doing well, because it meant that the tutor could understand her writing and that her professor might as well. Specifically, Suyin said that she felt “safe” when the tutor mentioned how she was constructing sentences well.

Zhang expressed similar feelings about praise. He was aware of the tutor’s attempts to reinforce his ownership and provide cognitive scaffolding. He mentioned specifically that it was beneficial that the tutor had led him to talk about his own intentions, because it would allow him to apply similar logic to future writing. However, praise made him feel much more confident about his writing: “she pointed out there a lot of points that she thinks I did well, so that just makes me feel really good.”

Praise was still somewhat appreciated by more confident writers, but not always. Jian, a senior, mentioned that praise made him feel excellent, but he was more focused on improvements he could make on his paper. Likewise, Hong, another senior, remarked that the praise was nice to hear, but she did not feel strongly about the technique beyond that. At the close of the session, the tutor working with Chaunli, a senior working on a personal statement, engaged in praise. The tutor said that the ideas of Chauli’s personal statement were good and that Chaunli was in a good place to move forward. However, Chaunli did not regard this praise highly because he did not feel as though he deserved to be praised, saying: Chaunli: “Okay, honestly, I think that everyone might say that, that every [tutor] would compliment their students, that’s very common, I wouldn’t regard that as praise because I don’t think I did good enough. I don’t know if they really think that way.”

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 25 Interviewer: “So it’s less valuable for you because you’re not sure if it’s genuine or not?”

Chaunli: “No, it’s, no I think they are genuine. I just don’t regard what he said as praise because of how I feel.”

When writers with higher linguistic self-confidence reflected on which scaffolding technique made them feel most comfortable, they favored cognitive scaffolding techniques like pumping questions and responding as a reader. These students valued the ability to come to their own conclusions and felt as if they were making progress in the writing process. Jian liked that he was not being told what to do; rather that the tutor let him develop his own thoughts and prompted him to explain those thoughts in more detail. Pumping was also the most valuable technique for another more confident senior, Chang, because she found it allowed her to learn the most about writing. Chaunli expressed that talking about his ideas with the tutor gave him a better sense of what he wanted to say, as well as how his writing was being received by an audience. He cited both the pumping questions and responding as a reader: I think [the technique that made me most comfortable] might be the conversation, yeah, because the conversation is like, like, more me talking about my document and at the same time he gave me some of his feedback, so it’s kind of like a win-win. For me, I kind of understand what I’m writing, and for him he gives me the feedback on what he thinks works.

Hong mentioned that she liked that the tutor did not edit the paper but tried to understand Hong’s intentions and assist her to meet those intentions: “[The tutor] doesn’t just edit [themselves], but [tries] to understand what I’m trying to say and what I’m trying to do.”

Students with higher linguistic self-confidence were more concerned with style and improving their writing process, rather than with being affirmed that their writing was understandable. These writers wanted to learn skills that would be applicable to other writing assignments. For this reason, Chang preferred cognitive scaffolding techniques: “First, I think [discussing my intentions is] the most useful part for the personal statement, and also it’s the part I can learn most from.”

The reactions of writers in this data set did not follow a simple pattern—writers with different levels of confidence did not always prefer the same respective techniques as other writers who rated themselves the same way. Writers who rated their fluency level as

average sometimes also preferred cognitive scaffolding, which implies that an individual’s perception of their writing and their fluency affects their receptions of scaffolding techniques.

Overlap of Scaffolding Strategies: Pumping to Show Concern Cognitive scaffolding refers to a range of tutoring strategies that elicit critical thinking and guide students to develop their own solutions to problems. When put into practice, cognitive scaffolding techniques often overlap with the emotional component of motivational scaffolding and contribute to a SLW’s sense of being understood. The overlap of motivational with cognitive scaffolding became apparent in Bao’s interview. Bao was a freshman who expressed that the tutor’s clarifying questions about the assignment parameters had led to a discussion of her intentions and argument: Interviewer: “So then, when he asked you clarifying questions about the parameters of the assignment and what the prompt was asking you to do, how did that make you feel?”

Bao: “Well, it’s actually like, difficult to explain the concept of philosophy to others, especially those who don’t know about the concept before, but it’s actually, like, help me to, like, know better what I’m going to argue for, by retelling others my thoughts or outlines.”

Interviewer: “When would you say that when he asked you these questions and you had a discussion about [your intentions], that made you more confident about what you were talking about?”

Bao: “Yeah it makes me feel more clear about my argument.”

While other participants expressed similar experiences where a tutor’s concern for a writer’s affect overlapped with prompting the writer to reflect on content, Bao's interview was the clearest representation of this overlap. In other words, the motivational scaffolding technique of showing concern, demonstrated by the tutor’s clarifying questions, overlapped for Bao with the cognitive scaffolding technique of pumping. The emotional component of this overlap was enforced by the way these techniques were received by students. Though they were received as cognitive scaffolding techniques that prompted discussion, students also found these techniques to be representative of tutors’ efforts to understand their needs. The students’ explanations for why a particular

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 26 technique was most effective in creating comfort were primarily related to the tutor’s effort to understand them, their writing, their intentions with that writing, and their intentions in a writing center session.

Patience, Nonverbal Scaffolding, and the Learning Environment My study extends Mackiewicz and Thompson’s definition of motivational scaffolding techniques by acknowledging the presence of nonverbal strategies that tutors used to create an environment of comfort for SLWs. SLWs reported that tutors achieved this environment through projecting an attitude of patience.

Similar to praise, patience was preferred by students with lower linguistic self-confidence. In the same way students with lower self-confidence wanted to be affirmed with praise, because it confirmed that their writing was comprehensible, patience was a nonverbal way to demonstrate a tutor’s efforts to comprehend a student during the session. Patience, as defined by the participants of my study, manifested when a tutor gave the student processing time and demonstrated their effort to understand the student’s intentions and to maintain the integrity of the student's paper. Both Lin, a junior, and Mei, a senior, preferred patience over other scaffolding techniques for this reason. Lin mentioned that the tutor’s patience made her feel comfortable, because it showed that the tutor wanted to be talking with her. It also made her feel like she had time to listen and understand his suggestions: “because I feel like if people are not patient with me, they might be like ‘I don’t want to talk with you’ and I need to be able to listen to his suggestions.” Mei more explicitly reported that the tutor’s patience made her feel comfortable.

Unlike Lin, however, Mei mentioned that the tutor’s patience allowed her to take the time to think about how she was going to reply to the tutor’s questions and better articulate what she wanted to say.

Yet, writers with low self-reported English fluency were not the only participants who mentioned patience.

Both Bao, a freshman who rated her fluency as average, and Chang, a senior who rated his fluency as high, specifically referred to patience. Bao mentioned that patience was how she would define the tutor’s attitude and that patience was important to her in a session: I feel like he is very, like, patient when hearing me explain the concept and he really takes time to understand and repeat to make sure he really understands what I’m going to say, what I’m going to discuss in my paper.

Chang expanded on Bao’s feelings about patience to connect it to SLWs’ ability to comfortably express themselves:

Chang: “Yeah so first, first it’s that they [the writing center] help me a lot, like all the people here are really patient and also every time it gives me a clear thought about, like, about what to work on.”

Interviewer: “So, when you say everyone here is really patient, why do you think that’s important for you?”

Chang: “Um, because, yeah, it sometimes take[s] time to explain things to people when . . . when English is your second language.”

Patience seemed to be linked to motivational scaffolding in the way that it functioned as a nonverbal demonstration of tutors’ concern for writers’ comfort.

For writers like Chang, a learning environment defined by patience was mentioned explicitly as a reason for their return to the writing center.

Perceived Inauthenticity of Sympathy and Empathy Though Mackiewicz and Thompson acknowledge that demonstrating sympathy and empathy rarely occurred in their data, they include it as a component of successful sessions. However, the reactions of one participant in my study raises questions about the effectiveness of these strategies with second-language students. Sympathy and empathy only occurred once in my data set, and, in that instance, did not function the way these strategies may have in a session with a native speaker. It is important to understand linguistic differences before attempting to practice empathy, as Chen’s session demonstrated. In the session, a tutor attempted to empathize with Chen’s concern of being concise, but Chen, a freshman, did not feel like the tutor understood his struggle as a SLW. Chen: “Like when I write things from Chinese, I, like, have to do the same thing. Every time I write my paper, I have to do a lot of things and then I have to do a reduction, because, like, that’s the reason I feel like using a second language to write about things makes me be more detailed. And, I know there’s a lot of mistakes that I make in the entire text, so I do it as more as possible, and then I do a reduction to limit my mistakes. So, when she talks about how she has the same problem as I do, I was like, like, what?”

Interviewer: “Because it’s not really the same problem.”

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 27 Chen: “Yeah.”

Chen’s response implies that monolingual tutors’ sympathy or empathy may not function as intended for second-language students. The empathy may be perceived as inauthentic. Though native-speaking tutors and SLWs may seem to have the same general concern about their writing, the composition process is much different.

Implications Through observations and semi-structured postsession interviews with ten undergraduate Chinese international writers, I attempted to identify trends that would reveal how scaffolding techniques supported language acquisition for SLWs during a one-to-one writing session with an experienced tutor. My analysis of the interviews revealed four major trends. The first was that writers with lower linguistic self-confidence generally preferred praise, while writers with higher linguistic self-confidence generally preferred cognitive scaffolding techniques. The second was that cognitive and motivational scaffolding techniques are more intertwined than Mackiewicz and Thompson’s schema might suggest. The third was that the nonverbal scaffolding technique of patience could be used to create a sense of a safe learning environment that allowed SLWs to feel comfortable. The fourth was that sympathy and empathy do not always function as the tutor intends when applied to a context with SLWs. The practical implication of these results suggest that tutors need to be fluid in their pedagogical approach, utilize the opening stage of a session to determine the needs of a SLW, be aware of a student’s reception of a technique, and create a comfortable environment through nonverbal scaffolding. The conceptual implications suggest that more research should incorporate students’ voices to enhance tutors’ understanding of how SLWs receive canonical techniques that are successful with native speakers.

One of the driving goals of my study was to better understand how tutors can alleviate SLWs’ anxiety and facilitate language acquisition. Like in MacIntyre, Noels, and Clément’s work on linguistic self-confidence, in this study, a student’s sense of their ability to be understood manifested in their self-reported fluency. In this way, self-reported fluency acted as a measure of student linguistic self-confidence. Writers with different confidence levels expressed preferences for different techniques. SLWs with lower self-confidence may feel judged based on their identity on the page, or how fluent they appear to be based on their writing, a concept that

has been explored by Yan and Berliner’s study on graduate Chinese international students’ sources for anxiety. As suggested by Thonus (“Tutoring”), the motivational scaffolding technique of praise functioned to alleviate the anxiety of these SLWs. This finding is also consistent with MacIntyre, Noels, and Clément’s assertion that more anxious and less confident students should stop underestimating themselves in order to improve, which suggests that motivational scaffolding is a key tool in building confidence. In practice, tutors can use praise to confirm that SLWs’ writing can and will be understood. Conversely, SLWs with higher confidence may be thinking of themselves more as scholars, especially because many of the participants of this study with higher linguistic self-confidence tended to be upperclassmen preparing for graduate school. As such, their writing concerns tended to be more in regard to style than clarity, and they preferred cognitive scaffolding to praise. The finding that more confident SLWs were not primarily seeking affirmation in writing center sessions correlates with Mackiewicz and Thompson’s conclusion that tutors should address both students’ comfort and the quality of their draft (“Motivational” 40). Since SLWs with high selfconfidence may already be comfortable, tutors could rely more on cognitive scaffolding to meet the needs of these writers. Overall, this result suggests that a writer’s perceptions of themselves and their fluency can affect what tutoring technique is going to work for them.

In order for a tutor to decide which technique or combination of techniques will best allow these writers to achieve their goals for the session, they need to elicit SLWs’ goals, linguistic self-confidence, and background.

This finding corroborates Nan’s conclusion that metatalk, the small talk that occurs in the opening stage and allows a tutor to get to know a student, might be a way for tutors to better address the concerns of SLWs (58).

The “opening stage” takes place at the start of the session, lasts around five minutes, and gives the tutor the opportunity to ask questions, get to know a writer, their background, and their assignment better. This moment is especially important when working with SLWs, because it also gives the tutor an opportunity to gauge the student’s perceptions of their writing, of their confidence, and their comfort writing in English. For instance, in this study, the tutor working with Chaunli devoted significant time to understanding how he felt about his personal statement, the program he was applying to, whether he had written a statement like this before, and his background in general. Chaunli said that this conversation made him feel like the tutor could understand what he was struggling with and what he hoped to gain from the session. Yet, Thonus found that

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 28 the opening stages tend to be short or skipped altogether in sessions with non-native speakers (“What” 236-237). Rather than ignoring the opening stage or merely using it to create rapport between the tutor and student, tutors should utilize the opening stage to ask SLWs about their background, their confidence, and their comfort to determine the proper techniques that will meet the needs of the writer.

Not only do we need to attend to the voices of students in our sessions, but we need to incorporate them in our research as well. While Mackiewicz and Thompson’s goal was to create a theoretical framework for categorizing tutorial talk, my study calls aspects of this framework into question and suggests that students’ reception of techniques matters. The finding that cognitive and motivational scaffolding overlapped in actual sessions emphasizes how students may receive techniques differently than a tutor intends. This finding also confirms Thompson’s assertion in her microanalysis of scaffolding that “although cognitive and motivational scaffolding differ according to the verbal and physical moves tutors make, their effects on students are likely more difficult to separate” (445). In Bao’s session above, for example, while the tutor intended to use the motivational scaffolding technique of showing concern, the student received it as the cognitive scaffolding technique of pumping. Therefore, my research confirms the difficulty of separating cognitive and motivational scaffolding in practice and asserts that what matters more than the classification of techniques is the student’s perception and reception of a technique.

Additionally, though Mackiewicz and Thompson acknowledge that sympathy and empathy rarely occur in sessions, when it does occur SLWs may perceive sympathy and empathy differently than native-speaking students. In this study, Chen revealed that the monolingual tutor’s empathy seemed inauthentic.

Though both the tutor and writer may have struggled with the same general problem when writing, there are clear differences in the writing process between native and SLWs. This example further emphasizes that the success of tutoring techniques depends on the student’s reception rather than the tutor’s intention. Given how infrequently these strategies occurred in both my and Mackiewicz and Thompson’s data set, future research should specifically analyze the role of sympathy and empathy and its dynamics between sessions with SLWs and non-native speakers.

Patience was perceived as a nonverbal demonstration of tutors’ efforts to understand SLWs’ intentions and preserve the integrity of their paper, which demonstrates that another limitation of

Mackiewicz and Thompson’s framework is the emphasis on tutor talk, when other nonverbal strategies might contribute to experiences of success. Nonverbal scaffolding techniques have been explored by Thompson in the past; however, scholarship on nonverbal scaffolding techniques is limited.

Thompson’s microanalysis of scaffolding in a writing center session focuses mainly on hand gestures. Her focus seems to suggest that nonverbal techniques are supplemental to verbal scaffolding techniques, whereas my research suggests that nonverbal techniques function foundationally to establish a comfortable tutorial environment. In particular, four of the ten undergraduate Chinese international students who participated in this study emphasized that the nonverbal technique they described as patience created an environment of comfort and safety. Participants also indicated that their experience of patience determined their likelihood of returning to the writing center.

Returning Chinese international writers develop a relationship with both a tutor and the writing center, which can be integral to SLWs’ language acquisition and linguistic self-confidence (Williams and Takaku). This relationship also calls back to the idea of guanxi networks and how the writing center can affect not only a student’s writing ability, but the way that they interact with and within a new culture (Fraiberg, Wang, and You). By focusing on the way their techniques are received, individual tutors and the writing center can create a comfortable environment for SLWs and provide a foundation for an ongoing relationship that facilitates language acquisition.

More conceptually, the trends revealed in my study demonstrate the importance of students’ perceptions of their linguistic ability and of the tutorial interaction. In this way, my results confirm Thonus’s assertion that students’ “perceptions of the tutor's role . . . create and modify the context of interaction” (“Triangulation” 61); however, my research includes a more expansive assessment of students’ perceptions, to include their reception of tutorial techniques and their linguistic selfconfidence. Writing center research tends to focus on the researcher’s assumptions of a student’s perception based on observation (Babcock et al.; Thonus, “Tutor”).

As such, my research should serve as a continuation of the call for more research that integrates students’ voices.

Conclusion The trends revealed in my interviews with ten undergraduate Chinese international writers suggest that more writing center research should incorporate both

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 29 the presence and voices of SLWs. Though this study specifically considered the reactions of Chinese international students, many of the implications for practice could be applied to a range of SLWs. The trends also suggest that researchers should examine nonverbal scaffolding techniques, beyond those that are supplemental to verbal scaffolding techniques. Further research should consider the way that nonverbal scaffolding techniques can structure a learning environment. The results of the study are somewhat limited because the data was collected over a relatively short period (two semesters) and is therefore unable to fully include the development of SLWs from low linguistic self-confidence to high linguistic selfconfidence. A longitudinal study on the linguistic development of SLWs throughout their college career, as well as how the techniques that they prefer fluctuate with this development, would help us better understand the role of the writing center and scaffolding in SLWs’ confidence and language acquisition. This study is also limited in its consideration of class standing. Another direction for future research would be a quasiexperimental design that compares the linguistic selfconfidence of freshmen and senior SLWs to better gauge relationships between class standing, linguistic self-confidence, and preferred tutoring techniques.

(However, given the complexity of students’ linguistic backgrounds, class standing may be an imperfect representation of the length of time students have been writing in English.) Additionally, students’ perceptions of the inauthenticity of certain motivational scaffolding techniques raises questions for future scholars about students’ reception of tutorial techniques.

The results of this study can be applied beyond theory to real-world writing centers by better equipping them to meet the needs of SLWs. A recent Praxis publication on how flagship universities in the U.S. market the writing center concluded that SLWs need high-quality writing services the most, but these universities “do not appear to provide these services or make these services apparent on their websites” (Taylor 6). Therefore, writing center administrators should pay more attention to how they communicate their services to SLWs. Writing centers’ marketing materials may implicitly their services incorporate SLWs, but it should be made explicit exactly how SLWs can take advantage of the writing center.

The results of this study also demonstrate that writing centers need to be more strategic in their training for tutors, devoting more time to specific questions that should be asked in the opening stages of sessions, especially sessions with SLWs. Training should also incorporate strategies for wait time and demonstrating

patience, for all writers but especially for SLWs. Tutors should use the perceived needs of the writer and their level of comfort and fluency writing in English, gathered in the opening stage, to determine which scaffolding technique will be most effective in meeting the needs of these writers. Additionally, monolingual tutors should also be especially aware of how their sympathy and empathy may not function as intended when used in sessions with SLWs. Ultimately, tutors should be aware of how their techniques are received by writers and do their best to ensure that all writers are comfortable and that their needs are met.

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Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 31 Appendix Table 1. Characteristics of Sessions with Chinese International Writers

Interview Number

Pseudonym

Standing

Major

First or Return Visit

SelfReported Level of Fluency

Writing Concern

Reported Technique Preference

1

Jian

Senior

Business

First

High

Personal statement grammar, wording, coherence

Cognitive Scaffolding

2

Chaunli

Senior

Psychology

First

High

Statement of purpose -

Cognitive Scaffolding

grammar 3

Hong

Senior

Mechanical Engineering

Return

High

Personal statement grammar and reader comprehension

Cognitive Scaffolding

4

Chang

Senior

Mathematics

Return

High

Personal statement grammar and structure

Cognitive Scaffolding

5

Mei

Senior

Accountancy

Return

Average

Personal Statement -

Patience

Structure and reader comprehension 6

Bao

Freshman

Computer Science and Statistics

First

Average

Intro-level philosophy paper grammar and logic of argument

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Cognitive Scaffolding

Chinese International Students’ Reactions to Tutor Talk • 32 7

Chen

Freshman

Business Unassigned

Return

Average

Intro-level media and cinema studies paper -

Cognitive Scaffolding

grammar and reader comprehension 8

Suyin

Freshman

Food Science and Human Nutrition

First

Low

ESL introductory rhetoric course paper -

Praise

grammar and clarity 9

Zhang

Freshman

Agriculture and Consumer Economics

First

Low

Praise ESL introductory rhetoric course argument improvement and coherence

10

Lin

Junior

Integrative Biology

First

Low

Mid-level integrative biology paper to discuss TA’s comments and the structure of the paper

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Patience

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GRAMMARLY VS. FACE-TO-FACE TUTORING AT THE WRITING CENTER: ESL STUDENT WRITERS’ PERCEPTIONS Jing Zhang Indiana University of Pennsylvania xftx@iup.edu

Havva Zorluel Ozer Indiana University of Pennsylvania lvwx@iup.edu

Abstract

This study investigated how English as a Second Language (ESL) writers perceive their use of Grammarly, an online grammar checker, in relation to face-to-face tutoring at the writing center. Forty-three (N= 43) international ESL writers studying at universities in the United States participated in an anonymous online survey. Mixed methods were employed to examine participants’ perceptions of Grammarly and face-to-face tutoring at the writing center respectively as well as their perceptions of Grammarly in relation to face-to-face tutoring. Results rendered from descriptive analysis of the data revealed: 1) participants perceived both services with advantages and limitations; 2) participants used Grammarly more frequently than visiting the writing center, while they used face-to-face tutoring for a wider variety of purposes compared to Grammarly; 3) participants reported a both/and approach toward these two writing resources and used them to meet different needs in different contexts.

Implications were offered for ESL writers, instructors, writing center tutors, and Grammarly program developers.

“Even though technology can be more available, humans provide a wider range of support and can alter ineffective approaches through training and self-improvement. Thus, “reaching” students (regardless of the reasons or their writing concerns) is still a human activity.” (98) — Jenelle M. Dembsey English as a Second Language (ESL) students who attend universities in the United States often need help with English writing, like their native English-speaking peers. Among the various resources and support that American universities offer to help ESL students manage college-level writing, writing centers cultivate ESL writers to become better writers through one-onone tutoring services where they discuss their works with trained tutors for revision directions and readerly feedback (North). Besides visiting writing centers for help, ESL writers also use grammar checkers to receive feedback and suggestions on their writing, such as Grammarly. As a popular automated online grammar checker that offers writing support, Grammarly has been juxtaposed with the face-to-face (F2F) tutoring service at the writing center in a grammar-checker-versushuman-tutors discussion, as is reflected by the quote

Raneem Bayazeed Indiana University of Pennsylvania wrqw@iup.edu

above. As a form of technology, how has Grammarly “reached” ESL student writers in relation to writing center tutors? How do ESL students navigate and utilize grammar checkers and tutors as writing support? This study aims to seek answers to these questions by investigating how ESL writers perceive and compare Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center. We provide implications for ESL writers, writing center tutors, instructors, and Grammarly program developers with regards to supporting ESL writers effectively with grammar checkers and F2F tutoring services.

Online grammar checkers have been in use for a long time and attracted scholarly attention (Bigert et al.; Burston; Chen; O’Regan et al.; Potter and Fuller; Radi; Vernon). As one of the most popular online grammar checkers, Grammarly announces that “over 15 million people use Grammarly to improve their writing” (Grammarly). According to Jill Duffy, the success of Grammarly to have reached a large market results from its quality as “more than a grammar checker. It looks for repetitive words, jargon, homonyms, and hackneyed phrases, as well as words that nonnative speakers commonly misuse” (Duffy). Furthermore, Grammarly takes into consideration the genre of writing to make appropriate suggestions accordingly (Duffy): after one imports a piece of writing into Grammarly, Grammarly first prompts the writer to set goals, which informs Grammarly of the writing context and helps it to propose customized suggestions (see Figure 1 in Appendix A).

In addition, Grammarly tracks users’ writing progress and provides users with weekly reports, informing them of issues to be resolved (TD Magazine).

Specifically, there are two versions of Grammarly: the free version and the premium version. In the free version, Grammarly checks writing for 150 types of grammar errors, while in the premium version, it checks writing for over 400 types of grammatical issues, makes suggestions for word choice and citation, and offers services for plagiarism detection (Nova). Figure 2 in Appendix A displays the interface of Grammarly.

Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 34 Existing research on Grammarly has provided insights spanning across a variety of topics related to student writers’ use of the program. However, with such a popular and arguably powerful automated grammar checker, which is used prevalently by student writers, we are yet to gain more in-depth and nuanced understandings of this digital tool. We can achieve that particularly by juxtaposing it with writing resources such as F2F tutoring services. We examine how Grammarly can potentially change, influence, and shape students’ writing processes, their use of writing resources, and their reactions to feedback, especially in relation to the writing center, where feedback is often generated and delivered through F2F conversations. Particularly, we are interested in how the services provided by Grammarly are perceived by ESL writers in relation to the F2F tutorials offered by the writing center due to two reasons: first, as a group that has been historically associated with a strong need for surface-level writing support (Matsuda and Cox), ESL writers’ perception of Grammarly is worth studying. Second, because extant research predominantly examined Grammarly from the perspectives of researchers and teachers (Dembsey; Nova), empirical inquiry into students’ perspectives is conducive to a richer understanding of this tool. By adding a piece of ESL students’ perceptions of Grammarly to the “puzzle,” our study contributes takeaways for writing center tutors and instructors to better support their ESL student writers. As such, this study aims at answering the following research questions: 1. What are ESL writers’ perceptions of Grammarly?

2. What are ESL writers’ perceptions of F2F tutoring at the writing center?

3. How do ESL writers perceive Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring at the writing center?

Literature Review

With Grammarly’s popularity among millions of users, a relatively sparse body of research has been devoted to the use and impact of this grammar checker.

Research on Grammarly covers: user experiences of Grammarly (Cavaler and Dianati; Jayavalan and Razali; Karyuatry et al.; Nova; Qassemzadeh and Soleimani; Schraudner), review of Grammarly (Daniels and Lesli; Perelman), and comparison of Grammarly to the writing center (Dembsey). Extant literature has reflected mixed attitudes toward Grammarly, highlighting both its advantages and limitations.

User Experiences of Grammarly One trajectory of research on Grammarly has focused on user experiences. Favorable user experiences with Grammarly were reported by Michelle Cavaleri and Saib Dianati, who studied the software’s perceived usefulness by eighteen college students (both ESL and English as a first language (L1) speaking students), through an online survey at two Australian colleges.

Results revealed that the majority (94.4%) of the students found Grammarly to be easy to use, and the majority (83.3%) of students perceived Grammarly as useful, for reasons such as receiving detailed and helpful feedback, gaining a better understanding of grammatical rules, and gaining confidence in writing. Thus, Cavaleri and Dianati concluded that Grammarly can benefit both students and teachers in academic writing contexts.

In particular, Grammarly has been used in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts as a tool to aid learners in their learning of English and English writing.

Studies on the use of Grammarly in EFL contexts have focused on the advantages of this grammar checker. For example, by comparing the impact of feedback provided

by Grammarly and teachers on Iranian EFL students’ learning of passive structures, Abolfazl Qassemzadeh and Hassan Soleimani reported that in terms of longterm memory, the feedback generated by Grammarly had a stronger impact than teachers’ feedback on the retaining of passive structures by EFL learners.

Furthermore, other research zoomed in on the grammar elements in English writing by investigating how Grammarly helped EFL students reduce grammar errors and improve their writing quality. For instance, conducting research in the Malaysian and Indonesian contexts respectively, Kalpana Jayavalan and Abu Bakar Razali and Karyuatry et al. highlighted the effectiveness of Grammarly in helping EFL students identify and correct grammatical errors and thus improve their narrative/descriptive writing.

Additional research on the use of Grammarly in EFL contexts was conducted by Muhamad Nova, who reported both strengths and weaknesses of Grammarly through a narrative inquiry of three Indonesian graduate students. Results revealed that Grammarly had advantages such as offering quick and useful feedback, being highly accessible to students, and providing free services; meanwhile, weaknesses of Grammarly included providing inaccurate feedback and its inability to check the context and content of writing. Similarly, Michael Schraudner revealed students’ mixed attitudes toward Grammarly. By running 135 book summaries written by 17 Asia University Business Hospitality students in Grammarly, Schraudner indicated that Grammarly was able to identify sentence-level errors and create

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 35 individually tailored reports for the entire class, saving time and effort for instructors; on the other hand, it sometimes flagged non-mistakes and did not have the function of peer comparison.

Based on the literature above, two things stand out: first, an important line of research focuses on ESL/EFL writers’ use and perceptions of Grammarly, especially those in EFL contexts; second, extant scholarship tends to investigate the effectiveness of Grammarly from a pedagogical standpoint without considering whether or not and how Grammarly should be used, especially ignoring students’ perspectives. Thus, our study aims to contribute to research on ESL writers’ use of Grammarly by focusing on international ESL students at universities in the United States, an English-speaking context, and by opening up our investigation to students’ selfreported use and experience of Grammarly broadly in academic settings.

Review of Grammarly: Among Other Grammar Checkers Another trajectory of research has examined the efficacy of Grammarly through technology reviews situating Grammarly among other grammar checkers. For instance, Paul Daniels and Davey Leslie evaluated three online spelling and grammar tools, including Microsoft Word (MW), Grammarly, and Ginger, to determine to what extent these tools might help second language (L2) students with writing. The results showed that Grammarly was able to identify the missing spaces and spelling mistakes and provide several alternatives for misspelled words; however, when Grammarly identified fragments and offered advice on the verb form, it did not always provide suggested corrections and its explanations of error were complicated.

Similarly, with the question “Are grammar checkers reliable?”, Les Perelman submitted a number of essays to different online grammar checkers including WriteCheck, WhiteSmoke, MS Word, ETS’s e-Rater 2.0 in Criterion, Grammarly (free version), Ginger, Virtual Writing Tutor, and Language Tool. Based on the results revealing grammar checkers’ failure in catching errors, Perelman argued that computer grammar checkers were not reliable because depending on the algorithmic tagging of words, they provided misleading information and flagged certain correct constructions as errors. Like the other grammar checkers examined by Perelman, Grammarly was perceived unreliable.

Grammarly vs. the Writing Center: Yet to Explore With Grammarly and writing centers both serving ESL writers as available writing resources, Dembsey initiated a comparison between the services provided by Grammarly with those by the writing center. Specifically,

Dembsey presented a thorough and rigorous analysis comparing the feedback provided by Grammarly on three freshmen’s essays with the feedback provided by ten asynchronous writing center consultants. Results demonstrated three patterns: 1. Grammarly provided twice more feedback than the online consultants due to repeated comments; 2. Despite the differences in amount, the writing center consultants covered more issues in their feedback than Grammarly. Feedback provided

by Grammarly focused on the same issues regardless of specific writer concerns, while the feedback given by online writing center consultants differed across the essays; 3. With respect to accuracy, neither Grammarly nor writing center consultants provided 100% accurate feedback because both groups used incorrect terms and explanations in their comments.

In general, despite Grammarly’s availability, Dembsey held a more favorable attitude toward writing center consultants because of their advantages of being trainable, flexible, and interactive over the disadvantages of Grammarly of being rigid and driven by algorithms.

Meanwhile, although he did not specifically focus on the relationship between Grammarly and the writing center, Perelman called on researchers to investigate how feedback from online grammar checkers compares to the individualized approach of writing center consultants. This call was echoed by Dembsey, who suggested conducting further research on how students view Grammarly in relation to the writing center. To respond to Perelman’s and Dembsey’s call, to contribute knowledge of students’ perceptions of using Grammarly, and to juxtapose their perceptions of Grammarly with F2F tutoring at the writing center, our study aims to explore ESL writers’ experiences and perceptions of using Grammarly in relation to consulting tutors F2F at the writing center.

Furthermore, whereas current research has offered useful insights regarding the role of Grammarly in the field of EFL instruction and L2 writing, an important issue calls for scholarly attention and further research: studies such as Jayavalan and Razali and Karyuatry et al., both seem to equate the reduction of grammar errors with the improvement of writing. Does a smaller number of grammatical errors in writing necessarily mean a better learning outcome for L2 writers and thus the effectiveness of the tool/resource? With the important writing center philosophy of cultivating better writers rather than better writing (North), we are more interested in how ESL students perceive their writerly

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 36 development with the use of Grammarly; thus, we intend to move beyond the discussion of the number of grammatical errors by conducting a mixed-method study to elicit both quantitative and qualitative responses from ESL Grammarly users.

Methods

To reveal ESL writers’ perceptions of Grammarly and the F2F tutoring service at the writing center and to examine how they compare their use of Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring, a mixed-method research design was implemented to collect quantitative and qualitative data in this study.

Participants Forty-three (N = 43) international ESL students attending universities in the United States participated in the current study. Because the survey did not mandate participants to answer all the questions, the total number of participants may not equal the number of respondents in the demographics section. Our analysis showed that most of the participants (N = 21) were Chinese native speakers. The remainder consisted of native speakers of Arabic (N = 10), Korean (N = 3), Bengalese (N= 1), Hindi (N=1), Thai (N=1), Ukranian (N = 1), and Turkish (N=1). Twenty-eight participants identified as female, and 15 participants identified as male. The participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 46.

Fourteen participants reported that they were undergraduates, and 29 participants reported that they were graduate students, with 10 being masters students and 19 being doctoral students. The participants were enrolled in a wide range of majors including biology, computer science, accounting, management, finance, marketing, fashion, speech-language pathology, student affairs in higher education, educational psychology, curriculum and instructions, literature and criticism, and composition and applied linguistics.

Among the 43 participants, 34 reported that they were users of Grammarly. Of the 34 Grammarly users, 29 were using a free version, while five were using a premium version. Fifteen participants reported using Grammarly for one to 12 months, nine using it for two years, six using it for less than a month, three using it for more than two years, and one using it only for once. Of the 43 participants, 36 participants reported that they were writing center visitors. Among the 43 participants, 27 reported that they were using both Grammarly and the writing center services.

Instrument After receiving IRB approval, we distributed an anonymous online survey (Qualtrics) through our social networks to international ESL students who were above the age of 18 and were studying at American universities.

We used two social network platforms to reach out to our potential participants (WhatsApp and WeChat). We sent an invitation message and the link to our survey to our personal contacts on these two social network platforms, i.e., EFL students who were studying at a U.S. higher education institution. Meanwhile, with a snowball sampling method, we asked them to forward our invitation message and survey link to their personal contacts of other EFL students studying at U.S. universities; similarly, we shared our invitation message and survey link in group chats that included EFL students as group members, inviting them to take the survey and encouraging them to spread the message for us. The survey included four sections. First, participants who responded “yes” to “Have you ever used Grammarly?” could proceed to Section 1, which required participants to respond to nine statements on a 5-point Likert-scale on their perceptions about Grammarly; participants also responded to an open-ended question and a set of multiple choice questions about Grammarly.

Following Section 1, participants were asked “Have you ever visited a writing center?” Those who responded “yes” could proceed to Section 2, which required participants to respond to nine statements on a 5-point Likert-scale and answer an open-ended question and a set of multiple-choice questions about using the F2F tutoring service at the writing center. Participants who reported having used both Grammarly and the writing center could proceed to Section 3, where participants were asked to compare their experiences of using Grammarly and F2F tutorials at the writing center through three 5-point Likert-scale statements and an open-ended question. The last section of the survey included demographics questions.

Analytical Method Statistical and qualitative analyses were conducted to answer the research questions in this study. First, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used for descriptive statistical analysis for the scale items in the survey. Descriptive data analyses were conducted to examine participants’ perceptions of Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center respectively as well as their perceptions of Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring. After descriptive statistical analysis were completed and finding that data were nonnormally distributed, a Mann Whitney U test was conducted to examine the differences between

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 37 participants’ perceived satisfaction, recommendation, and future use of Grammarly and those of F2F tutoring.

Secondly, a one-pass, exploratory thematic analysis was conducted to analyze participants’ responses to the three open-ended questions regarding reasons why they liked and disliked Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center and how they compared these two writing resources. First, after exporting survey results from Qualtrics, a Word document was generated to store all the participants’ responses to the three open-ended questions; the Word document was then imported to NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, for thematic coding. The coder, i.e., one of the authors, read this qualitative data set carefully and iteratively, with the three open-ended questions in mind. During this process, the coder first conducted an exploratory thematic coding (Saldana) and assigned a list of codes and categories to capture the salient features of the responses. Then, a pattern coding (Saldana) was performed to generate themes that place the codes and categories in relation to one another and to describe the patterns in the data set. Before finalizing the themes, the data set and codes were reexamined again for any possible formulation of new themes. The codes, categories, and themes are presented in the following sections.

Descriptive Data: ESL Perceptions of Grammarly

Students’

Statistical Analysis: Perceptions of Grammarly Table 1 in Appendix B presents the means, medians, and standard deviations of the rated items related to Grammarly. Table 1 illustrates that item 1 had the highest mean (M = 4.12), indicating that participants somewhat agreed that Grammarly is easy to use for ESL writers. Similarly, participants tended to somewhat agree that Grammarly makes helpful suggestions to improve ESL writers’ writing (M = 3.82) and that Grammarly gives detailed feedback to help ESL writers improve their writing skills (M = 3.74). Table 1 also shows that items 8 and 9 had the lowest means (M = 3.24), indicating that participants remained neutral with regards to Grammarly helping them to improve their writing skills and to get better grades on their assignments.

Thematic Analysis: Likes and Dislikes about Grammarly To understand why participants liked and disliked Grammarly, their responses to the open-ended question (“Why do you like and dislike Grammarly?”) were coded through an exploratory thematic analysis and a summary of the findings are provided in Table 2 (Appendix B).

For participants’ reported reasons for liking Grammarly (31 references), the following reasons stood out: Grammarly offers useful feedback and explanations, and it is quick, convenient, accessible, and easy to use.

On the other hand, participants articulated fewer reasons for disliking Grammarly. Among the reported concerns (11 references), participants pointed out that feedback provided by Grammarly was unhelpful, inaccurate, and decontextualized (7 references), that they had to pay to use the additional features of Grammarly Premium (3 references), and Grammarly focused on local issues only (1 reference), etc.

Descriptive Data: ESL Students’ Perceptions of F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center

Statistical Analysis: Perceptions of F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center Table 3 in Appendix B demonstrates the means, medians, and standard deviations of the rated items related to participants’ perceptions of F2F tutoring at the writing center.

Table 3 shows that Item 1 had the highest mean (M = 4.03), indicating that participants somewhat agreed that tutors make helpful suggestions for improving ESL writers’ works. Table 3 also reveals that participants tended to somewhat agree that tutors provide good explanations about their suggestions (M = 3.92), and that participants trust tutors because their feedback is accurate (M = 3.81). Results reveal that Item 9 had the lowest mean (M = 3.58), indicating that participants were uncertain whether tutors help them understand grammar rules better.

Thematic Analysis: Likes and Dislikes about F2F Tutoring To understand the reasons why participants liked and disliked F2F tutoring at the writing center, their responses to the open-ended question (“Why do you like and dislike face-to-face tutoring at the writing center?”) were coded through an exploratory thematic analysis.

Table 4 in Appendix B demonstrates participants’ reported reasons for liking and disliking F2F tutoring at the writing center. Among the 31 references, two reasons were the most salient: 1. F2F tutoring makes it easy to communicate, discuss, and ask questions about writing 2. Tutors provide helpful feedback and explanations.

Participants also reported benefiting from F2F tutoring because they better understood assignments and comments on their papers (2 references) and got

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 38 inspirations (1 reference) by working with a tutor. Again, participants focused less on reasons why they disliked F2F tutoring at the writing center (13 references), with time concerns as a major reason such as the wait time and the limited opening hours of the writing center.

Other reasons included the inconvenience to visit the writing center (3 references) and tutors’ lack of expertise (3 references).

Comparison: Grammarly vs. F2F Tutoring

A Big Picture: Frequencies and Purposes of Using Grammarly vs. F2F Tutoring Twenty-seven participants reported using both Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center. Table 5 displays the frequencies and percentages of these participants’ use of Grammarly and the writing center.

Table 5 (Appendix B) indicates that among the ESL writers who reported using both services, six participants used Grammarly on a daily basis, while no participants reported visiting the writing center daily.

Table 5 reveals that more than half of the participants (55%) reported that they visited the writing center once a semester. Participants who used both services used Grammarly more frequently than visiting the writing center.

Table 6 (Appendix B) displays the purposes of using Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center for the 27 participants who reported using both Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center.

Table 6 reveals that participants’ purposes to use Grammarly included grammar (31%), spelling (27%), and punctuation (19%). Participants reported that they also used Grammarly for word choice (14%), style (8%), and other (to check plagiarism) (1%). It is seen in Table 6 that writing center visitors used F2F tutoring for grammar (15%) and word choice (14%). In addition, participants used F2F tutoring for a variety of purposes such as format (9%), punctuation, style, and organization (8%), spelling, transitions and flow, and developing ideas (7%), writing a thesis or main idea (6%), using examples and details, introductions and conclusions, and incorporating research (3%). Our data show that while ESL writers used both Grammarly and F2F tutoring mainly for grammar issues, they tended to use these services for different ranges of purposes.

Comparison: Statistical Analysis of Responses to Rating-Scale Questions Table 7 in Appendix B presents participants’ perceptions of Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring at the writing center.

Table 7 reveals that participants tended to agree that both Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center were important to them (M = 3.88) and they would probably use Grammarly more often than working with a tutor face to face at the writing center (M = 3.85).

Results indicate that participants were uncertain whether they use Grammarly instead of working with a tutor face to face at the writing center (M = 3.44).

Table 8 in Appendix B presents participants’ responses to “How satisfied are you with Grammarly/F2F tutoring at the writing center?”, “Would you recommend Grammarly/F2F tutoring at the writing center to your peers?”, “How likely are you to use Grammarly/F2F tutoring at the writing center in the future?” on a 5-point Likert-scale.

Table 8 reveals that participants tended to be somewhat satisfied with using Grammarly (M=3.74) and F2F tutoring at the writing center (M=3.94). Results indicate that participants would probably recommend using Grammarly (M=4.06) and visiting the writing center (M=4.47) to their peers. Participants reported that they were somewhat likely to use Grammarly (M=4.03) and visit the writing center (M=4.22) in the future. It was seen that the participants rated all the items slightly higher for F2F tutoring. To examine the significance of the differences between participants’ perceptions of Grammarly and F2F tutoring in terms of satisfaction, recommendation, and likeliness of future use, a Mann Whitney U test was conducted. Results reveal that there was no significant difference in satisfaction U=492.0, p=.123, recommendation U=493.5, p=.127, and likeliness of future use U=575.5, p=.642.

Comparison: Thematic Analyses of Responses to Open-ended Questions When asked to compare their perceptions of Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring at the writing center, four themes emerged from the collected responses (22 references): 1. Participants saw both Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center with respective benefits and made choices depending on their specific writing needs and contexts (10 references), illustrated by one of the participants’ quotes: Grammarly is convenient when you need instant responses and you can use it more portably.

Working with a tutor F2F is the most helpful for me to revise my writing, …

2. Participants perceived both resources with limitations and hoped for improvement (4 references), as one of the responses went, “It (Grammarly) is mkre [more] convenient, though has

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 39 many drawbacks. I wish I had tutor availability 24/7.”

3. Five participants reported favoring F2F tutoring at the writing center for its specific feedback and opportunities to discuss and communicate with tutors. Below is a compelling and profound quote from a participant, highlighting the advantage of F2F tutoring over Grammarly in that the former attends to issues beyond grammar and enables writers in discussions and negotiations: Grammarly cannot replace working with tutors at the writing center. Grammarly can be used to check basic grammatical errors. However, writing is more than grammar. Writing involves so many issues that Grammarly cannot solve at all. Working with tutors is also about negotiation. During the tutoring sessions, students can ask questions and exchange ideas rather than take or not take the recommendations in Grammarly. (In Grammarly, there are two choices: take/deny).

4. Three participants reported favoring Grammarly, without giving specific reasons besides its convenience.

Therefore, results rendered from our data analysis revealed that participants perceived both services with advantages and limitations. In addition, they used Grammarly more frequently than visiting the writing center, while they used F2F tutoring for a wider variety of purposes compared to Grammarly. Furthermore, participants reported using these two writing resources to meet different needs in different contexts.

Discussion and Conclusion

The present study aimed to answer three research questions: 1. What are ESL writers’ perceptions of Grammarly?

2. What are ESL writers’ perceptions of F2F tutoring at the writing center?

3. How do ESL writers perceive Grammarly in relation to F2F tutoring at the writing center?

In this section, major findings are presented regarding ESL writers’ perceptions of Grammarly, F2F tutoring at the writing center, and their comparison of these two writing resources. In addition, the major findings are synthesized to make connections to the extant research.

RQ 1: Grammarly In general, participants demonstrated a positive attitude toward their use of Grammarly. Participants did not show disagreement on any of the items about Grammarly because the lowest mean score was 3.24, which corresponded to “neither agree nor disagree.”

Regarding their perceptions of Grammarly, both statistical and thematic analyses indicate that participants favored the advantages of Grammarly such as its ease of use and useful suggestions, which improved their confidence in writing. However, despite the relatively high means of ratings on the helpfulness of Grammarly’s suggestions, accuracy, and the quality of its explanations, the biggest reason that participants disliked Grammarly was its unhelpful, inaccurate, and decontextualized feedback. This might explain why participants gave relatively low ratings when it came to Grammarly’s helping them understand grammar rules better, its effectiveness in improving their grades, and improving their writing skills. Still, the overall results indicate that participants reported more reasons for liking Grammarly than disliking it.

RQ 2: F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center Participants’ reported perceptions toward F2F tutoring at the writing center were also positive, with the means of all the ratings above 3.58. The thematic analysis revealed that participants’ reported reasons of liking F2F tutoring focused on the convenience and richness of face-to-face communication and the helpful feedback offered by tutors, which was corroborated by the relative high ratings on tutors’ helpful suggestions, good explanations of their suggestions, and their accurate and detailed feedback. On the other hand, participants disliked consulting tutors at the writing center mainly due to physical inconvenience such as time and location and a lack of confidence in tutors’ expertise, coupled with participants’ relatively low ratings on the convenience of the writing center.

Generally, participants perceived the effectiveness of tutoring favorably, with tutoring increasing their writing skills, helping them get better grades, giving them more confidence in writing, and helping them understand grammar rules better.

RQ 3: Comparing Grammarly and F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center Despite participants’ generally positive attitudes toward Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center, their uses and perceptions of these two writing resources did reflect nuanced differences worthy of discussion.

To begin with, participants reported using Grammarly more frequently than visiting the writing center in general, while consulting writing center tutors about a wider range of issues than Grammarly. These two patterns correspond to the findings above: with the reported convenience to use Grammarly and the inconvenience to visit the writing center, it is reasonable

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 40 that participants used Grammarly more often; similarly, with the convenience and richness of face-to-face communication with tutors and with Grammarly only focusing on grammar, spelling, punctuation (free version), it seems natural for participants to capitalize on the versatility of tutors and bring a wider range of issues to the writing center.

When participants were asked to compare their perceptions of using Grammarly and F2F tutoring, statistical analysis indicates that they tended to value both, with a higher frequency of using Grammarly and a lower tendency to replace the tutoring service at the writing center with Grammarly, with the differences being statistically insignificant. These findings align with our thematic analysis, where the majority of the participants pointed out both advantages and limitations of these two writing resources and reported choosing one to use depending on their specific writing needs and contexts. Therefore, instead of an either/or stance that leads student writers to choose one and give the other up, participants tended to adopt a both/and stance and incorporated both Grammarly and F2F tutoring as useful resources in their writing processes. Additionally, when participants were asked to compare using Grammarly and F2F tutoring regarding satisfaction, recommendation, and the likeliness of future use, they gave slightly higher ratings of tutoring than Grammarly, but the differences were not statistically significant.

Contribution to the Field Our analyses above show that the majority of the participants found Grammarly to be a useful tool for ESL students in terms of providing helpful suggestions and detailed feedback, which supports findings from Cavaleri and Dianati, who indicate that Australian college students considered Grammarly to be easy to use.

Based on the results of Cavaleri and Dianati and the current study, it can be suggested that Grammarly was perceived to be easy to use by both L1 and L2 speakers of English. In addition, Participants’ positive responses such as “Grammarly offers useful feedback,” “is convenient,” “accessible,” and “easy to use” confirm the usefulness of Grammarly for ESL students in previous literature (Cavaleri and Dianati; Soleimani; Razali; Karyuatry). However, the Australian college students in Cavaleri and Dianati’s study seemed to favor Grammarly more than the participants in the current study, because the majority of the Australian participants agreed or strongly agreed on the rated items, while the majority of our participants remained neutral on them.

Meanwhile, our participants provided some examples for disliking Grammarly. For instance, some participants reported that Grammarly is “inaccurate” and

provides “decontextualized feedback.” This result supports previous findings on user experiences with Grammarly which emphasize the inaccuracy and the decontextualized nature of feedback provided by this online grammar checker (Nova; Schraudner). These comments confirm Perelman’s argument that grammar computer checkers can provide unreliable information.

Our results confirm Grammarly’s drawbacks to provide imprecise feedback on errors and its inability to take contextual background into account. Thus, producing accurate and contextualized comments on writing remains as an area yet to be developed by the program developers of Grammarly.

Besides our participants’ generally positive perceptions of F2F tutoring at the writing center, they also reported negative feelings about tutors’ lack of expertise, which reflects a much-discussed issue in writing center scholarship. Empirical research reveals that tutors’ disciplinary expertise plays an important role in facilitating the efficacy of tutorials (Dinitz and Harrington) and that tutors develop strategies in order to tutor writing in which they lack subject knowledge (Summers). Consequently, based on our participants’ reported lack of confidence in tutors’ expertise, it can be suggested that tutors need to horn their strategies to help writers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.

Additionally, moving beyond studies that equated the reduction of grammar errors to the improvement of writing (Jayavalan and Razali; Karyuatry et al.), our study probed into participants’ perceptions of Grammarly in a more nuanced way. The results of our study indicate that participants acknowledged both advantages and limitations of Grammarly. On one hand, they perceived feedback from Grammarly to be useful; on the other hand, their ratings were lower when they considered the effectiveness of Grammarly in helping them get better grades and improve their writing skills. In other words, participants’ positive perceptions of Grammarly did not seem to translate into actual improvement of their writing or their development as writers, which counters studies such as Jayavalan and Razali and Karyuatry et al.

Consequently, while Grammarly holds potential for improving students’ writing ability, due to the shortage of empirical studies exploring Grammarly’s influence on student writing, the conversations surrounding the effectiveness of Grammarly in student writing development are inconclusive. This evinces the need for more research to investigate whether and in what ways using Grammarly might help cultivate writing development in students. Thus, with our findings about ESL students’ self-reported perceptions of Grammarly as a starting point for more scholarly discussion of Grammarly’s impact, we suggest that researchers conduct

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 41 more systematic empirical inquiry into Grammarly’s effects on students’ writing improvement and development.

Another important contribution of this study lies in its reflection of a both/and approach toward Grammarly vs. F2F tutoring at the writing center. Among the few studies that examine or touch upon the relationship between Grammarly and the writing center, scholars seem to conduct comparisons based on an either/or approach that aims to judge which writing resource is better. For example, Dembsey conducted a rigorous and nuanced comparison between feedback provided by Grammarly and by writing center tutors asynchronously, indicating that tutors were more advantageous than Grammarly in that tutors were trainable, flexible, and interactive. Dembsey’s findings contribute significantly to our understanding of Grammarly in relation to the writing center and pose interesting questions: when we compare Grammarly against tutors and decide that one is more advantageous than the other, are we to choose between automated grammar checkers and human tutors? Our study suggests otherwise. Based on our findings, the majority of our ESL participants perceived that Grammarly and tutors both had advantages and limitations and participants reported choosing one to use depending on their specific needs and situations. For example, in situations where they needed to “check basic grammar,” they used Grammarly and benefited from its convenience and speed, thus using Grammarly to lessen the cognitive burden arising from grammar issues that they have to deal with while writing in English; when they needed to engage in in-depth discussions about their writing, they consulted tutors face to face. In this sense, the majority of our participants adopted a both/and approach: they treated both Grammarly and F2F tutoring as useful writing resources and they used them under different circumstances to their advantages. As compositionists and scholars, we endorse such a both/and approach toward Grammarly and the writing center, because such an approach enables ESL students to make full use of a wide range of available writing resources in their writing processes and to base their decisions on their needs and contexts. Therefore, we call on researchers to conduct more comparison studies to explore the affordances and effectiveness of Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center, so that students—both L1 and L2 students—can make informed decisions when they utilize writing resources to aid their writing processes.

Implications The results from this study contribute to discussions over “grammar checkers vs. writing tutors”

in literature (Dembsey; Perelman), or even “technology vs. humanity” discussions in broader contexts. The advances in technology result in the creation of digital tools that aim to facilitate learning, such as online grammar checkers, and learners naturally desire to take advantage of these tools. Rather than arguing against the use of automated grammar checkers to improve writing, the current study advocates an open attitude toward available writing resources for ESL writers. Based on the results of this study, we propose that both Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center can be used to support the development of ESL writers, helping them to become more savvy and resourceful writers. For example, we can encourage ESL writers to use feedback from Grammarly as heuristics to generate a list of concerns to bring to the writing center to discuss with tutors. Especially for ESL writers who might lack the metalanguage to discuss writing in English, Grammarly can provide them with terminologies that can help them to conduct more productive tutorials with writing center tutors. In other words, we encourage ESL writers to explore all writing resources available to them and incorporate them into their writing processes to their advantage, be them automated checkers or human tutors. For instructors and writing center tutors, we recommend that they explore the potential to utilize Grammarly in their teaching/tutoring pedagogy and provide guidance to help ESL writers make informed decisions about using different writing resources to meet different needs in different contexts. For instance, we suggest that instructors and writing center tutors engage in discussion with EFL students about their Grammarly usage, raising students’ awareness of the benefits and limitations of Grammarly and encouraging them to visit the writing center for more individualized and in-depth discussion about their writing. In addition, the limitations that participants reported about Grammarly and F2F tutoring raise important implications for both Grammarly program developers and the writing center administrators. For Grammarly, programmers need to improve the accuracy of Grammarly’s feedback to provide more reliable support for its users.

Limitations and Future Research Most empirical inquiries have limitations and the current study is not an exception. The main limitation of this study is the small sample size which decreases the generalizability of the findings to larger contexts. With a relatively small sample (N = 43), this study offers preliminary findings only; thus, larger-scale studies are needed to further inquire into students’ perceptions of Grammarly and F2F tutoring at the writing center. We encourage writing center and second language writing

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 42 researchers to conduct replication studies to establish more generalizable patterns on user perceptions of online grammar checkers and F2F tutoring. Another limitation of the study is that its analysis remains mainly at a descriptive level to identify and describe perceptions. More empirical research that employs inferential statistics is needed to draw causalcomparative relationships and make stronger arguments about the use of these services. Despite these limitations, this study offers some insights about ESL writing resources and development and initiates an important line of inquiry for future research to build on.

Besides examining ESL/EFL students’ perceptions, future research could also look into L1 students’ perceptions’ of Grammarly in relation to the writing center. Particularly, we call on researchers to examine how a both/and approach to Grammarly and the writing center influence students’ writing processes and development. Another interesting line of research is to examine how the services provided by Grammarly, i.e., grammar, spelling, and punctuation, etc., are attended to in F2F tutoring at the writing center.

Acknowledgement The authors extend great thanks to their professors, family, and friends, including Dr. Mary Stewart, Dr. Ben Rafoth, Krista Sarraf, 赖财兰, 王丽文, 王宝, 张云 生 , 阎 杰 . We also thank the attendees of our presentation at the International Writing Centers Association Conference in Columbus in 2019 and the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal for their valuable feedback on this article.

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 43 EFL learners.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 6, no. 9, 2016, pp. 1884-1894.

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 44 Appendix A: Figures Figure 1: Screenshot: Grammarly enables users to create a rhetorical situation by making choices about intent, audience, style, emotion, and domain

Figure 2: Screenshot: Interface of Grammarly

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 45 Appendix B: Tables Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for ESL Writers’ Perceptions of Grammarly (N=34)

Table 2. Thematic Analysis: Likes and Dislikes about Grammarly

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics for ESL Writers’ Perceptions of the Writing Center (N=36)

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 46

Table 4. Thematic Analysis: Likes and Dislikes about F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center

Table 5. Frequency of Use: Participants Who Used Both Grammarly and the Writing Center (N=27)

Table 6. Purpose of Use: Participants Who Used Both Grammarly and the Writing Center (N=27)

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Grammarly VS. Face-to-face Tutoring at the Writing Center • 47 Table 7. Descriptive Statistics: ESL Writers’ Perceptions of Grammarly in relation to F2F Tutoring at the Writing Center (N=27)

Table 8. Descriptive Statistics: ESL Writers’ Perceptions of Their Satisfaction, Recommendation, and Future Use of Grammarly and F2F Tutoring

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TUTOR TALK, NETSPEAK, AND STUDENT SPEAK: ENHANCING ONLINE CONSULTATIONS Courtney L. Werner Monmouth University cwerner@monmouth.edu As more writing centers move to include synchronous chat as a writing center consultation option, writing center researchers and practitioners must continue examining the affordances and constraints of the medium. In this article, we analyze four synchronous online consultation transcripts from one writing center’s pilot program to evaluate consultation patterns and arcs, approaches to teaching and tutoring, and the role of digital language, or netspeak (Crystal 19), in tutors’ feedback. We use this preliminary analysis to argue that writing center tutors can effectively use synchronous tutoring to meet the needs of diverse student populations, but these consultations might be more effective if tutors thoughtfully utilize some of the best practices of face-to-face tutoring. One finding suggests that tutors might engage student writers in online consultations more effectively by employing soliciting and reacting techniques more often than unintentionally using directive structuring practices, which can serve to limit dialogue with student writers (Fanselow 21; Davis et al. 29).

Additionally, although netspeak can potentially establish common linguistic ground with writers, tutors should be aware of the disadvantages of using an informal tone and non-academic language in chat consultations; in fact, student writers might benefit from reading tutors’ chat feedback in Edited Academic Discourse.

By employing the positive elements of face-to-face consultations in chat sessions, this medium has the potential for effective tutoring in a space where many students feel most comfortable. Our analysis may serve as a heuristic for others to use in assessing chat consultations, developing tutor training, and initiating future research on this consultation option.

When our writing center at a large, Midwestern university launched a new synchronous chat consultation option, we promoted a relatively straightforward pedagogical principle: if the traditional face-to-face writing consultation model did not work for some students, our writing tutors should be available to those students in other spaces. Although some centers resist online tutoring as contrary to core writing center principles, diverse student needs oblige us to consider offering such consultations. For some students, meeting in person with a tutor about their writing simply does not work logistically—distancelearning status, family-life constraints, career demands, and overbooked schedules sometimes preclude students from scheduling writing center appointments during the center’s face-to-face working hours. For other students, the idea of working face-to-face with tutors provokes such anxiety that they feel uncomfortable engaging in traditional in-person consultations (Yergeau et al., np.), and they try to “keep a safe distance” from tutors (Carlson and

Diana Lin Awad Scrocco Youngstown State University dlawadscrocco@ysu.edu Apperson-Williams 133). This anxiety sometimes stems from physical, social, and learning disabilities (Ries 7) and discourages these students from making face-toface writing center appointments. More generally, some students simply feel more comfortable using digitally mediated writing collaboration strategies because they find these spaces more comfortable and natural (Pritchard and Morrow 94).

Ideally, online chat consultations can compensate for a range of obstacles that occur during in-person consultations, though we must not assume that online consultations are a panacea for scheduling difficulties and the discomforts students face in our centers.

Instead, we must acknowledge, as Heather Fielding notes, that students still need to fit online writing instruction (OWI) into their schedules and lived time constraints (104). And while some students feel confident in digital spaces, others may feel anxious about online writing consultations: the need to acclimate to this new consultation space may be offputting for some students (Pantellides 271), including those with disabilities. Still, according to Stephanie Ries, online consultations can do much to remedy students’ anxieties, such as creating a safe space for disabled students while allowing the intimacy of the writing center consultation to play out through important rapport-building strategies (7-8).

Despite the potential for online writing consultations to overcome some constraints of traditional face-to-face consultations, we recognize legitimate concerns about the pitfalls of such consultations, particularly when they endanger the hallmarks of writing center practice. For example, potential downsides for online consultations include greater focus on the written product rather than the writer (Neaderhiser and Wolfe 66; Rickly 58) and the writer’s growth (a hallmark of our own center’s ideology).

Another challenge is a potential increase in unintentionally directive feedback—though we acknowledge that intentional directive feedback can, in fact, be effective and appropriate in specific contexts1.

Finally, writing center directors might also worry about typing competencies or even voice-to-text transcription errors when transitioning to synchronous digital tutoring. Tutors and writers may face challenges with

Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 49 typing competencies that range from simple issues of keyboard familiarity and speed to physical disabilities.

Further issues may arise when considering the time constraints of sessions and the pressure to type quickly yet cogently for clear communication. Some tutors and writers may experience added anxiety and pressure in this situation. These challenges may impede tutors’ abilities to offer valuable feedback, and they may also inhibit writers’ abilities to explain their ideas, concerns, and even their agendas for consultations.

Despite the possible challenges of online writing consultations, at our university, our director seeks strategies for meeting all of our students in ways that work for them and fit into their lives. Considering the diverse student needs and expectations for writing center consultations, the director at our center aimed to meet students’ needs in digital environments— specifically by piloting synchronous online chat consultations, not in lieu of face-to-face or asynchronous consultations but as an alternative for students who need another consultation option.

Nevertheless, while the chat option provides an opportunity for students who may not otherwise choose to work with a tutor, the potential for tutors to overlook the conventions of established tutoring practices seem greater. Indeed, this concern has received attention by others seeking to make the shift to online consultations (Rickly 58).

In this exploratory study, we conduct a dialogue analysis of four synchronous chat transcripts to determine some affordances and constraints of this medium, to suggest some areas for future research, and to model how discursive analysis of digital consultations methods can be used by other centers to craft stronger tutor-training programs that align with centers’ unique philosophies and pedagogies. To this end, we ask three research questions: 1. What elements of traditional face-to-face tutor talk and digitally-mediated language—David Crystal’s “netspeak” (19)—appear in these synchronous chat consultation transcripts?

2. What potential benefits and drawbacks arise from using these elements of tutor talk and netspeak in synchronous chat consultations?

3. How can we design a tutor-training program to prepare tutors to navigate synchronous chat consultations?

In answering these research questions, our analysis of this limited data set aims to provide other writing center administrators and scholars a heuristic for developing tutor training for synchronous chat consultations and conducting more robust future research on a larger sample of synchronous chat consultation transcripts. While our analysis cannot

substantiate broad generalizations, we strive to model the type of analysis that others can utilize in their own centers to evaluate their tutors’ chat consultation practices and to improve student writers’ experiences with this type of tutoring.

In the next section, we review some established strategies for tutoring in online spaces, and we explain and define the key features of tutor talk (Auten 2; Davis et al. 32) and netspeak (Crystal 19), which we use to help us to answer our research questions. We use these characteristics of tutor talk and netspeak to understand how the tutors in our study interweave conventions of tutor talk and netspeak to build rapport with students and to support their writing processes.

Further, we identify some aspects of these tutors’ feedback that might undermine our writing center’s goal of engaging students in productive, academic conversations about their writing. We argue that, although this technological space broadens where writing tutors can meet students, some tendencies of digital communication may impede tutors’ modeling of Edited Academic Discourse—one goal our center holds for tutors interacting with writers.

The Growth of Online Conferencing Technologies and Online Tutoring Strategies Research from the past two decades reveals an increase in online writing labs (OWLs) and online writing instruction (OWI); this increase suggests the need to study the practical implications of online consultations—especially those that incorporate synchronous chat and related technologies. In 1997, Mark Shadle’s survey of OWLs showed that very few writing centers utilized basic email or text-based consultations, even though digital and internet-based technologies had grown in popularity among college students. More recently, Stephen Neaderhiser and Joanna Wolfe updated Shadle’s survey, asking similar questions of writing centers about their online spaces and tutorial offerings. They found that, of 266 schools with an online presence, 115 “reported offering online consultations,” but “fewer than 6% reported even experimenting with technology that was not available when Shadle did his first survey of OWLs in 1997” (Neaderhiser and Wolfe 61). In other words, very few centers from Neaderhiser and Wolfe’s 2009 study reported using newer online-consultation tools, such as synchronous instant-messaging or screen-sharing technologies, which allow tutors and writers to share and view documents digitally in real-time.

Some research on digital consultation technologies examines writing centers that have embraced the OWL

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 50 as more than a compendium of handouts and links.

Challenging those who assume that face-to-face consultations maximize the conversational nature of writing tutorials, scholars such as Melanie Yergeau et al. note that using text to discuss texts can demonstrate writing in situ to students; in the process, technologically mediated consultations can offer new and interesting ways to interact and converse about writing (Yergeau et al. np.) and demonstrate for both tutors and writers “how the text evolves” (Grustch McKinney 11). In this vein, scholars such as Jackie Grutsch McKinney and Beth Hewett have examined what Yergeau et al. refer to as audio-video-textual conferences (AVT): “a semiotically rich medium that sustains critical ‘social cues’ and enhances interaction and exchange” (np). Scholarship suggests that AVT (and other online tutoring technologies) should be used to reflect and embody an individual center’s pedagogical ideology, including whether to offer synchronous or asynchronous consultations (Grutsch McKinney 12; Summers 13; Hewett 21).

In the context of some writing centers, then, asynchronous online tutoring can be used for effective consultations. For years, Kathryn Denton notes, writing center scholarship and the broader professional conversation has rehashed the same arguments for and against the use of asynchronous consultations (177).

Although Denton argues that these arguments remain stale and based on lore rather than empirical research, she asserts that asynchronous consultations can, in fact, be innovative and useful, especially for students receiving course content via online instruction (Denton 178, CCCC Principles 13 and 15; Hewett 48). Despite the potential benefits of asynchronous tutoring and interaction in the writing center, other scholars suggest that student writers and tutors alike may prefer face-toface interactions in the writing center (Awad Scrocco 12; Carlson and Apperson-Williams 134; Thurber, 156). These preferences for face-to-face exchanges suggest synchronous options that mimic face-to-face consultations can have real staying power among tutors and writers alike.

To provide an online consultation option that more closely mirrors face-to-face interaction, our center’s director chose to add an online, synchronous chat consultation option, reinforcing the center’s espoused ideology of meeting students’ needs in their preferred spaces and lives. Our center’s philosophy aligns with “foundational writing center literature [which] tells us that tutoring is best in a one-on-one setting, with an engaged student participating in lively dialogue with an interested tutor who knows how to ask the right questions to spark student insights” (Denton 199). In other words, synchronous chat

enables a dynamic dialogue that asynchronous consultations simply cannot. However, we know, too, that synchronous and asynchronous online tutoring is part of a tutoring continuum: effective consultations slide across this continuum by being “more flexible and responsive to the moment and to student needs” (Denton 199). Our director’s choice to employ document-sharing technologies alongside synchronous chatting attempts to help tutors effectively navigate this tutoring continuum by allowing them to examine the student’s written product while interacting in real time.

As the use of OWLs continues to grow, our director strives to make our digital consultations more similar to in-person, Burkean parlor-esque conversations about writing; in the process, we promote the philosophy that tutor-writer conversations should support writers’ autonomy as critical thinkers and should engage them, rather than employing overly directive tutoring methods that encourage passivity (Neaderhiser and Wolfe 50). Our study contributes to a better understanding of how synchronous digital consultations can productively engage students in conversations about their writing by incorporating beneficial face-to-face conversational conventions and netspeak practices that make many students feel comfortable (Crystal 19; 255). Thus, we add to the growing body of scholarship that compares online interaction to face-to-face consultations (Wolfe and Griffin 62). In this article, we attempt to demonstrate one approach for analyzing and improving our tutors’ synchronous chat practices—a method that other directors, tutors, and writers (Conrad-Salvo and Spartz 41-42) who emphasize collaboration (Nordmark 70) might model. Ultimately, we remember that “it’s not the technology that drives our actions, but our commitments” (Godbee).

The Writing Center Context Although some writing center OWLs predominantly use asynchronous methods of consulting, we examine synchronous consultations piloted in our center because this type of session mimics face-to-face consultations more closely than asynchronous consultations. We do recognize, though, that tutors and writers face both more potential benefits and more risk in attempting to reproduce faceto-face strategies in synchronous chat consultations.

Specifically, we acknowledge that some elements of face-to-face tutoring may not be possible or appropriate in chat consultations, and aiming for a wholesale reproduction of face-to-face tutoring strategies may be misguided; however, because of the similar social dynamics between synchronous face-toface and synchronous chat consultations, we attempt

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 51 to understand what face-to-face patterns emerge in chat consultations and whether and how well those patterns serve students’ needs.

At our center, we implemented synchronous chat consultations paired with document sharing; in these consultations, tutors and writers use screen-sharing so both can see the document and view the other person making changes to the text. All elements were used via our institution’s Google platform. Tutors who agreed to participate in this pilot program were not given any supplemental training on how to tutor in digital environments. Instead, they were only given training in how to use the platform and were encouraged to implement the best practices learned during their prior tutor training.

In our study, examining the language tutors and writers use in live chats with document sharing allows us to explore the conversational patterns employed, the similarities and differences between online chat and inperson consultations, and the pedagogical implications of patterns observed in synchronous online consultations. We argue that synchronous chat consultations have the potential to reach students in a space where they feel comfortable and receptive to engaging in critical conversations about their writing; nonetheless, the unchartered territory and informal nature of digital writing center consultations may create an environment in which tutors inadvertently dominate the consultation with the types of directive tutoring that can disempower students and strip their ideas from a paper. Further, tutors may default to informal, non-academic English, which may undermine tutors’ credibility and miss opportunities to model Edited Academic Discourse for writers.

Integrating Traditional Tutor Talk and Netspeak in Online Consultations Tutor Talk In addition to integrating potentially valuable rapport-building netspeak features in online chat consultations, we contend that these consultations also ought to include the well-established features of traditional tutor talk. Similar to Joanna Wolfe and Jo Ann Griffin’s work on audio-based online writing instruction (OWI) consultations, we compare the trends in a set of synchronous chat consultation transcripts to tutorial patterns in face-to-face consultations (65-66). Like Wolfe and Griffin, who specifically discuss “assessing [transcripts for] qualitative differences such as consultant control of the sessions or overall pedagogical quality of the sessions” (66), we examine qualitative features of synchronous consultations by using theories of tutor talk to analyze

these consultations; we focus on the elements of tutor talk that align with ideas of control and session quality.

In his discussion of tutor talk, Tom Truesdell argues that ideally, tutors should discuss writing with writers in “open-ended, exploratory ways and not in directive, imperative, restrictive modes” (Ashton-Jones 32 qtd. in Truesdell 7). Rather than instructing writers during a writing consultation, for instance, Truesdell encourages more reciprocal tutoring strategies (7). Truesdell and others (e.g., Neaderhiser and Wolfe) characterize the ideal form of tutor talk as involving reflective, guided questions and reader-response statements (7). In short, tutor talk—whether online or in person—ought to consist of reflective, open-ended, strategic questioning and responding in non-dominant and personal ways that intentionally employ both non-directive and directive feedback strategies appropriately.

Tutor-Talk Features.

Research on the structure of face-to-face writing consultations suggests that tutor talk includes an opening, connecting, and closing (Auten 2, 4) as well as the pedagogical sequences of structuring, soliciting, responding, and reacting (Fanselow 21; Davis et al. 29). In the opening segment of a consultation, tutors introduce themselves, familiarize writers with the basics of the consultation, and talk generally about the paper; with connecting, tutors and writers establish rapport and develop an agenda for the consultation (Auten 2). Structuring occurs when one speaker—usually the tutor—offers scaffolding through lessons or explanations, and soliciting occurs when tutors or writers pose questions or statements that intentionally seek a response from the interlocutor (Fanselow 21; Davis et al. 29). During responding, one speaker’s statement serves as a follow-up to a solicitation; a speaker draws on something the interlocutor has previously said, and reacting acknowledges the response through agreement, feedback, or evaluation (Fanselow 21; Davis et al. 29).

Finally, during closing, writers and tutors end the consultation with recaps of the lessons, goodbyes, and ideally, invitations for writers to come back to the writing center (Auten 4). In our study, we aim to determine how these elements of tutor talk manifest in synchronous chat consultations. We also examine whether tutors might benefit from explicit training and professional development that encourages them to accomplish particular goals in specific stages of the consultation.

Directive Versus Non-Directive Tutoring.

Although our writing center director espouses non-directive methods as generally preferable to more directive approaches, we recognize that intentional

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 52 directive methods can also lead to effective writing tutoring; specifically, when tutors receive training in the directive/non-directive tutoring continuum and learn when directive tutoring can be most useful, they can consciously and effectively employ more directive methods. We contrast this purposeful directive tutoring strategy with the more unintentional directive tutoring that tutors sometimes use as a default method; unintentional directive tutoring often involves tutors taking control over the consultation and usurping writers’ ownership over the written product rather than empowering writers with knowledge they previously might not have had but can now use to craft a stronger written product.

Indeed, we recognize the historical debate in writing center studies about which consulting methods most effectively engage, instruct, and empower student writers (see Brooks; Gillam, et al.; Shamoon and Burns; Grimm; Geller et al.; Corbett). Specifically, as Steven Corbett writes, “Writing center and peer tutoring people are proud of our history of caring and focusing on the individual learner” (94). Our center is no exception; still, we must ask Corbett’s question, “Have we alienated some outside our centered family circles” (94) when we focus solely on non-directive tutoring strategies? Indeed, many student writers perceive nondirective feedback to be ineffective and circuitous; students note that strictly non-directive methods often seem to lack a clear plan for the consultation and ultimately fail to help them develop a more effective writing process or written product (Hedengren and Lockerd 138).

More broadly, non-directive tutoring remains a murky construct. While non-directive tutoring remains the standard practice among many scholars and writing center directors as the “pedagogy du jour” (Carino 98), actual consultations can be difficult to label as directive or non-directive. Tutors and writers may characterize their contributions and approach to a session differently. Moreover, as Irene Clark demonstrates, tutors and student-writers often hold different assumptions about the benefits of non-directive tutoring; those assumptions often rest on students’ perceptions of their own writing abilities (37) as well as what counts as directive or non-directive (44). She notes, “Poor writers tended to attribute a more significant role to the consultant” (45), showing that they interpret consultations as directive even when tutors interpret the consultation as non-directive.

Moreover, directive methods run a gamut of options: a consultation could be interpreted as directive if the tutor specifically commits to a given objective, line edits the student paper, or gives the writer suggestions for entire paragraphs or the text’s

organization. Each of these separate instances can be characterized as a directive method that can influence the consultation. Many writing center scholars and directors balk at particular forms of directive feedback, especially line editing (Giaimo 61-62). However, Peter Carino notes that “a nonhierarchical environment does not depend on blind commitment to nondirective tutoring methods,” (109) even though writing center lore tends to discuss directive and hierarchical tutoring as one in the same. Carino contends that directive methods can be useful when tutors understand who has power in a consultation and when to use that power appropriately (109).

With scholarship on the directive/non-directive continuum in mind, we use the context of our chat transcripts to assess tutors’ use of both non-directive and directive feedback; we attempt to highlight instances of productive, non-directive feedback and to differentiate between unintentional and intentional directive tutoring. Specifically, non-directive tutoring, at its best, draws primarily on peer collaboration: “Both student and tutor share authority and engage in collaborative operations to improve the text” (Carino 104): the tutor supplies a question and rhetorical knowledge, which the student writer uses to improve the paper. Also, the student simultaneously learns something about her writing knowledge and improves the paper by implementing this knowledge. On the other hand, intentional directive feedback can supply needed direction and instruction, whereas unintentional directive feedback can serve to shut down communication between tutors and writers.

With collaboration at the center of our tutortraining program, our writing center director emphasizes non-directive tutoring as one preferred way to advocate for a nuanced approach to power dynamics within a writing consultation. Along these lines, in a critique of directive tutoring, Anne DiPardo notes that one tutor in her study overpowers the writer with directive strategies; she argues that non-directive tutoring might be more productive for certain writers, such as those who identify as part of a linguistic minority or those working on high-stakes academic writing assignments (140-141). In our center, our director strives to balance the benefits of non-directive tutoring with the understanding that in certain contexts, directive tutoring better supports some writers; nonetheless, our director does emphasize nondirective strategies during tutor training. As such, the tutors in our center and in this study receive training in foundational non-directive pedagogies, such as asking guiding questions and engaging in “active listening” (DiPardo 126). Tutors are encouraged to enact this pedagogy while making room for lived situations that

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 53 require or may be better served by directive tutoring.

As Corbett reminds us, In the “real world” of intellectual peer critique, we realize that sometimes it’s all right to give a pointed suggestion, to offer an idea for a subtopic, to give explicit direction on how to cite sources, to offer examples of alternate wording and sentence constructions—in short—to practice along a continuum of instructional choices both collaborative and empowering, allowing for alternate moments of interpersonal and intertextual collegiality and agency-building. (95) While non-directive methods dominate the training in our center, we acknowledge that tutors should use intentional directive pedagogies in context, and in our analysis, we attempt to distinguish between unintentional, controlling directive feedback and thoughtfully employed directive feedback. We use the phrases “intentional directive tutoring” and “unintentional directive tutoring” to differentiate between situations where a tutor is meeting a writer’s needs via an intentionally directive moment (such as explaining the specifics of a citation or grammatical error) as opposed to the tutor shifting the tone, content, or intent of a paper—for example, by giving a writer a thesis to use. The synchronous tutoring transcripts we analyze in this study demonstrate this continuum of directive tutoring and in situ decisionmaking.

Language Modeling in Writing Consultations.

Tutors’ decision-making can carry over into their language modeling practices as well. One of our center’s goals for online synchronous consultations is for tutors to use their chat dialogue to model Edited Academic Discourse. Various studies indicate that using text-based mediums for writing center consultations enable student writers to witness academic discourse in action (Denton 178; Carlson and Apperson-Williams 135). Moreover, text-based consultations demonstrate how written language— including tutors’ written advice—can be misunderstood (Hewett 116), further reinforcing the need for precision in students’ own writing.

Linguistics and discourse studies also demonstrate the usefulness of communication modeling. For example, James Pennebaker argues that verbal mimicking serves as a form of modeling: people engaged in conversation tend to adopt the same words as their interlocutors. More importantly, “People also converge in the ways they talk—they tend to adopt the same levels of formality, emotionality, and cognitive complexity” (ch. 8). This convergence, called Language

Style Matching (LSM), can occur during any form of social interaction, including text and video. Thus, after just 15 to 30 seconds, tutors can set the tone of Edited Academic Discourse for writers in a synchronous consultation (ch. 8). The opening of the session, then, may determine tutors’ abilities to effectively model Edited Academic Discourse throughout the duration of the chat session.

Netspeak Uniquely, online writing consultations create spaces where the environment shifts from an oral context of a face-to-face consultation to a textual environment in which writers and tutors write about the student’s writing. As Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch and Sam Racine claim, “A virtual tutoring environment is rich with text, and it often includes tutor feedback in a text-only format. As one might imagine, virtual spaces have been critiqued as being ‘less inviting’ than face-toface environments” (247). However, the social conventions of netspeak make the synchronous chat option potentially more popular among and accessible to students than asynchronous email consultations because students are increasingly comfortable with informal online writing via texting, instant/direct/private messaging, social media, and other online contexts.

According to Crystal, the netspeak characteristics that contribute to online social interaction include synchronous timing, turn taking, and a highly colloquial grammar with non-standard usage (171).

Crystal explains that netspeak also incorporates emoticons, abbreviations, uncorrected typing errors, and a heightened use of question marks, exclamation points, and ellipses. Netspeak is characterized by fewer full stops (ending punctuation), sentence-initial capitalization, and capitalized proper nouns (255).

These features, according to Crystal, establish “an increased level of intimacy linking IM [instant messaging] participants [which] promotes a greater level of informality and typographical idiosyncrasy” (255). If tutors employ these conventions of netspeak, they may be able to reach common linguistic ground with student writers; however, because netspeak violates conventions of Edited Academic Discourse, tutors may not strategically code-switch between netspeak and Edited Academic Discourse well enough to maximize their modeling of the type of language expected in college classrooms.

The Current Study: Methodology While the aforementioned features of tutor talk have been accepted as best practice in writing center

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 54 scholarship, few scholars have examined the extent to which tutors employ these features of tutor talk when conversing with writers in synchronous online writing consultations. We argue that even though synchronous online tutoring differs from traditional face-to-face tutoring, the conversational and pedagogical objectives remain constant: tutors should engage writers in discussions about their writing, respect writers’ agendas, and equip writers with knowledge and resources to improve their own writing. As noted, to examine how well tutors accomplish these writingcenter goals in synchronous chat consultations, we analyzed four transcripts from our center’s saved online synchronous chat consultation logs to answer our research questions: What elements of traditional face-to-face tutor talk and digitally-mediated language—“netspeak” (Crystal 19)—appear in these synchronous chat consultation transcripts? What potential benefits and drawbacks arise from using these elements of tutor talk and netspeak in synchronous chat consultations? How can we design a tutor-training program to prepare tutors to navigate synchronous chat consultations?

At the time of this study, our center at a large public, doctoral-granting institution in the Midwest had only recently begun offering online synchronous chat consultations. Our director perceived synchronous chat consultations as more interactive than the asynchronous email consultations offered at the center for several years. With the university’s then-recent migration to the Google platform, our director viewed chat consultations as a logical alternative to offer students; thus, she chose to pilot these consultations among her robust staff of undergraduate tutors from a range of disciplines.

Tutors received no additional training for synchronous chat consultations during the semester in which the chat consultation option was piloted, though they had previously received some training for asynchronous tutoring. The training for asynchronous tutoring involved reading scholarship and tutortraining materials about online writing conferencing.

The tutors worked with one of the two graduate assistants at the center to read and analyze sample tutor feedback and generate their own hypothetical responses to student texts submitted for email tutoring.

Only four chat consultations were hosted in the term during which our study occurred. We received IRB approval to study the chat transcripts, and we collected signed informed consent forms from both tutors and writers to analyze their chat consultations.

Unfortunately, demographic information for tutors and writers were not collected during the pilot run of the online consultations, and we did not request IRB

approval to collect such data, either.2 Therefore, we cannot draw connections between tutor and writer demographics and the patterns that emerged in the consultations. All four consultations were used for this exploratory study. Students were not recruited to use the online chat consultation. Those students who saw this consultation option advertised on the website and signed up to use it also consented to have their transcripts used for this study.

Using a deductive analytical approach, we coded the transcripts using the tutor-talk features we know exist in face-to-face consultations as well as those netspeak features we know exist in digital conversations. By reviewing the transcripts for these pre-determined elements, we aim to compare these online synchronous consultations to traditional face-toface consultations. We attempt to assess the appropriateness of traditional tutor-talk and netspeak features in a limited set of online consultations to develop a heuristic others can use to analyze their own tutors’ chat transcripts or a larger data set for future research.

Each transcript was reviewed for thirteen coding categories (defined in table 1 and 2): three essential features of a consultation arc (Auten 2), four essential features of teaching/tutoring (Fanselow 21; Davis et al.

29), and six elements of netspeak (Crystal 255). We coded for both tutor-talk and netspeak elements, including the following: opening, connecting, closing, structuring, soliciting, responding, and reacting; emoticons, abbreviations, mistyping, sentence-initial capitalization, lowercase proper nouns, and full-stop punctuation. Each author read through the transcripts and coded them separately. Then, we compared our coding, negotiated coding discrepancies, refined our coding scheme and definitions, and reviewed the documents again to ensure consistency in our coding.

We acknowledge that follow-up interviews might have added another level of nuance to our analysis.

Such interviews could help us understand why students choose online chat consultations and could elucidate the relationship between the patterns observed in online chat consultations and face-to-face consultations. We could envision asking students the following questions: How do experiences with face-toface consultations compare to experiences with synchronous chat consultations? Which type of consultation is preferred and why? Which consultation type best helps to shape the writing process or product more effectively, and in what ways? Because this exploratory study was retrospective, the student tutors and writers did not consent to follow-up interviews.

Future researchers might conduct such interviews with

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 55 students who consultations.

participate

in

synchronous

chat

Results and Discussion In our analysis of synchronous chat consultations, we found that several patterns of tutor talk that occur in face-to-face consultations also occur in synchronous chat consultations. We speculate that the similarities between the two types of consultations stem from the dynamic, real-time nature of synchronous chat, the parallels between oral and online instant-message dialogue, and the comfort many students feel with online communication. The transcripts show synchronous consultations have the potential to quickly, effectively build rapport, yet that rapport can be put at risk when tutors dominate the consultation through too much structuring. Based on tutor-talk conventions and best practices in writing center pedagogy, we argue that writing tutors ought to spend more time in these conversations soliciting and reacting to writers’ agendas and responses rather than structuring the conversation with their own agendas, lessons, or instructions. We also argue that some patterns in tutors’ use of netspeak during chat consultations have the unique potential to establish rapport with writers and increase their comfort with the medium. We encourage writing center administrators to train tutors about the appropriate use of netspeak in online consultations.

In this section, we describe the trends in tutor talk and netspeak we identified in these transcripts. We also illustrate these trends with representative exemplars and suggest some implications for tutor training and development. We draw our examples from four synchronous chat consultation transcripts: 1. Transcript 1 is a consultation about an early draft of the student’s paper; the writer does not articulate specific concerns about the paper at the beginning of the consultation, and ultimately, the tutor and writer discuss introducing quoted material, writing the thesis statement, and some wording issues.

2. Transcript 2 is a consultation about a literature review paper; the writer identifies the requirements for the paper at the beginning of the consultation, and they proceed to discuss the purpose of a literature review, the writer’s thesis statement, the alignment of the thesis with the content in a specific section, and some features of APA style.

3. Transcript 3 is a consultation about a literature review paper; the writer identifies her thesis statement as her main concern at the

beginning of the consultation, and they focus thereafter on the thesis statement, the content and purpose of the introduction section, the purpose of a literature review, and some sentence-level issues.

4. Transcript 4 is a consultation in which the writer identifies brainstorming a paper topic as her main concern; they talk about the requirements for the paper followed by the writer’s topic idea and supporting examples.

Tutor Talk Overview of Tutor Talk Findings Our analysis of tutor talk in these four chat consultations suggests that soliciting remarks often lead to writer-centered learning and that tutors seem to use structuring comments as a fallback to ensure that the consultation moves forward. In this section, we argue that the transcripts show clear potential for reproducing the most effective features of face-to-face tutor talk in a synchronous chat context, especially when the document is viewable by both writer and tutor. When consultations utilize document-sharing software, tutors and writers can reproduce the dynamic, engaging nature of face-to-face consultations; on the other hand, synchronous chat consultations that lack document sharing require more time to describe and explain the written text and its components. For example, in one interaction within our corpus, the tutor says, “I am having trouble identifying your thesis, could you highlight it for me please?” Using document sharing, the writer highlights the thesis on their shared screen, mimicking how a writer might point to the sentence in a face-to-face session. Without document sharing, the writer would instead need to explain, “My thesis is the third sentence in the first paragraph, beginning on line 5 with the word ‘therefore.’”

In these transcripts, document sharing allows tutors’ solicitations of writers’ responses to push writers to take ownership over their revising processes and engage in active conversations about their writing.

When tutors rely on structuring, writers seem to respond more passively in the consultation but remain receptive to tutors’ ideas and suggestions. Our claim that more controlling directive structuring responses appear less effective than solicitations takes into consideration scholarship that evaluates the amount and nature of teacher or tutor talk during writing consultations.

While Carolyn Walker’s research suggests that less teacher or tutor talk does not guarantee that writers perceive writing consultations as more effective (72), Jessica Williams’s research suggests that writers who participate more actively in tutoring consultations are more likely to implement tutor feedback during their

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 56 subsequent revision processes (173). Thus, we conclude that, in the context of our analysis, tutors who take more turns throughout the consultation engage in less back-and-forth discussion with writers.

In these cases, writers receive more advice, suggestions, and direction, which may help writers who lack a clear plan but may also disempower writers from making their own decisions and revisions. Because tutors build less rapport when they dominate with too many directives, writers may ultimately demonstrate less confidence in taking ownership over their writing and implementing needed revisions.

In contrast, when tutors use soliciting to build rapport, writers seem more likely to take ownership over their writing process and product. For example, table 3 shows that overall, tutors include a greater proportion of what appears to be unintentional directive structuring comments than solicitations. In contrast to the overall trend, though, the tutor from transcript 4 uses a greater proportion of soliciting (19 statements) than structuring statements (5), and, as a result, the writer generates a greater proportion of responses (24) than the writers in the other three consultations. Given Williams’s findings that writers who participate more actively in writing center consultations are more likely to accept and implement tutors’ suggestions (173), we assessed consultations with more active writer talk as more likely to be successful, productive consultations.

Representative Exemplars Early in the conversation, the tutor in the following excerpt asks the writer to explain the assignment before using solicitation to encourage a more specific, detailed response: Tutor: alright, [sic] what can you tell me about your assignment?

Writer: its very broad it just has to be something about discrimination or stereotypes like in the media Tutor: ok, do you have anything in particular in mind? something that interests you or something you'd like to look into? (Transcript 4: Passage 1) Here, the writer initially provides a relatively vague description of the instructor’s expectations, and in response, the tutor solicits the writer to suggest some potential topics for the project. The tutor’s solicitation seeks the student’s own agenda and goals, which Walker’s research suggests increases the likelihood that the student will express satisfaction with the consultation (80). By probing the writer, the tutor prompts her to participate actively in a meaningful

conversation about the assignment; she uses specific, leading questions rather than controlling, directive statements or feedback focused on her own concerns.

Furthermore, the tutor’s use of the pronoun “you” in her questions emphasizes the writer’s autonomy and ownership over her writing, a key tenet of traditional face-to-face tutoring that establishes a positive respectbased rapport.

Later, when the writer in this consultation offers a possible area of focus for the paper, the tutor positively evaluates the idea and poses some guided questions to encourage the writer to become even more specific and engaged in the conversation about her writing: Writer: maybe to focus more on like stereotypes aginst [sic] women?

Tutor: thanks [sic] a great start :) Do you mean stereotypes in media? or something else?

Writer: yeah, but im [sic] not sure what kind of media I should use (Transcript 4: Passage 2) Rather than supplying the writer with her own ideas, the tutor redirects the writer’s imprecise responses with strategic questioning that pushes the conversation forward while simultaneously building a positive rapport. In so doing, the tutor also seems to afford the writer ownership over her writing process and work.

This type of soliciting promotes a response from the writer, which demonstrates the problems the writer faces as she works to revise the paper. The writer’s response also functions as a form of structuring. Although she deems the tutor’s ideas as helpful—noting “yeah” and mentioning the “media” she plans to use in the paper—her implicit query, “I’m not sure,” structures the next segment of the consultation. When the writer admits her uncertainty about what to do next in her writing process, she conveys a sense of her concerns and provides a clear path forward for the conversation.

Clearly, the writer trusts the tutor’s input, seeking out her advice throughout the consultation and engaging in a give-and-take of solicit-and-structure to build a trusting rapport between them.

Subsequently, the tutor in this transcript uses solicitation to engage the writer in a critical discussion about the content of her written work: Tutor: well what are some examples you can think of with stereotyping women in media? are there any advertisements/shows/news stories that come to mind?

Writer: i know a lot of television today can stereotype women into categories such as the perfect house wife when in real life its not exactly like tah [sic]

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 57 that* Tutor: exactly! so how women are portrayed in television might be a good place to start can you think of any tv shows specifically that create the "perfect housewife" image?

Writer: well the show real housewifes [sic] even though they say they are "real house wifes" [sic] they don’t exactly act like it Tutor: good example. can you think of other stereotypes from tv [sic]? other than the housewife?

Writer: well shows on mtv [sic] like jersey shore make out all the girls t [sic] be partiers when not everyone is (Transcript 4: Passage 3) Here, the tutor asks more open-ended, reflective questions, soliciting the writer to brainstorm about how to expand the content and supporting details in one section of her paper. The writer responds with specific examples, taking ownership over her argument rather than allowing the tutor to supply the examples. Their rapport becomes even clearer when the writer volunteers several examples. The tutor’s hands-off approach serves to push the writer to do the thinking and undertake the task of developing evidence to support her thesis, continuing to develop the writer’s confidence. The tutor’s reactions to the writer’s responses seem to positively reinforce her efforts.

Moreover, the tutor’s follow-up questions encourage the writer to continue generating ideas.

Unlike this tutor’s ostensible attempt to solicit the writer’s participation throughout the consultation, the other consultations in our data set involve a greater proportion of tutors’ overly directive structuring comments. These tutors offer more explanations of and instructions about what writers should implement in their writing. In these consultations, the writers’ overall passivity in the conversations suggests that, when overused, structuring can disengage writers in synchronous chat consultations. The writers respond in smaller proportions and demonstrate less general engagement and attentiveness than the writer in transcript 4.

For example, the tutor in transcript 3 uses structuring to explain her understanding of the goals of a conclusion and implications section in a research paper; her extended explanation seems to disengage the writer, potentially damaging their rapport: Tutor: then, in your conclusion you can give the ideas you came up with from analyzing all of the research, and then in your implications, you give your recommendation for how your conclusions should be applied

so going off of that idea of the purpose of each section would be my recommendation Writer: ok yes. Thanks, I know you highlighted the one sentence. Are there any things that seem obviousely [sic] wrong to you. (Transcript 3: Passage 1) The tutor in this excerpt dominates the discussion in this passage, explaining in detail how she understands the rhetorical purpose of these sections of the research paper rather than asking the writer to provide her own understanding of these sections. To engage the writer more actively in the exchange, the tutor might have asked the writer to respond to her descriptions of the rhetorical purpose of these sections. The tutor might have also incorporated more solicitation to encourage the writer to demonstrate comprehension of those suggestions or actively discuss how to apply her recommendations. More solicitation in consultations like this one would take into consideration conclusions by Williams: student writers who respond passively in tutoring consultations are less likely to implement the tutor’s recommendations (189). The writer’s passivity in this exchange suggests that she does not understand or accept the tutor’s explanations of the rhetorical purpose of the conclusion and implications sections of the paper. In short, the writer’s passivity in this case implies a lack of rapport between the tutor and writer.

As a result, the writer may be less likely to consider or use the tutor’s explanations during revision.

On the other hand, while the tutor’s structuring may not provide the writer with explicit advice or ideas about how to revise, the writer’s affirmative response suggests her satisfaction with the specific information the tutor offers and the consultation more broadly.

While the writer exhibits some passivity, the tutor appears to have built some degree of a positive rapport by the end of the consultation. Her positive response to the consultation may bolster her confidence in her writing and her desire to continue her revisions. As Kastman Breuch and Racine note about asynchronous consultations, “The benefit of using this online environment for clients is that they can receive careful, well-considered responses to their own work that models the type of clear, communicative writing for which they strive” (248). Likewise, the tutor in this example models well-reasoned logic and methods for reading and understanding course prompts. Overall, the tutor here seems to be acting in good faith, attempting to help a student who is struggling with an assignment. Her structuring approach could be a drawback of defaulting to a directive method and engaging the writer less actively; alternatively, this situation could also be one that calls for more intentional directive tutoring (see Carino and Corbett), supported

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 58 by solicitations to ascertain the writer’s level of understanding and motivation to revise. While their rapport appears weak throughout most of the consultation, by the end, the tutor and the writer appear to have developed a stronger relationship: the writer may have needed more intentional directive tutoring in this this case to provide her with some more concrete guidance.

The tutors in this study, though, also clearly needed intentional directive tutoring—that is, the tutors need specific, intentional directive training and guidance to help them determine when and how to implement intentional directive tutoring strategies. This is one area of our center’s tutor training that can be improved. In transcript 1, for example, a seemingly negative pattern of unintentional directive tutoring emerges. We observed this phenomenon in transcript 1 in passages 3 and 4. In the fourth passage, a directive tutor takes control of the consultation, and a passive writer halfheartedly engages in the consultation: Tutor: Okay that is a good argument, make sure you include this thesis in your introduction.

However I would consider stating a large portion of the student body, instead of 80 %, this way you would not have to use a direct quotation in the thesis Writer: great, I will thanks. (Transcript 1: Passage 4) In this excerpt, the tutor evaluates the writer’s argument and instructs the writer to incorporate the tutor-identified thesis in the introduction.

Problematically, the tutor appears to assume that the writer understands the concept of a thesis and the rationale for including one in the opening of an essay; however, the tutor does not use solicitation to engage the writer in a discussion of the concept of a thesis.

Perhaps because they do not jointly define the criteria for an effective thesis—a conversational move Walker suggests is necessary for an effective consultation (71)—the writer passively accepts the tutor’s advice and promises to implement it. Additionally, the writer shows no engagement with the tutor’s recommendations and no real evidence that she comprehends how to implement the advice. Although the tutor and writer both use positive language, no sense of rapport emerges; instead, the tutor provides what appears to be unintentional directive instruction and the writer offers passive acceptance. While intentional directive tutoring may have been useful to this writer, such strategies were not implemented by the tutor. Thus, this tutor could potentially learn more about her directive tutoring techniques by reviewing this transcript and her seemingly unintentional, overly directive strategies.

Solicitation moves that do not promote a positive rapport can further damage the development of a writer’s process by disempowering writers. When tutors rely on structuring via unintentional directive methods of tutoring instead of solicitation comments, writers may resist taking ownership over their revisions by assuming their work is already acceptable or by depending on the tutor to supply the “solutions” to their writing problems. For example, in the following excerpt from transcript 2, the tutor dominates the conversation, which seems to deter the writer from participating in a discussion about her writing: Tutor: as far as whether your paper looks like a literature review, my understanding is that it is still similar to a traditional argumentative paper, you just have more focus on other research so if you're addressing what others have done in relation to your research question/argument and analyzing what they did and how it helps your work, then I think you're doing the assignment correctly Writer: ok that makes me feel better because that is what I did. (Transcript 2: Passage 1) Here, the tutor describes the purpose and successful implementation of a literature review. When she implies that the writer has accomplished a task, the writer expresses relief that she has been effective rather than demonstrating more in-depth understanding of what she has done well. Moreover, the writer does not reveal comprehension of how to accomplish the goals the tutor suggests or how to recognize whether she has been successful in future written work. While intentional directive tutoring here might enable the tutor to explain key concepts to the writer, failing to follow up with solicitation and rapport building in scenarios like this one can discourage a writer’s process and growth.

Netspeak Overview of Netspeak Findings In addition to revealing tutor-talk features, our analysis demonstrates evidence of particular features of netspeak. These digitally specific communication patterns allow tutors and writers to establish common linguistic ground in a digital environment where many students feel quite comfortable, allowing for ample opportunities for rapport building between tutors and writers. Undoubtedly, individual differences between writers and tutors may influence how effectively netspeak can facilitate rapport building. For example, when writers and tutors have a notable age gap, the older interlocutor may not use netspeak at all or may use outdated forms of netspeak (e.g., older acronyms;

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 59 emoticons rather than emojis). Similarly, in face-to-face consultations, demographics such as background, age, academic level, and socioeconomic status all play a role in establishing common linguistic ground. Some demographic factors—such as tutors and writers being in the same generations or from similar socioeconomic backgrounds—may still contribute to online linguistic common ground, but the common ground they create may be less obvious or may even create additional linguistic barriers. Hypothetically, netspeak can be used to create common linguistic ground between a tutor and writer from the same generation who use the same social media platforms and language markers.

However, netspeak can also create barriers if a writer perceives a tutor’s use of netspeak to undermine the tutor’s academic ethos. Table 4 shows the frequency with which specific netspeak features occur in the four consultation transcripts we examined. Overall, the tutors and writers in our study employ netspeak in their conversations in ways that enable a comfortable, accessible writing consultation.

Representative Exemplars One example of how tutors can utilize netspeak to create common ground appears when tutors fail to correct typing errors or capitalize proper nouns and sentence-beginning words (see table 4). These typing conventions may represent tutors’ attempts to connect with writers via shared digital literacies. For example, this exchange occurs in transcript 4: Tutor: so what are you working on today?

Writer: i just need some help developing a topic for my paper Tutor: alright, what can you tell me about your assignment?

Writer: its [sic] very broad (Transcript 4: Passage 4) The writer’s choice to end turns by pressing “enter” rather than by using sentence-ending punctuation (Crystal 255) reveals her comfort chatting with the tutor in this digital space; the writer does not seem concerned with writing “properly,” perhaps signaling her comfort with the tutor and the online writing consultation context. Although their strategies for ending sentences differ, the tutor and writer seem to understand each other’s techniques because of their shared digital literacies; in short, they jointly create a space in which they both feel at ease. On the other hand, if the tutor had used appropriately capitalized sentence-beginning words, she may have promoted the writer refining her academic writing practices. Tutors’ switching between netspeak and Edited Academic Discourse could be a means of maintaining rapport while modeling accepted academic literacies. To offer the most effective modeling, though, tutors might

switch between netspeak and Edited English more consciously and consistently. For example, this tutor could model sentence-beginning capitalization more regularly; she could also model sentence-ending breaks more consistently by using either a hard return or punctuation every time, rather than occasionally using periods and occasionally using a hard return.

While using other characteristics of netspeak can be potentially rapport building, such informality may fail to model formal academic writing, which Kastman Breuch and Racine argue can be one benefit of a textsaturated tutoring environment (248). For example, in transcript 2, the tutor’s use of lowercase proper nouns and absent sentence-initial capitalization, though common in netspeak, does not set a formal academic tone for the chat consultation: Tutor: what is your paper called so I can find it? or what is the file name Writer: it should say draft2 (Transcript 2: Passage 2) A more formal tone might model the standard writing conventions expected in academic contexts and could provide writers with an opportunity to practice academic tone in a low-stakes context. When the writer mirrors her tutor’s informal tone, both the tutor and writer lose an opportunity to hone the academic writing conventions that college-level instructors expect.

Alongside using features of netspeak, tutors can create safe spaces to practice academic tone and style.

For example, when the tutor in transcript 3 later chooses a more formal academic style, she provides the writer with a comfortable setting in which to practice writing standard academic discourse: Tutor: I'm responding to your statement, “We need to include the chapter and really I feel that that's what is kind of a second thesis, the sentence after the purpose of the paper.” So, are you saying that the sentence giving me the chapter information is your second thesis?

Writer: Second thesis is The purpose of this paper is to explore the research done in the field of technology.

I just highlighted it can you see it.

Tutor: oh ok. In that case, I think you could incorporate the chapter information earlier in the introduction. I think its current placement distract readers from your thesis and research question (Transcript 3: Passage 2) In this excerpt, the tutor initially uses appropriate capitalization and punctuation, which the writer mimics three times, returning to appropriate capitalization and using some sentence-ending punctuation. This linguistic mimicking a la Pennebaker can be a strategic form of modeling, often working

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 60 unconsciously in the writer’s favor and can even be a subtle form of intentional directive tutoring.

Additionally, the connection between the writer and tutor that allows the linguistic mimicking to take place demonstrates the writer’s level of comfort and rapport, facilitating the writer’s willingness to engage with the tutor. As Kastman Breuch and Racine claim, “Not only do text-only [OWL] environments encourage students to write, but they also encourage tutors to write in the ways that writing centers promote: considering our audience’s needs, anticipating readers’ reactions to text, and writing in a clear, concise, and informative style that does not laud authority nor condescend” (248). If we train tutors to be aware of the tension between netspeak and academic writing, the synchronous chat consultation can provide students with tutors’ written models of academic writing in an evolving, studentcentered academic space; in the process, tutors can enable students to practice their sentence-levels skills while discussing higher-order concerns in their written work. Through language modeling, tutors and writers build rapport, and writers strengthen their rhetorical knowledge and savvy.

In addition to expecting informal writing in these chat consultations, we also anticipated that tutors and writers would use emoticons in these interactions, but few appear in the transcripts. One might assume emoticons—or the more contemporary emojis—would be prevalent in these online consultation spaces, especially during opening and closing segments when tutors and writers establish rapport. Based on the scholarship on emoticons, we assumed that emoticons or emojis would be important tools for tutors and writers to use to mimic face-to-face interactions or create the same sense of tone and body language present in face-to-face interaction (see Garrison et al.).

However, the transcripts in our corpus show only two instances of emoticons—both used by tutors rather than writers. Neither of these instances of emoticon use occurred during opening phases of the consultations, and only one occurred during the closing phase, as shown in transcript 1: Tutor: It was a pleasure working with you today [writer] :) Do you need me to send an e-mail to your instructor notifying them that you had an appointment? (Transcript 1: Passage 1) Here, the tutor uses a smiley face to develop camaraderie and signal her positive feelings about the consultation. Notably, the writer does not respond with an emoticon and instead chooses to address the tutor’s follow-up question instead. This response indicates that the writer accepted the emoticon at face

value or understood it as a natural part of the conversation that does not require a response.

We expected emoticons in the opening and closing phases in part because established tutoring rituals involve expressing positive emotions and establishing or concluding the consultation with an overall positive tone (Auten 2, 4). Moreover, emoticons might be expected within the opening or middle phase of consultation as a rapport-building technique—either to set a tone of ease and familiarity or to emphasize a friendly demeanor. In our data set, one tutor uses a smiley face to respond to a writer in the consultation’s opening: Tutor: ok, do you have anything in particular in mind? something that interests you or something you'd like to look into?

Writer: maybe to focus more on like stereotypes aginst [sic] women?

Tutor: thanks [sic] a great start :) (Transcript 4: Passage 5) Here, the tutor uses the emoticon to underscore a positive assessment of the writer’s ideas about how to revise and move the paper forward. This rapportbuilding response strategy (Crystal 41) demonstrates how and why tutors might effectively use emoticons.

As noted, emoticons occur just twice throughout all four transcripts. Anecdotally, many people bemoan netspeak and worry that student writers will begin inappropriately using emoticons or emojis in their academic writing. However, based on these transcripts, tutors and writers appear to recognize the online consultation as an academic space where little room exists for this feature of netspeak. Rather than focusing on whether or not a statement needs to be softened with an emoticon (Crystal 41), tutors seem to be aware of the rhetorical situation in a writing consultation, and consequently, focus on consultation objectives: they write efficiently and concisely. As Crystal states, “In traditional writing, there is time to develop phrasing which makes personal attitudes clear; […] And when they are missing, something needs to replace them” (41). Rather than utilizing emoticons, the tutors in this study follow Kastman Breuch and Racine’s advice and practice effective audience awareness through their own careful writing (248). Ultimately, rapport building among the tutors and writers in our study does not rely heavily on the use of emoticons or emojis.

Conclusion and Practical Implications While the consultations in our analysis occur in a digital space, they still retain the purpose and form of face-to-face writing consultations and should, therefore, implement some of the best practices of

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 61 traditional face-to-face consultations. Our findings from this exploratory study suggest that these tutors may be inclined to dominate the conversations or use non-academic digital writing conventions in online chat consultations. Our results align with Wolfe and Griffin’s findings, which show “online conferencing environments may become consultant focused” because “consultants initiated and controlled significantly more of the discourse” in one of the online environments they studied (72). Our tutors’ more directive tendencies may stem from lack of sufficient training and practice in both directive tutoring and synchronous chat consulting or from habits they may have formed in face-to-face consultations. Another possibility is that these tendencies arise from the medium itself, which enables tutors the freedom to tutor without real-time observation by other tutors and supervisors; in our open-floor-plan center, face-to-face consultations are often overheard by other tutors and supervisors, and this dynamic may affect what tutors say and how they engage with writers. Although we cannot generalize our findings to offer a robust set of best practices, the results of our analysis provide some avenues for future research and a heuristic for writing center directors to use in analyzing synchronous chat consultations they may be piloting or implementing in their own centers.

Because our study is a limited four-transcript case study of a pilot program, we cannot claim that these consultations represent other synchronous chat consultations. Neither can we claim that all chat consultations will be successful or afford writers the same sorts of agency they might possess in other types of sessions, in other settings, and under other ideological approaches to writing instructions and center philosophies. Finally, we also cannot claim that the strategies that would have improved these consultations are the same strategies that will improve other types of synchronous, online consultations at other institutions and with other student populations.

However, our study demonstrates the need to pay attention to how tutors and writers use a center’s technologies: both the face-to-face table in the physical center as well as the digital chat room and whiteboard.

Because our study and Wolfe and Griffin’s study demonstrate a preponderance of tutor turn-taking, writing center administrators should be aware of how tutors and writers interact in their spaces and should closely examine whether or not those interactions align with their centers’ philosophies. Our director firmly grounds our center in non-directive tutoring philosophies, yet our analysis demonstrates that these tutors sometimes defaulted to ineffective, unintentional directive pedagogies when working synchronously

online. Obviously, this misalignment of pedagogy and philosophy is problematic for our center, and future research might explore this misalignment via tutor training that addresses some of the pitfalls and advantages of tutor-talk features demonstrated across these transcripts.

Overall, the consultations in this study appear to successfully build rapport, though tutors often tend to use unintentional directive methods as a default strategy. While tutor turn-taking may be higher in online conferences, writers’ positive reactions suggest that they may still benefit from the interaction just as they might benefit from face-to-face sessions using more directive methods of tutoring. However, their passive engagement and dismissive positive comments suggest the writers in tutor-dominated, structuring-driven consultations may take less ownership of their writing processes and revisions. Future research might conduct a similar study in a center that trains tutors to use directive-tutoring techniques intentionally; such research might be able to assess whether those tutors more appropriately assess and implement directive tutoring.

Implications for Tutor Training In analyzing these four synchronous chat-based consultations from our writing center, we identified some tutor-training activities that may help tutors develop an awareness of their chat tendencies so they can intentionally maximize productive and minimize problematic responding patterns. Because the transcripts we analyzed occurred during a pilot semester of the synchronous chat consultation option in our center, our director and assistant directors lacked a specific direction for tutor training; our analysis of these transcripts provides some ideas for training our tutors and those at other centers implementing this consultation option. Ideally, tutors should be taught to use chat consultations to connect with students in a comfortable, safe space. Moreover, they should practice using these consultations to focus on writers’ concerns and agendas in ways that effectively navigate the non-directive/directive continuum while modeling effective academic writing.

A key tutor-training strategy involves making tutors aware of common online conferencing patterns and studying the types of patterns tutors employ when consulting with writers in online spaces. Through training, tutors can critically analyze how they tutor and what they can do to become more effective tutors. As Kastman Breuch and Racine argue, “Online tutors need training specific to online writing spaces” (246, emphasis in original) and “the use of a training activity that focuses on exploring written dialogues” in an effort “[to]

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 62 encourage tutors’ sensitivity to the dynamics of the text-only environment” (249). Consistent with these suggestions, we recommend requiring tutors to review model chat consultation transcripts as a part of their training and to examine their own consultation transcripts as part of ongoing professional development.

We also recommend paying attention to tutors’ and students’ use of and access to different methods of communicating via chat consultations. For example, while all of our tutors typed their responses, we did not collect data on whether or not writers were using voice-to-text, dictation, or transcription software or actually typing their responses during the chat consultation. Training and research in these additional areas can improve accessibility of and discussions of accessibility with our tutors in various settings, not just online consultations.

The coding categories and analyses in this article can serve as a basis for tutors to analyze their own online consultation transcripts. For instance, tutors might read samples of effective synchronous chat transcripts and identify the other tutors’ uses of tutortalk and netspeak features; then, they might compare such usage to the moves they make in their own online consultation transcripts. This exercise could allow tutors to identify ways to strengthen their own chat consultations. By analyzing their own written dialogues and interactions, tutors can reinforce critical writing center principles: prioritizing higher-order concerns and effective tutor talk during their chats with writers, using standard academic writing more consistently, and capitalizing on the socially productive features of netspeak to build a positive rapport with writers in an engaging, dynamic conversation. If tutors prioritize these elements, we argue that synchronous chat tutoring has the potential to benefit various student populations—some of whom may otherwise remain strangers to the university writing center.

Notes 1. See our section on Tutor Talk for an explanation of why we choose to focus on the downsides of directive methods.

2. Demographic information for writers include age, geographical location, race, year in coursework, etc.

Tutor demographics, while also missing for this study, include tutor age, geographical location, race, year in coursework, as well as the number of years spent tutoring. The only demographic information available was sex: all tutors and writers identify as female.

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Appendix Table 1: Tutor-Talk Features Feature

Definition

Connecting

Writer/tutor builds rapport by creating a personal link to the paper, the topic, or the writer’s experience as a student (Auten 2) or by encouraging the student to take ownership of and set the agenda for the consultation.

Closing

Structuring

Soliciting

Writer/tutor mirrors the opening of a consultation by providing positive feedback, “expressions of general approval,” and “broad assurances of success” (Auten 2, emphasis in original); and exchanges pleasantries by way of a farewell.

Writer/tutor “sets the stage for subsequent behavior,” such as engagement and revision (Fanselow 19); or makes comments that attempt to engage the other person in an action, preferably advancing the paper or moving the other person toward a reaction or toward making a statement. Structuring is usually not composed of specific questions but rather statements that implicitly elicit some sort of reaction or response.

Writer/tutor “[sets] tasks or asks questions” (Fanselow 19) that explicitly or specifically point to a task.

Responding Writer/tutor performs “set tasks [and/or provides] answers to questions” (Fanselow 19).

Reacting

Writer/tutor “[modifies] previous moves…or [is] called forth by previous moves” (Fanselow 19).

Examples Writer: Somehow I missed that that is what it should [say] I was scrambling yesterday.

Tutor: …if you have a question, feel free to ask.

Writer: Janice, this has been incredibly helpful. Thank you.

Tutor: It was a pleasure working with you today, Karen.

Writer: I put some questions it italics in the body of the paper Tutor: My main concern for you is to make sure that you are using your quotes to support your argument, not letting the quotes dominate your writing.

Writer: On page 3 in terms of neutrality, should I just rewrite the sentence?

Tutor: could you highlight [your thesis] for me please?

Writer: I just added that this morning and thought it probably needed fill out too.

Tutor: I can comprehend what you are talking about, and it does make sense.

Writer: I see that I still am not clear.

Tutor: That is a great point!

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 66

Table 2: Netspeak Features Feature

Definition

Examples

Emoticon

Writer/tutor uses a “combinations of keyboard characters…to show an emotional facial expression” (Crystal 39).

:) ;) :(

Abbreviations

Writer/tutor uses a common shortening of a familiar word or phrase.

Writer: I’m working on a final paper for my music ed. class

Mistyping

Writer/tutor rearranges letters in a word, leaves letters out, uses incorrect apostrophes, or uses the wrong word accidentally. Mistyping usually results from fast typing and sending the message before editing. When the writer/tutor sees the mistake, they might correct it by using an asterisk with the proper spelling/word or by sending the corrected word or phrase in a subsequent message.

Writer: When in real life its not exactly tah Writer: *that

Writer/tutor does not capitalize the first letter of a new sentence or message.

Writer: certain shows also make women out to be very emotional.

Sentenceinitial capitalization

Tutor: ok hold on while I look at that sectino

Tutor: we have about twenty minutes left, Lowercase proper noun

Writer/tutor does not capitalize a proper noun.

Writer: well the show real housewifes Tutor: yeah, i think thay [sic] would really help

Full-stop punctuation

Writer/tutor does not use a period to end a Writer: I can see how in the body of sentence—often when the sentence is the last one the paragraphs it would be easy to of the message, before the composer hits “return” forget the point and send the message to the interlocutor.

Tutor: we have references for colons, semicolons, transition phrases...there's a ton of information there

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Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak • 67

Table 3: Frequency of Tutor-Talk Features in the Data Set Open

Connect

Close

Structure

Solicit

Respond

React

Totals

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

#

%

Tutors

13

3

6

1

18

4

109

26

40

10

20

5

25

6

231

55

Writers

6

1

8

2

13

3

30

7

20

5

106

26

4

1

187

45

Feature Totals

19

4

14

3

31

7

139

33

60

15

126

26

29

7

418

100

Table 4: Netspeak Features in Chat Transcripts Tutors

Writers

Conversational terms

165

127

Word count

2731

1569

Abbreviations

0

4

Emoticons

2

0

Absence of sentence-initial capitalization

108

71

Uncorrected typing errors

18

20

Corrected typing errors

2

7

Lowercase proper nouns

14

14

3040

1812

Totals

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020)

THE STATE OF WRITING CENTER RESEARCH ACROSS THE ATLANTIC: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF A GERMAN FLAGSHIP JOURNAL, 2010-2016 Pam Bromley Scripps College pbromley@scrippscollege.edu The number of writing centers in German-speaking countries has grown rapidly since the first center was established in 1993. The increase in centers has been accompanied by substantial growth in writing professionals, scholarship, and professional activities in the region. Indeed, many are calling this a new field: Schreibwissenschaft, a direct translation of the term writing studies. This article presents a bibliometric analysis of citations and authorship from the first twelve issues of JoSch: Journal of Writing Consultation, the first and premier peer-reviewed journal of writing center studies published in Germany. Founded in 2010, JoSch is now affiliated with the largest German organization for writing professionals, making it particularly influential. Examining who publishes and what is cited in JoSch highlights what this emerging field values and what it omits.

Replicating Neal Lerner’s methodology from The Writing Center Journal, we directly compare our findings to WCJ, including other bibliometric studies when relevant. In JoSch, we find a similarly strong ethos of collaboration through increasing co-authorship; authorship, as in the US, is largely female though they may be underrepresented in proportion to writing center community. JoSch pieces also reference a more disciplinarily diverse cluster of highlycited authors and sources, forming a broader core of knowledge than in WCJ. If JoSch is any measure, writing centers are driving disciplinary conversations about writing research and administration in the region. Our findings are particularly relevant to readers of Praxis because they illuminate trends in scholarship in a region with the largest number of writing centers outside North America.

Introduction The first writing centers outside of North America were established in Germany in the early 1990s (Girgensohn, “Exciting”; Universität Bielefeld Schreiblabor; Ruhmann). While writing centers in the region were initially slow to take off, the past decade has seen exponential growth in writing centers, writing professionals, academic conferences, and scholarly publications (Girgensohn, Innovation; Ruhmann; Scott), so much so that the field is now beginning to see itself as a discipline —or “interdiscipline”—with distinct regional traditions and networks (Call for Papers; Brinkschulte and Kreitz, 11-19; Steinhoff, Grabowski, and Becker-Mrotzek, 9). Yet there are few empirical studies examining how this disciplinary conversation is constituted and what it values (Scott and Bromley).

Bibliometric analysis, which began in the natural sciences and has extended to the social sciences and humanities (Nederhof), provides useful insights into these questions. Our study utilizes this method to examine the authors and the sources cited in the first

Andrea Scott Pitzer College Andrea_Scott@pitzer.edu twelve issues of JoSch: Journal der Schreibberatung [JoSch: Journal of Writing Consultation,1 hereafter JoSch], the premier journal of writing studies published in Germany. Founded in 2010 at the writing center of the European University at Viadrina in Frankfurt Oder, JoSch is the second German-language publication dedicated to research on writing and its administration in German-speaking countries, after Zeitschrift Schreiben (European Journal of Writing2) was founded in Switzerland in 2006. In 2015, JoSch was named an official affiliate of Germany’s Gesellschaft für Schreibdidaktik und Schreibforschung [Society for Writing Didactics and Writing Research], the association of the country’s broad range of writing professionals.

Members of the organization now automatically receive a journal subscription, making it an increasingly important venue of scholarly publication (Gesellschaft).

Our quantitative analysis of citation and authorship practices in JoSch provides insight into the shape of Germanic writing studies at this important juncture, in which the field is deeply engaged in discipline-building.

This discipline-building serves as as a strategy for securing the long-term future of writing centers while funding continues to remain precarious at most universities (Girgensohn, Innovation; Girgensohn and Peters; Lahm). The emergence of disciplinary organizations and journals and the first tenured and tenure-track professorships in the past year (Hochschulteam) are developments that promise to help secure the standing of the discipline in the higher education landscape.

Because we believe that comparative analysis would be valuable, we consciously replicate the methodology of Neal Lerner, who evaluated citation and authorship patterns in The Writing Center Journal (67; hereafter WCJ). While not an exact match in focus, these two journals have a similar orientation and are leading journals in their regions. We also compare our findings to relevant global and US-based bibliometric studies in order to further contextualize our study. The study published here is the second half of a two-part comparative study, drawing on the same dataset. In the first part, published in June 2019 in JoSch, we focused on categories not included in Lerner’s study in order to

The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 69 capture what we hypothesized would be unique features of the Germanic case (Scott and Bromley).

Our data from that study provided empirical evidence confirming emerging disciplinary self-understandings represented in the growing number of genesis narratives published in the region (Breuer and Schindler; Frank and Lahm; Girgensohn, Innovation; Lahm; Ruhmann). In JoSch we found the Germanic scholarly conversation was indeed regionally distinct, with German-language sources constituting the overwhelming majority of all citations since the very first issues. At the same time, the transatlantic history of the field was also represented insofar as US-based sources constituted the second largest body of research cited. Furthermore, we found evidence to support the field’s sense of the growing importance of peer tutoring to the field’s ethos. Overall, peer tutors published more often in JoSch than appears to be the case in WCJ. And finally, unlike WCJ, where the article (and particularly articles published in WCJ) predominate, we found that materials published in book form (including single and co-authored books, edited collections, and guidebooks) are the principal genre for citations in JoSch, with guidebooks, which have been central since the field’s founding in the region, appearing to grow in importance (Scott and Bromley 85-6).

In this article, we focus on the categories directly captured in Lerner’s 2014 study, finding important differences and similarities in both regional scholarly conversations.3 We examine citation frequency and source type as well as author collaboration and sex, as these were among the most striking of Lerner’s findings about WCJ. In JoSch, we find a more disciplinarily diverse cluster of highly-cited authors and sources, forming a broad core of knowledge suggestive of the field’s interdisciplinarity and the expansive missions of writing centers in the region. We also find a stronger ethos of collaboration as seen through robust co-authorship and strong representation of female authors. If JoSch is any measure, Germanic writing centers are driving interdisciplinary conversations about writing and its administration, making them less siloed than their US counterparts.

Our findings are particularly relevant to readers of Praxis because they illuminate trends in scholarship in a region with the most writing centers outside North America (Bromley) while adding to the growing body of research investigating non-US-based writing centers that has long been of interest to this journal’s readers (e.g., Chang; Kyle; Scheiber and Đurić; Turner).

Background To situate our study, we begin with a brief overview of the history and role of writing centers in German-speaking countries. Since the first center outside North America was founded in Bielefeld, Germany in 1993, writing centers have experienced exponential growth in this region in the past decade, with over 70 centers and initiatives currently operating.

In tandem with this growth, the founding and expansion of three professional organizations based in Austria (2009), Germany (2013), and Switzerland (2005) has fostered national and international exchange through conferences, workshops, special interest groups, publications, and position papers (Call for Papers; Girgensohn, Innovation; Universität Bielefeld Schreiblabor).

According to Katrin Girgensohn (Innovation), one of the newly appointed tenured professors in the emerging field of Schreibwissenschaft (writing studies), these developments have contributed to the growth of writing centers for a number of reasons. The region’s three professional organizations have raised consciousness for writing center work. Furthermore, the growing demand for university degrees in the current economy and the opening of universities to a larger and more diverse student body has increased demand for academic support resources. These resources are easier to fund in the wake of the Bologna Reforms, whereby universities have shifted their missions “from teaching to learning,” emphasizing the kind of agentive, student-centered learning fostered in writing centers and their writing-in-the-disciplines partnerships with departments. Most universities have identified writing as a key competency, which means it must be explicitly taught and supported. Finally, the shortening of degree programs in Europe and revision of curricula to include shorter writing assignments along the way means that student struggles with writing are often visible sooner and likely to lead more quickly to attrition, motivating universities to address perceived problems sooner (see Girgensohn, Innovation 54). All of these changes in the higher education landscape have strengthened the institutional role of writing centers. It’s important to remember that, as Tracy Santa, a founding member of the European Writing Centers Association, once put it, “the writing center is the writing program” in the region (3).

Typically, the lack of general education requirements like first-year writing and the absence of departmental structures for the emerging field of writing studies have made writing centers institutional homes for advancing research and practices about the teaching, tutoring, and

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 70 administration of support for writing across the curriculum.

Given this history, what might citation and authorship practices reveal about this regionally distinct field? In terms of authorship, we wanted to learn more about who is driving scholarly conversations in the field and how collaborative this highly-networked research culture is, as measured through the frequency of co-authorship. In addition, authors’ citations are the “mechanism which both demonstrates the advance of knowledge and distributes credit for priority, emphasizing that research is embedded in a literature and that writers are linked into wider social networks,” as Ken Hyland and Feng Jiang argue (1). We agree about the value of exercising what Chris Anson and Christiane Donahue call an “almost anthropological sensitivity to context and the cultural and national sources of practice” (23) when engaging in transnational research, Yet, we find that comparative bibliometric research is a valuable method because it allows us to engage in a “distant reading” of the field (e.g., Moretti), identifying the outlines of broader trends in disciplinary cultures we might otherwise miss.

Methodology While bibliometric analysis is commonplace in the sciences, such analyses are much less often undertaken in the humanities (Ardanuy 751), the result, perhaps, of so much humanities scholarship encapsulated in books rather than articles, which lend themselves more readily to such analysis (Archambault and Larivière 251).While evaluating a journal’s authors and their citations quantitatively highlights a field’s key features, many scholars undertaking this work use unique methodologies, making it difficult to replicate or compare results across studies (Bornmann and Daniel 45). Because we wanted to see what a comparative study would reveal, we use Neal Lerner’s methodology for evaluating author and citation practices in WCJ (68) in our study of JoSch, adding categories to capture this context’s unique features.4 We present here the data we believe of most interest to Praxis readers: our replication of some of Lerner’s key findings on citation number, type, and frequency and author collaboration and sex.5 We examined every piece appearing in JoSch from issue 1 (2010) to issue 12 (2016). Each issue includes four types of articles—tutoring methods and techniques, writing and writing tutoring research, field reports, and book reviews – as well as editors’ introductions, conference calls, and announcements.

Using a single Excel spreadsheet, we recorded every article and every author. For each article, we recorded every citation in its references, including the author(s),

title, location where it appeared, press, and year. To do the counting featured in the results below, we used Excel’s Pivot Table function. We focus here on the 100 pieces with sources, which contained 818 citations; 26 pieces did not include citations, including editors’ introductions, calls for papers, and field reports. To determine each JoSch author’s sex, we examined the short biography at the end of their contribution (where we often were able to determine sex through the use of the author’s own pronouns or, as most articles were in German, via the use of noun suffixes), while internet searches enabled us to determine the sex of cited authors; though this method is very obviously limited, we adopt it from previous studies, recognizing the need for the development of more nuanced and inclusive methods for capturing sex and gender identities.

Results and Discussion

Below, we share highlights about both JoSch authors and their cited sources, drawing on literature examining citation patterns and authorship, comparing our findings to Lerner’s 2014 WCJ study as well as other bibliometric analyses when relevant. We note that our study (of 100 articles and 818 sources cited over seven years) is far smaller than Lerner’s study (of 241 articles and 4095 cited sources over thirty years).

In JoSch, we uncover a field with disciplinarily-diverse authors and sources; central, primarily book-based texts; growing co-authorship; and strong representation of female authors.

Most Commonly Cited Authors We begin by examining the authors of the 818 sources cited in JoSch, to provide a window into whose ideas and which texts are most influential in this field, before investigating the authors themselves. This is the reverse of Lerner’s presentation, but as the authors and sources most often cited in the region may be new to some readers, beginning with the larger disciplinary conversation provides useful context for readers.

Evaluating which authors are most commonly cited may be particularly useful in the German context, where authors publish more frequently than their international peers (Aiston and Jung 209)—so perhaps writers in this region consider citing specific individuals rather than specific pieces. We highlight below the ten authors most frequently cited in JoSch (see table 1). We note that the top seven authors—Gerd Bräuer, Otto Kruse, Katrin Girgensohn, Kirsten Schindler, Nora Peters, Gabriela Ruhmann, and Franziska Liebetanz— appear, as authors or co-authors, in more than 2% of all citations. Pieces by the top ten authors cited in JoSch

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 71 comprise 26% of all sources cited in the journal, while pieces written by the top 20 authors comprise 37% of all citations. In comparison, Lerner (with his much larger and longer dataset) finds that the top ten authors cited in WCJ comprise just 15% of all cited sources, and the top 20 authors account for only 22% of all citations (86).

At first blush, then, JoSch authors seem to rely more strongly on a core set of cited authors than WCJ authors. However, with further investigation, we see that in WCJ, there are a three authors that dominate: Muriel Harris (with 2.9% of citations), Stephen North (2.7% of citations), and Kenneth Bruffee (2.3%), while the rest of the top authors have 1.2% or fewer of citations (calculated from Lerner 86). Works by these key authors play an outsized presence in WCJ articles.

While each of these writers contributed multiple pieces that are meaningful for writing center work, each has a single most-cited piece through which we can see their impact. North’s 1984 foundational article, “The Idea of a Writing Center,” is cited in 29% of all WCJ articles, while Bruffee’s 1984 “Peer Tutoring and the Conversation of Mankind” is cited in 11% WCJ articles; Harris, who has published many well-cited pieces, is cited in at least 9% of WCJ articles, with the most often cited piece her 1986 Teaching One-to-One (calculated from Lerner 87). Lerner demonstrates that North, Bruffee, and Harris have strongly influenced the work of WCJ authors (84-86). In JoSch, though, we find a broader cluster of highly-cited authors and sources, forming a bigger core of researchers whose work authors can draw from. The cited authors also have a wide range of disciplinary training, coming to writing research from fields like education, psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, creative writing, and German as a foreign language.

Number and Frequency of Citations Moving from highly cited authors, we investigate how many citations each article includes and how often specific sources are cited. While we see a growing number of citations per article and most sources cited just once, we also see a shared core of authors and texts emerging.

As in WCJ, in JoSch, the number of citations per article over time has expanded. The first issue of JoSch (2010) has an average of 3.7 sources cited per article, while the last issue of JoSch that we examined (2016) has an average of 10 sources cited per article—a 170% increase. In WCJ, Lerner finds an 84% increase in the number of sources cited per article, from 11.6 in 1980 to 21.3 in 2009 (78). Derek Mueller likewise finds more than double the average number of citations in College

Composition and Communication (CCC) from 1987 to 2011 (199). We note that there is a real distinction in length of articles between WCJ and JoSch: for JoSch, the longest article accepted in 2016 (when our study concludes) was 22,000 characters including spaces— about 3,000 words, akin to the length of The Writing Lab Newsletter (WLN) articles, while WCJ accepts submissions up to 8,000 words. Comparing the percentage increase (rather than the number of sources cited) allows us to see commonalities despite this difference. A potential explanation for the shorter length pieces in JoSch is the need of a new field wanting accessible information for a range of experience levels, analogous to the early years of WLN. JoSch recently extended the length of its research articles to 38,000 characters including spaces—a bit over 6,000 words (JoSch). This shift to longer-format pieces reflects the growing professionalization and the maturation of research in the field, where more practitioners are engaging in research and other professional activities; this change certainly makes it likely that the number of cited sources will continue to increase. The increase in the number of citations in both journals over time may signify the maturation of the field; authors are expected to engage a scholarly conversation as they pose and answer questions and theorize practice.

Another window into seeing what a field values is how often each source is cited. Of the 818 sources cited in JoSch, 74% (607) of sources are cited just once, while 4% (32 sources) are cited twice, and 5% (40 sources) are cited three times or more. In WCJ, Lerner finds that 81% of sources were cited just once; he calls these “orphan citations,” not taken up as the field moves forward (76). Perhaps the somewhat higher percentage of sources cited more frequently in JoSch means that, even in the relatively early days of German writing studies, a core set of work informs this growing community. However, we note that both journals have a very large proportion of one-time citations. In CCC, Mueller reflects on changing patterns of author citations, drawing on those writing about items’ popularity (and lack thereof) in economics and culture, using the term “the long tail” to describe the lesserknown, extensive back catalog of artists and authors compared to the bestsellers; in his 25-year overview of CCC citations, Mueller finds that the long tail of onetime authors is getting longer over time, with 48% of authors cited just once in pieces published between 2007-2011, compared to just 32% of authors cited just once in pieces published from 1987 to 1991 (216).

While Mueller is looking at authors, rather than individual sources, we note that both JoSch and WCJ

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com

The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 72 may be outside the mainstream in terms of the high percentage of one-time citations.

Cited Source Types and Most Commonly Cited Sources JoSch authors primarily draw their sources from recent books with diverse lenses, and they frequently cite authors with a range of disciplinary backgrounds.

We highlight the top nine sources cited in JoSch: two journals, three edited books, and four guidebooks (see table 2). Four additional sources are cited five times, the beginning of the long, steady decline in number of citations per source. JoSch, like WCJ, is the most commonly referenced source in the journal. However, while 2.2% of citations in JoSch are of that journal, in WCJ, 12.5% of all citations are of that journal (calculated from Lerner 67, 80). This is a marked difference, which can in part be explained by the relative newness of JoSch and the longevity of WCJ. However, Lerner notes that WCJ authors, in citing the journal publishing their own work so frequently, “run the risk of casting the field as largely talking to itself, not to be taken seriously by related and affiliated fields” (68). JoSch authors, in contrast, cite sources from a wide range of disciplines, including writing center studies, discourse on writing pedagogies, German as a foreign language, and other fields. In addition to JoSch, five other sources appear in more than 1% of all citations: Writing: Foundational Texts on Theory, Pedagogy, and Consultations (edited by Dreyfürst and Sennewald); Writing Consultations, A Model for the Future (co-authored by Grieshammer, Liebetanz, Peters, and Zegenhagen); Teaching Writing, Learning Writing: An Introduction (co-authored by Girgensohn and Sennewald); Writing as a Key Competence: Concepts, Methods, and Approaches for Writing Consultations and Writing Instruction at University (edited by Kruse, Jakobs, and Ruhmann); and Zeitschrift Schreiben; of these, just Zeitschrift Schreiben is a journal, while two are coauthored books and two are edited collections, one of which is the only text explicitly focused on writing center work. All but two of these editors and authors are among the most highly cited authors (see table 1).

The two exceptions are Stephanie Dreyfürst and EvaMaria Jakobs; Dreyfürst’s co-edited collection with Nadja Sennewald, Writing: Foundational Texts on Theory, Pedagogy, and Consultations includes many oft-cited chapters, while Jakobs is a well-known scholar in linguistics and technology. In stark comparison, the most commonly cited sources for WCJ authors are journals, with WCJ itself the most often cited source, followed by College English (6.3% of citations, including references to Stephen North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center”), Writing Lab Newsletter (5.4%); and College

Composition and Communication (4.6%); the top three edited collections comprise just 4% of all citations, while the top four books comprise just 2% of all citations, with all but one of these texts explicitly writing center focused (calculated from Lerner 80-81).

The citations of JoSch authors principally come from book-based sources and encompass 72% of all citations, including edited collections (29%), singleauthored and co-authored books (26%), and guidebooks (17%); journal articles comprise just 17% of sources, while online resources (7.6%) and other types of sources (4.3%) are the remainder. The most commonly cited texts by JoSch authors come from a wide range of disciplines; while they include two fieldspecific writing studies journals, they also include texts focused on theory and practice of teaching, tutoring, and learning writing, exploring writing from psychology, as well as working through writer’s block and strategies for professional writing. There is no one central text that dominates citations, unlike WCJ, where Stephen North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center” is cited in nearly a third of the journal’s articles, reflecting that that journals’ authors seek to “appeal to the inside reader” rather than to a more diverse audience (Lerner 92).

The work of eight of the ten most often cited authors (see table 1) is included in the most-cited sources (see table 2). The two exceptions are Gerd Bräuer and Kirsten Schindler. Bräuer, at the top of the most cited authors list, has authored chapters in several of the most cited books and journals, even though he is not among the primary authors or editors of these sources. Schindler, who has published widely in writing studies in German and English, has work included in both highly cited journals, JoSch and Zeitschrift Schreiben.

One striking feature is that two of the top three most cited sources were published in the last three years investigated: Writing: Foundational Texts on Theory, Pedagogy, and Consultations and Writing Consultations, A Model for the Future. Perhaps we are witnessing early scholarly incorporations of what will become classic texts. All but one of the most commonly cited sources is written in German. Publishing in the national language for national or regionally-oriented scholarship is common in humanities and social sciences outside of Anglo-Saxon countries (Nederhof 84). Citing German sources may also reflect JoSch’s audience, which includes peer tutors. More importantly, perhaps, it provides further evidence that the scholarly conversation about writing is regionally distinct, as only one of the most frequently cited sources is published in English.

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 73 A focus on research appearing in books, edited collections, and guidebooks puts JoSch authors in good company with many humanities and social science authors: Nederhof’s 2006 review of bibliometric studies finds that books and book chapters comprise over 60% of citations in sociology, philosophy, literature, and fine arts (85). In contrast, Lerner shows that WCJ authors more regularly cite journal articles, with pieces from the top five journals comprising 30% of all citations (calculated from 76-80). While Lerner finds that a majority of citations in WCJ since 1995 draw specifically on writing center sources, with WCJ itself comprising over 40% of these citations (82-83), the most frequently cited sources in JoSch showcase a much broader perspective, focusing not only on writing consultations, but also on writing processes, writing blocks, and writing pedagogy. Both journals likewise publish pieces about writing centers and writing research generally. Because the writing center is at the heart of all things writing in this region, from consultations to instruction to research, that JoSch authors draw from diverse disciplines is no surprise.

Co-Authorship We end our analysis by examining the authors who contributed the 100 pieces with citations to JoSch from 2010 to 2016. We found 103 unique authors for these 100 pieces. 81 authors publish in JoSch just once (79% of authors) with 22 authors publishing multiple times (21% of authors). This puts JoSch in line with WCJ, where 83% of authors contribute to the journal just once (Lerner 75). Lerner points to the publication expectations for many writing center professionals, and the concern that WCJ might not be prestigious enough for multiple pieces that lead to tenure and promotion.

While there are proportionally not many permanent academic staff positions and, at the time of this article’s completion, only a few tenure-line positions situated in writing centers in the German-speaking world, it may be that other locations for publication are more beneficial to authors, including the many oft-cited edited collections and guidebooks.

Looking at co-authorship, we find potential growth in line with US and bibliometric studies. Our study also reveals a largely female field, likewise analogous to US and global studies in this area. Writing studies has long had a collaborative ethos (e.g., Lunsford and Ede; Harris; see also Schindler and Wolfe 160) and promoting exchange among diverse authors has been a focus of JoSch from the publication’s first issue (Kowal et al. 2), which included an introduction with a reflective metaphor and a collaboratively written article to showcase a range of

possible approaches to publishing in the journal. Of the 100 articles with citations, we found 31% of pieces with two or more authors (see fig. 1).

Because we evaluate twelve issues over just seven years, it is hard to know if there has been a shift in coauthorship in JoSch. However, we note that the first two issues had just 23% of pieces co-authored, while the last two issues had 45% of pieces co-authored.

Thus, we see co-authorship increasing over a relatively short time span. This information aligns JoSch with other research on co-authorship. In US-based writing studies, Lerner found in his analysis of articles from 2000-2009 that 33% of pieces in WPA had at least two authors, as did 26% of pieces in WCJ; he also found co-authorship in WCJ increasing from 1980 to 2009 (74). In fact, increasing co-authorship is part of a broader trend across academia. Vincent Larivière et al.’s study of collaboration practices shows coauthorship increasing worldwide regardless of discipline and country; focusing on Canada, which parallels global authorship trends, this study determines that some fields have higher co-authorship rates than others (e.g. 4-18% of articles in history, literature, law are co-authored, as are 40-60% of articles in education, management, and psychology; 5-8). Co-authorship in writing studies seems be somewhere in between these humanities and social sciences fields, with about a third of pieces co-authored – not as fully collaborative as the field’s ethos might suggest but potentially moving in that direction. JoSch’s co-authorship rate, which has increased to nearly half, appears to be on the forefront of the global trend in increasing co-authorship in humanities and social sciences. However, it is important to note that this increase in co-authorship may be due, at least in part, to these authors seeking to increase their productivity in their efforts to establish the new discipline of writing studies. Whatever its roots, the robust co-authorship seen in JoSch is more reflective of the collaborative ethos in writing studies than US-based journals.

Authorship by Sex Just as authorship differs by discipline, authorship also differs by sex (Aiston and Jung 210). While we acknowledge that gender and biological sex are distinct, and identities may be non-binary and fluid, following other bibliometric studies, we categorize authorship by male and female; this categorization also replicates Lerner’s study. When citing other studies, we use the terminology used in that study. Empirical data about writing program and writing center directors and visitors highlight the field as distinctly female in the US. The 2014 National Census of Writing finds that

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 74 two-thirds of US writing program and writing center administrators are female (National Census). 1995 and 2009 studies of writing program administrators reveals similar results, with two-thirds female administrators; the earlier study shows that female administrators were less likely to have tenure than their male counterparts (Barr-Ebest 53, 61; Charlton and Rose 118). A 2004 writing center study finds 88% of writing center directors were female, only 32% of which were in tenured or tenure-track posts; in contrast, males were just 12% of writing center directors, of which 43% were in tenured or tenure-track posts (Nicolas 13).

Turning to writing center visitors, a 2007 study demonstrates that two-thirds of writing center visitors were female at a school with 51% female students (Leit et al.). Together, these studies show that in the US, writing centers and writing programs are places that are largely occupied by females and led by female administrators working in positions of less prestige than their male counterparts.

Because writing center work is often seen as “gendered” work in the US (Nicolas 13), and noting that the majority of WCJ authors are female (Lerner 76), we explore the sex of JoSch authors. We find that, of the 103 individuals who contributed pieces to JoSch, 72 (70%) are female while 31 (30%) are male.

Comparing distribution by authorship category between JoSch and WCJ, JoSch authors lead WCJ authors in collaboration (see fig. 1). In JoSch, females authored 62% of single-authored texts and 68% of all texts, while males authored 32% of single-authored texts and 26% of all texts. In JoSch, female authors work somewhat more collaboratively than males, similar to Lerner’s finding in WCJ (76).

The relationship between sex, gender, and authorship is complex, and we wonder the extent to which authorship in JoSch reflects membership in the field. In most fields, male authors tend to be cited more often than female authors, due to a combination of factors including males’ higher likelihood to cite themselves and fellow males compared to female authors, as well as lower publication rates among females (Tahamtan et al. 1211). As a result, there may be a higher proportion of male scholars seen in these authors compared to the field as a whole. Certainly, from our own experiences, attendance at European, US, and international conferences, workshops, and institutes highlights a predominantly female field, though we also recognize that conference attendance is likewise only the purview of a select group. A 2011 study of authorship in the social sciences exposes a paradox: in most fields, women publish less than their organizational membership would predict, but in some

fields where the proportion of women was high, women author publications at similar or higher rates than their male colleagues (Bird 935). It is uncertain whether this is the case in this region. Certainly, comparing the sex of members of the three Germanic writing organizations to the sex of JoSch authors could add to this multifaceted picture.

Conclusions Our bibliometric analysis of author and citation patterns in JoSch reveals that writing research in this journal includes increasing collaboration in authorship, fewer “orphan” citations, more diverse central texts, and more focus on the book than WCJ. Together these findings suggest JoSch showcases a capacious understanding of what constitutes writing centers and writing studies in a scholarly conversation driven largely by females. As seen in the analysis of the most frequently cited sources, the journal features a diverse range of research on writing centers, pedagogies, practices, and administration. It does not, as its title suggests (JoSch: Journal of Writing Consultation), focus exclusively on tutoring sessions. This is a notable departure from the US, where conversations about writing programs and writing centers are often siloed in separate journals and practitioners attend separate conferences, despite calls for more collaboration (e.g., Balester and McDonald; Ianetta et al.). Our study suggests that this siloing of disciplinary conversations in writing centers is not universal, but rather a feature of the disciplinary history of writing administration in the US. We suspect that we would find a similar expansiveness if we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the first Germanic journal dedicated to writing research, Zeitschrift Schreiben.

Our study raises a larger question. JoSch is not only driving conversations about writing in the region as Germany’s flagship publication; its cited themes and status as an affiliate journal of the German Society for Writing Didactics and Research place it at the very center of disciplinary conversations in the emerging field of Schreibwissenschaft, or writing studies. If one value of transnational research, as Donahue has argued, is that it has the potential to “adapt, resituate, [and] perhaps decenter our contexts” in the US (215), what might it mean for writing professionals in the US to reimagine writing center research as not just inclusive of research on writing centers, but as at the very core of the discipline of writing studies? Our colleagues, published and cited in the German journal JoSch, offer one possible model, inviting readers to imagine the ways in which writing center research, broadly defined, can generate perspectives central to

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 75 the identity and increasing institutionalization of writing studies as a field.

Notes 1. All translations are the co-authors’ own unless otherwise indicated.

2. This is the journal’s own translation. A literal translation of the title would be Journal of Writing.

3. We thank the editors and reviewers of this piece for suggesting that we better situate our findings about authors in broader disciplinary conversations, that we strengthen connections between our findings and our conclusions, and that we nuance our discussion about gender, sex, and authorship.

4. These additional categories include the language of the piece cited, whether the piece was translated from another language, the location of the press, as well as the author’s institutional affiliation and whether authors were peer tutors at the time of publication. See Scott and Bromley for these findings and further information.

5. Lerner’s study, written in 2014, uses the term “gender” to define the authorship category he is investigating, but uses male and female when describing and categorizing authors’ contributions.

Lerner notes that his “method for determining an author's gender is admittedly crude,” based on an author’s name and whether he had met them personally; he acknowledges that his “gender assignment might not reflect the reality of these authors’ self perceptions” (75). Because we sought to replicate Lerner's methodology for comparative purposes, we use his method here, while acknowledging that this way of categorizing authorship is binary and thus misses important information. In this piece, we update the terminology to reflect that Lerner’s method categorizes authors by sex (male and female), not by gender identity (men and women).

When we reference other bibliometric studies, we replicate the terminology used in those pieces. In cases of bibliometric reviews, which capture a variety of studies, we also use the terms used by the authors, though we note that these overviews include studies that use different categories. Sometimes, especially in earlier studies, gender (e.g., women and men) and sex (e.g., female and male) are used interchangably. In these cases, we use sex for consistency.

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 78

Appendix Table 1 Authors cited most often in JoSch, 2010-2016

Author

# Citations

% Citations

Author

# Citations

% Citations

Bräuer, Gerd

32

3.9% Ruhmann, Gabriela

18

2.2%

Kruse, Otto

32

3.9% Liebetanz, Franziska

17

2.1%

Girgensohn, Katrin

25

3.1% Grieshammer, Ella

15

1.8%

Schindler, Kirsten

23

2.8% Sennewald, Nadja

15

1.8%

Peters, Nora

18

2.2% Zegenhagen, Jana

14

1.7%

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 79

Table 2 Sources most often cited in JoSch, 2010-2016 (translations are co-authors, except as needed) Source

Type of source

# times % of all cited citations

JoSch: Journal der Schreibberatung (2010-2016) JoSch: Journal of Writing Consultation

Journal

18

2.20%

Schreiben. Grundlagentexte zur Theorie, Didaktik und Beratung (2014, ed. Dreyfürst and Sennewald) Writing: Foundational Texts on Theory, Pedagogy, and Consultations

Edited book 18

2.20%

Zukunftsmodell Schreibberatung. Eine Anleitung zur Begleitung von Schreibenden im Studium (2015. Grieshammer, Liebetanz, Peters, Zegenhagen) Writing Consultations, A Model for the Future: A Handbook on Accompanying Writers During their Studies

Guidebook 14

1.71%

Schreiben lehren, Schreiben lernen. Eine Einführung (2012, Girgensohn and Sennewald) Teaching Writing, Learning Writing: An Introduction

Guidebook 10

1.22%

Schlüsselkompetenz Schreiben. Konzepte, Methoden, Projekte für Edited book 9 Schreibberatung und Schreibdidaktik an der Hochschule (1999, ed. Kruse, Jakobs, Ruhmann) Writing as a Key Competence: Concepts, Methods, and Approaches for Writing Consultations and Writing Instruction at University

1.10%

Zeitschift Schreiben (2006-2016) European Journal of Writing [the journal’s translation]

Journal

9

1.10%

Cognitive Processes in Writing (1980, Gregg and Steinberg)

Edited book 7

0.86%

Keine Angst vor dem leeren Blatt: Ohne Schreibblockaden durchs Studium (2000, Kruse) Don’t Worry about the Blank Page: Navigating our Studies without Writer’s Block

Guidebook 7

0.86%

Die Schreibfitness-Mappe: 60 Checklisten, Beispiele und Übungen für alle, Guidebook 6 die beruflich schreiben (2011, Scheuermann) The Writing Fitness Portfolio: 60 Checklists, Examples, and Exercises for Everyone Who Writes Professionally

0.73%

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The State of Writing Center Research Across the Atlantic • 80

Fig. 1 Type of authorship by sex in JoSch (2010-2016) and Writing Center Journal (1980-2009) %

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REVIEW OF MULTIMODAL COMPOSING: STRATEGIES FOR TWENTY-FIRSTCENTURY WRITING CONSULTATIONS, EDITED BY LINDSAY A. SABATINO AND BRIAN FALLON Amber Kent-Johnson University of Tennessee, Knoxville akent9@vols.utk.edu Sabatino, Lindsay A., and Brian Fallon, Editors.

Multimodal Composing: Strategies for TwentyFirst-Century Writing Consultations. Utah State UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-60732-845-2. $28.95.

The edited collection by Lindsay A. Sabatino and Brian Fallon, Multimodal Composing: Strategies for TwentyFirst-Century Writing Consultations, consists of an introduction and fourteen distinct chapters, featuring twenty-two contributors, including Sabatino and Fallon. The project Multimodal Composing seeks to tackle is nothing short of herculean. Sabatino and Fallon’s preface outlines the project in three elements: (1) build on and evolve tutoring practices and strategies for multimodal texts, (2) introduce consultants to important features and practices in a variety of multimodal texts, and (3) start a conversation about the relationship between rhetorical choices, design thinking, and technological awareness in the writing center. (x) The goal of creating such a guide for writing center consultants was born out of a mutual need Sabatino and Fallon experienced in their work as Writing Center Directors as they created a resource detailing multimodal consulting strategies.It is also inspired by the work of their mutual friend and mentor, Ben Rafoth, who created an extensive guidebook for conventional tutoring genres called A Tutor’s Guide.

The fourteen multimodal projects covered in Multimodal Composing work to provide an updated consulting resource, and include Storyboarding, Artist and Design Statements, Brochures, Academic Research Posters, Prezis and Powerpoints, Infographics, ePortfolios, Web-Design, Podcasts, Multimodal Video Projects, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), Professional Identity and Social Media, and Copyright and Citations for Multimodal Projects.

Each of the fourteen chapters follows a distinct structure. After an outline of major points in a chapter overview, each chapter gives an “Illustrative Example” of a student bringing a project into the Writing/Multimodal Center, which serves to illustrate how consultants can approach such a consultation. The third section of the chapter describes the “Background

Information” a consultant should know about the multimodal genre. This is closely followed by “Consultation Strategies” for working with the specified multimodal project, as well as an “Activity” consultants can do to simulate the experience of working through a multimodal project. The chapter ends with a “Conclusion” that discusses the implications of understanding the specified multimodal project, before additional “Resources,” “Key Search Terms,” and “References” for further research are listed. These chapters’ structured style helps each chapter to serve as a “How To” guide for consultants.

It is also clear from the layout of each chapter that it is only meant to serve as a beginner’s guide into each multimodal project. There are even key terms and further resources provided at the end of each chapter to encourage deeper research into each multimodal project.

Although each chapter follows the same basic structure, there are distinct differences amongst them.

The section that perhaps stands out the most is Lindsay A. Sabatino’s introduction titled “Design Theory and Multimodal Consulting.” Sabatino’s introduction is meant to serve as a reference that covers the major design principles that apply to most, if not all, of the multimodal projects discussed throughout the book. Her comprehensive introduction also explores design theory and the logic behind it.

Sabatino’s introduction is often referenced by other contributors in their chapters when they want to refer back to the principles she discusses in full.

Regardless of whether the other thirteen sections of the book follow a consistent format, they still contain distinctions in their explanations, approaches, and methods for understanding myriad multimodal projects. No two chapters prove this more clearly than Sohui Lee and Jarret Krone’s chapter on Brochures and Patrick Anderson and Florence Davies’ chapter on Multimodal Video Projects. In their chapter on Brochures and “Helping Students Make Good Design Decisions,” Lee and Krone spend a majority of the chapter building off of commonly held knowledge about the brochure format, as well as working against

Review of Multimodal Composing • 82 common misconceptions about the brochure genre (51). In this chapter’s “Illustrative Example,” Lee and Krone discuss the importance of not viewing the brochure as a “plug and play” genre, or “just finding the template to fill in with ready-made information” (52). They state that brochure consultations can “provide. . . opportunit[ies] to think more carefully about brochure types and. . . visual layout in terms of its persuasive impact on the viewer” (52). The moves Lee and Krone make throughout the chapter make it clear that, in order to successfully coach consultants on providing constructive guidance in the brochure genre, they must first point out the common misconceptions and assumptions that could prove counterproductive to consultants and students alike.

Patrick Anderson and Florence Davies take on another approach entirely in their chapter “Multimodal Video Projects: Video-Doing by Example.” Clearly expecting a far less universal understanding of video concepts than that expressed by Lee and Krone about brochures, Anderson and Davies use their chapter as an extensive guide to video that multimodal consultants will need to understand in order to guide any students with multimodal video projects. They discuss concepts such as realism and formalism, the three basic stages of production (preproduction, production, and postproduction), as well as staging, lighting, framing, camera angles, the rule of thirds, the 180-degree rule, camera movement, lens movement, shot duration, editing (including cuts and montage editing), and diegetic and nondiegetic sound (156-159).

While Anderson and Davies’ provide such an extensive description of technical video principles, the chapter stays firmly focused on understanding these concepts as a way for consultants to better help students determine whether certain techniques are appropriate for the specific audiences, contexts, and purposes for which these projects have been created.

Although each chapter provides a marked approach to a unique multimodal genre, it is clear that each is working toward the same general goal: that of “put[ting] together an edited collection that w[ill] cover a number of frequently seen multimodal projects in the writing center” (Sabatino and Fallon viv). Perhaps the only negative aspect of such a comprehensive guide is that it is asking for an equally extensive amount of work from writing center consultants, especially within a thirty-minute-to-one-hour consultation. In order to enact the suggestions within Multimodal Composing, writing center consultants would often have to take on the job of first educating students about the genre in which they’re attempting to work and then to provide them with feedback based upon the new knowledge

the student has only just learned. Will students be able to retain so much new information given to them in such a short period of time? They can obviously attend more than one session to help them structure their projects, but even in the span of multiple sessions, it could be difficult for consultants to provide such extensive genre instruction and critique.

However, Multimodal Composing succeeds in providing an extensive guide on different multimodal projects, tips for consulting with students on such projects, and ways of furthering discussion about multimodal texts. The easy-to-follow structure of each chapter, along with thoughtful activities that consultants can engage in regardless of the size of their writing center and budget, creates an invaluable resource to consultants and writing centers everywhere.

The text acknowledges the prominence of technological projects and their ever-evolving nature, which provides a foundation for consultants that can be updated and revised accordingly.

Multimodal Composing is truly a text that fulfills its rhetorical purpose and acknowledges the exigence for which it was initially created. It is a text that is meant to withstand the constant evolution of technology and its ever-changing implications for writing-intensive projects. It provides the foundational knowledge one needs to delve into the world of multimodal composing, and how to build upon that knowledge as they see fit.

Works Cited Sabatino, Lindsay A. and Brian Fallon, Editors.

Multimodal Composing: Strategies for Twenty-First Writing Consultations. Utah State UP, 2019.

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Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020)

REVIEW OF RADICAL WRITING CENTER PRAXIS: A PARADIGM FOR ETHICAL POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT BY LAURA GREENFIELD Oksana Moroz Indiana University of Pennsylvania o.moroz@iup.edu I vividly remember the first time I came to a writing center. I was a graduate student in the United States, and in my home country, Ukraine, the notion of writing centers is relatively new. I had a particular agenda in mind for my first visit: I needed help with cohesion and coherence because of the complicated nature of the English language’s system of reference.

Not only did I receive the writing support I needed, but I also had a genuine conversation with a tutor about my background, my studies, and my future endeavors. Now, four years later, I am taking a graduate course titled Research on Writing Centers and Writing Program Administration and hoping to establish an English writing center in my hometown, IvanoFrankivsk. With this goal in mind, Laura Greenfield’s book, Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement, is of particular interest to me. In her book, Greenfield envisions a radically new writing center where all staff members are agentive in social justice work, not only within the walls of the writing center but also beyond its boundaries. To accomplish these goals, Greenfield must address the question of what a radical agenda is, and what it means for writing centers to adopt one.

In the text, Greenfield argues that the writing center field’s current practices have to be drastically transformed because “despite our many successes, the collective influence writing centers are having on the world is simultaneously violent” (Greenfield 9). Here, it is worth noting the explicit definition Greenfield gives for radicalism as a central concept in the book: Radicalism in this book refers to the belief that (1) the truth is a human construction; (2) power is not possessed but exercised, and therefore power is neither inherently good nor bad; and (3) authority resides not in people or entities but in ethically engaged praxis (reflective action). (59) In arguing for transformation, Greenfield proposes a radically new paradigm for writing centers by bringing together the topics of social justice, antiracism, peace, systems of oppression, power, violence, and ethics.

The book is organized by two main themes: theory and practice. In terms of theory, the author critiques conservative and liberal approaches in writing center practices. In particular, the first chapter outlines a

historical account of theoretical values in the field, while the second proposes theoretical grounds for a new paradigm based on radical politics. The next three chapters propose a practical approach to transform the field by providing answers to why, what, and how the field can benefit from a radical lens through which to view current practices. Throughout the text, Greenfield asks her readers several questions: what is the goal of the writing center? Who is it serving? How can writing center administrators and tutors introduce changes that benefit not only the writing center but also diverse communities at large?

Greenfield is not the first author to call for the transformation of writing centers. Harry Denny et al. and Romeo Garcia have also expressed their views on current practices and ways to change them. Denny et al. conclude, “writing centers are places where inequality—unequal access to educational resources— is made manifest” (69). Similarly, Garcia interrogates how “whiteness shapes the imagining of both centers and practices as ‘safe’ and ‘inviting’” (34). Greenfield, in her turn, invites readers to reflect on marginalized practices the writing center often perpetuates. These critical concepts are meant to help the reader question the status quo and bring the writing center’s vision to a new level of promoting peace, equality, and accessibility for all. Additionally, Greenfield argues that radical transformation will give voice to marginalized and oppressed groups, which, according to Greenfield, is the only way to change the writing center field. To assist this process, methods of tutoring that emphasize individualized instruction should be replaced by more collaborative ways of learning, such as workshops, projects, shared research, writing circles. Greenfield also questions current terms such as “tutor” and “session,” asking whose agenda they serve and why we use these terms. In her vision of the radicalized writing center of the future, there might not be such terms, or they might transform into something yet unknown.

Greenfield’s ultimate plan outlined in Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement is that “The writing center field, because of its size and will. . . holds mighty potential to change the world” (13). While this is an ambitious goal, I find it utopian by nature. Additionally, the lack of detail in

Review of Radical Writing Center Praxis • 84 many of the book’s directives and examples poses problems. For example, as evidence of current writing center practices that promote violence, Greenfield offers an example in which a student brings a text containing violent views to the writing center. Current practices used in writing centers, according to Greenfield, will view the subject matter of the text as a writer’s choice and will not address the content.

Therefore, Greenfield argues, writing center practices might cause or allow students to go into their communities with a political agenda that promotes violence rather than peace. However, the author does not specify what kind of violent views are expressed in the paper or whose views the student’s text represents.

Thus, in this example, there are few details and little evidence to support the claim that writing centers are influencing the world in violent ways.

Moreover, while the book’s intended audience is writing center directors, stakeholders, students, and tutors, these stakeholders are not urged to take on this change themselves. But if not these individuals, then who? Readers may find the lack of clarity on this point problematic, as an absence of clear vision, strategies, and, most importantly, people in charge, will not accomplish any goals. The author calls to “start from ground level and rebuild the writing center anew, imagining radical possibilities for our work unencumbered by the trapping of the past” (85).

However, creating a new paradigm for writing centers completely from scratch by forgetting their rich history could lead to bad outcomes.

Although the book calls for its audience to take risks and assumes that radicals create “a just and peaceful world” (Greenfield 15), from my personal experience of participating in two revolutions in Ukraine (the Orange revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014), the radical movements, though they may have a positive agenda, do not always bring a positive change. Radical changes in Ukraine have led to an unstable political and economic situation for the past 15 years. Furthermore, in the examples I cite here, even though radicals opposed to the government technically won, the Russian Federation used the unstable situation in the capital of Ukraine to its benefit and annexed the Crimea peninsula in 2014.

In terms of literacy, many Ukrainian channels, as well as internet propaganda, have spread fake news to convey false information to the population. It is no wonder that nowadays media literacy courses are being implemented in the universities in Ukraine to fight the armies of fake news and propaganda. In other words, radical changes can sometimes lead to severe problems

for the people who supported and advocated for those radical agendas in the beginning.

Does this mean that writing centers should be resigned to the status quo and set aside transformative ideals like Greenfield’s? No. It means that every change, especially a radical one, needs a clear vision of the goals for the changemakers. Therefore, Greenfield should carefully consider the consequences radical changes can lead to and whether her agenda’s advantages will outweigh some of the challenges that will follow. These challenges include, for example, changing the language of the writing center field.

However, whether new words result in better practices is unclear. Also, it is important to remember that there are many ways to bring about transformation. Garcia discusses reflection and reflexivity as a means of interrogating our own biases, beliefs, assumptions, and identities as they impact writing center practices. These are powerful ways to dismantle various individualistic systems of oppression and power dynamics as well, but they are mentioned only briefly by Greenfield. In my example of the Ukrainian media literacy problem, reflexive practices and critical thinking would help people to recognize fake news and corruption being perpetuated through various media channels. As a reader, I wondered what Greenfield thinks about the concept of reflexivity as a way to evoke radical change from within for those involved in writing center praxis.

Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement is an influential book that invites all writing center administrators, tutors, faculty, composition instructors, graduate students, and other stakeholders to revisit and challenge their common theories and practices. While many readers will find the author’s idealism inspiring, the plausibility of the radical changes proposed in the book also remains problematic.

Works Cited Denny, Harry, et al. “Tell Me Exactly What It Was That I Was Doing That Was So Bad” Understanding the Needs and Expectations of Working-Class Students in Writing Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, 2018, pp. 67-100.

Garcia, Romeo. “Unmaking Gringo-Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, 2017, pp. 29-60.

Greenfield, Laura. Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement. Logan: Utah State UP, 2019.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 17, No 2 (2020) www.praxisuwc.com