Published on The Writing Instructor (http://writinginstructor.com)
English Education Mentoring
Training ESOL Instructors and Tutors for
Online Conferencing
Author(s):
Beth L. Hewett and Robert Lynn
Publication History:
The Writing Instructor, September 2007
Introduction
Individualized conferencing, a situation where instructors and tutors work individually
with students, is one traditional way in which students whose first language is not
English (ESOL) can receive help as they learn and practice their English speaking and
writing skills. With face-to-face conferencing, for instance, ESOL students experience the
individualized attention that they need given their varying educational, cultural, and
language learning backgrounds. To some degree, as professional discussions have
demonstrated, instructors and tutors need different skills and attitudes when assisting
ESOL students from those they use with native speakers of English. For example, Judith
Powers, in a much cited and often reprinted article, explains that because an
instructor/tutor and ESOL student may not have a shared background or experiences in
writing English, collaborative strategies that many have found successful with native
speaking students do not always work (97).[1] Indeed, ESOL writers tend to be working
with unfamiliar language, audience, and written genres and forms. Therefore, Powers
suggests such “differences in the educational, rhetorical, and cultural contexts” of ESOL
writers make the collaborative stance common to contemporary tutoring and teaching
practices less useful than the role of “informant” who provides “direct” help (98–99). She
notes that her own writing center staff required an “attitude adjustment” on the part of the
tutors in that “ESL writers bring different contexts to conferences than native speakers do,
that they are, therefore, likely to need different kinds of assistance from us, and that
successful assistance to ESL writers may involve more intervention in their writing
processes than we consider appropriate with native-speaking writers” (100–101).
Powers’ thinking seems to have resonated with writing and writing center professionals,
who subsequently have debated the nature of “intervention” when it comes to assisting
ESOL students. For example, Susan R. Blau, John Hall, and Tracy Strauss employ
linguistic analysis of an ESOL student’s tutorial session to discuss “three recurring
rhetorical strategies that led to insights about the nature of the tutor/client relationship”
(22): questions, echoing, and qualifiers. They argue for intervention in the form of
directive teaching when it clearly is necessary or when the tutor clearly knows the
“answer” to a problem. In such a case, the authors think, indirection wastes “already
too-short time they had to spend with their clients” (38). On the other hand, Jane Cogie,
Kim Strain, and Sharon Lorinskas argue that the role of cultural informant to ESOL
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writers, as outlined by Powers, could lead tutors—such as their own staff—“to feel that
too often this role, at least when sentence-level errors were concerned, tended to
translate into the tutor editing and the student observing” (7). To address such concerns,
the authors added to their tutors’ repertoire these strategies: use of a learner’s dictionary,
minimal marking, error logs, and self-editing checklist—all of which were intended to
promote self-editing practices (9).[2]
As these discussions of traditional face-to-face ESOL conferencing suggest, no
approach to individual instruction is without its supporters and critics, a situation that
seems crucial to developing critical theory and practice. Similarly, ESOL conferencing
that occurs in online settings through either asynchronous or synchronous modalities
shares this requirement for critical discernment. Indeed, critical discernment seems
particularly important in regard to whether the differences that apply to assisting ESOL
students in traditional face-to-face settings require additional adjustments in instructional
practice when the conference moves to online settings.
Online instruction often has been called a hybrid form of communication, somewhere
between talking and text (see, for example, Faigley; Kimball “Cybertext”), and thus
familiar on some level to any instructor who has engaged in both spoken instruction and
written commentary or other communication.[3] Yet, according to Beth L. Hewett and
Christa Ehmann:
. . . few straightforward transitions exist between traditional (face-to-face) and
online contexts because, we believe, there is something fundamentally
different about teaching and learning in the virtual medium. Even our most
seasoned face-to-face instructors found themselves needing to develop new
repertoires of strategies and skills—among these becoming familiar with the
technological media, navigating text-based modes of communication,
learning asynchronous and synchronous modalities, establishing rapport in a
virtual medium, and translating primarily oral teaching strategies into a
text-based environment. But these repertoires did not come easily to our
instructors. (xiii)
In “Cybertext/Cyberspeech: Writing Centers and Online Magic,” Sara Kimball appears to
agree, explaining that there are essential differences between teaching online and
simply writing to a student: “In working online, we are not, however, simply talking in text.
Instead, we are working in a medium that people perceive and react to both as text and
as conversation” (31). Although her general purpose may be to improve what
professionals know about face-to-face instructional interactions, Kimball writes: “We
should try to understand the nature of online exchanges, respecting and interrogating
the medium in which we work, trying not to be distracted by unexamined assumptions we
bring from our experiences as speakers or writers, trying, instead, to learn from them”
(45). At a minimum, online program directors must address likely concerns regarding
whether their staff (and, by extension, their students/tutees) can achieve the atmosphere
that makes them effective and comfortable in a traditional instructional setting without
eye contact and actual voices.
Relatively little has been written about ESOL conferencing when the instruction occurs
online. A few examples from tutor-specific literature help to demonstrate this gap. For
example, in James A. Inman’s and Donna N. Sewell’s Taking Flight with OWLs:
Examining Electronic Writing Center Work, Andy Curtis and Tim Roskams offer the only
discussion pertinent to ESOL tutoring online. They report on an affective study they
conducted in Hong Kong regarding a combined writing center/networked writing lab. The
students involved expressed varying levels of satisfaction, disappointment, and
“demotivation” from the peer feedback they received and the sometimes overwhelming
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amount of information they received in the synchronous modality (39). The authors find
that both tutors and peer respondents could benefit from training and preparation when
working with ESOL students in online settings—a situation that we think also includes
instructors who conference online—and they position their study as one that begins to
address “a significant gap in scholarship about electronic writing center work” (29, 39).
Eric Hobson’s (Ed.) Wiring the Writing Center, while certainly an important look at the
state of online writing centers in 1998, is a good example of how online ESOL tutoring
practices have been underrepresented. Generally, the subject is addressed by a few
words in a chapter, hinting at ESOL strategies rather than illuminating them; for example,
Barbara Monroe suggests that tutors may naturally treat ESOL students with somewhat
“more deference and less humor” (18). Kimball (“WAC”) simply points out that ESOL
students are addressed on her writing center’s website as among other “special needs”
students (67), while Neal Lerner (127, 135) and Ellen Mohr (156–57) briefly consider
how skill-specific software might have some benefit for ESOL students.
In The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, a tutoring guide that is focused on
helping tutors to develop overall skills, Paula Gillespie and Lerner address online and
ESOL tutoring in separate chapters. They provide some helpful suggestions that debunk
common misconceptions about working with ESOL students, as well as a brief, “early
thinking” chapter regarding online tutoring that engages the strengths of “best practices”
of face-to-face tutoring in the online setting. But, in what seems to be a pattern common
both to professional literature and training manuals, there is no mutual discussion of
online ESOL tutoring that more specifically might help those who conference with ESOL
students through online technology. Similarly, in Ben Rafoth’s A Tutor’s Guide: Helping
Writers One to One, there are two separate articles regarding online (Cooper, Bui, and
Riker) and ESOL tutoring (Ritter). Although Jennifer J. Ritter does address online tutoring
of ESOL students briefly by advising tutors to write questions that reveal their
(mis)understanding of the text and models for correcting the language problems
(107–108), she somewhat reflexively points readers back to George Cooper, Kara Bui,
and Linda Riker’s chapter for more assistance. Even a recent text developed to assist
ESOL tutors, Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth’s ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center
Tutors, has only one chapter relevant to online issues (Rafoth), which focuses only on
asynchronous essay tutoring. Rafoth considers how tutors read the student papers
(whether as assimilationist, accommodationist, or separatist) in his writing center, and he
interviews participants to determine advice for improving their practices.
There also exist some useful discussions that are largely centered on technology-based
instruction with language teachers, who may also “tutor” if not in the traditional sense of
the word at least in the one-to-one conferencing sense of it. For example, Aaron Doering
and Richard Beach discuss how pre-service ESOL teachers can more deeply
experience practice online instruction with available technology tools in ways that might
help their students (e.g., developing intertextual connection skills, “links” through
hypermedia and collaborative issue exploration, and multiple voices/perspectives).
Similarly, in a research study of technology-based language choices, Carla Meskill,
Jonathan Mossop, Stephen DiAngelo, and Rosalie K. Pasquale find that training
language teachers online can help them to overcome novice tendencies to
non-reflexively appropriate technology in their practices by helping them to
conceptualize their practice beyond mere mastery of the routines and language of new
instructional contexts. More such discussions would be helpful to writing professionals
as they broaden the focus from writing center tutorials to other conference-based and
group-based ESOL instructional settings.
As this brief literature review suggests, the subject of training educators to work with
ESOL students in online settings has been underrepresented in the professional
literature. There is a need to explore ESOL conferencing in online settings with the goal
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of developing sound instructor training. Doing so may reveal ways to improve theory and
practice with regard to assisting ESOL students using a variety of educational
technology. It is time to develop a deeper understanding of the processes and strategies
that may work best with ESOL writers who receive their instruction and tutoring online
through synchronous and asynchronous modalities. Our own experiences with online
instruction, training, and program development suggest that instructors need to be
acquainted with some of the ways that assisting ESOL writers online both may and may
not require new skill and thinking repertoires. Therefore, we conceive this article as a
practical addition to the literature relevant to online conference-based ESOL instruction.
Training ESOL Instructors
This article is a demonstration of some of the practical strategies common to ESOL
conferencing that may require different consideration in various online settings. We
present these online strategies through three conference-based cases where the ESOL
instructors would have benefited from additional training specific to conferencing online:
a synchronous “chat” that resembles a transcript of face-to-face interaction, a
synchronous whiteboard interaction that uses both text and graphical tools, and an
asynchronous interaction that engages local embedded and global end commentary.
After each example, we present a discussion of ESOL-based concerns that might need
to be addressed somewhat differently in an online setting. We hope that readers will find
these cases helpful both as a practical extension of the professional discussion about
ESOL conferencing in online settings and as material for developing their own
instructor-training programs.
Before we begin our exploration of strategies helpful to assisting ESOL students online,
we want to set the stage. We look to training any instructor for online settings less as a
platform-specific (software) concern than as a modality-specific (synchronous or
asynchronous) one. In other words, instructor-trainers will be using a variety of software,
which can change rapidly, so we will not discuss how one might introduce any particular
program. No one, of course, feels comfortable with any computer program without using
it extensively, and extensive use may in itself convince trainees that online conferencing
is right for them. For example, trainees will generally find as they learn to navigate the
software how easy it is to use hyperlinks to expand or reinforce points made in a
conference. This ability often will help them to realize that online conferences are not just
a convenience for night-owl students, but a superior delivery system for certain kinds of
information. Beyond platform and modality, the obvious advantage of hyperlinks and
other features available only online may create real enthusiasm for online conferencing,
but it will do little to deal with the other common concern of trainees—the fear that two
people peering at computer screens will never be able to interact as instructors and
students should. This fear needs to be addressed explicitly throughout the training, not
simply by assurances from old hands but by an immersion process in which trainees
themselves can see online conferencing in action, note successes and failures in
conferencing sessions, and develop processes that will help them in their own
conferencing.[4]
The three authentic cases that follow engage some common online platforms to
demonstrate real-life conferences at the post-secondary level.[5] One way to use these
cases is to give trainees the transcripts with instructions to read a transcript carefully and
come to the next session ready to point out what went right, what went wrong, and how
the session could have been improved. In addition, trainees might be encouraged to
consider how the nature of the ESOL writer does or does not inform particular parts of the
interaction. We have followed each case with our own discussion of it, and in the course
of the case discussions we highlight ten recommendations that may be familiar in any
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conference setting, but that seem to require different strategies when training ESOL
instructors for online settings:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Know how to “give face”
Sell yourself as a tutor
Make an art of “clock watching”
Find out what the student wants
Learn how to talk to a particular student
Know what you’re talking about
Proofread
Contextualize the conference
Use clear language
Teach by doing
As a matter of course, we think that correctness of advice ought to be considered the first
priority, and to that end, we recommend that every ESOL instructor have either online or
hard copy access to a reliable handbook and an English learner’s dictionary.
Additionally, we suggest that program directors provide both experienced instructors and
instructor-trainees some form of systematic feedback that will enable them to perfect their
own understanding of ESOL instruction and of conducting that instruction online.
Beyond issues of correctness, trainee discussion groups most likely will come up with
many of the same recommendations as these on their own, and of course trainers who
use our cases are welcome to use, alter, or ignore our discussions as well. Thus, in
addition to this article’s primary goal of extending the professional discussion relevant to
ESOL conferencing in online settings, it may be used as training material from which one
might develop other recommendations or suggestions that apply specifically to ESOL
conferencing or, more broadly, it may be adapted to teaching writing in most one-to-one
situations.
Online ESOL Conferencing Cases
Case 1: Online Synchronous Chat Conference
Sam: I have question about the use of “that”
Marian: Hi there! I’m Marian. What’s your name? done
Sam: A. “It is a truth universally acknowledged , that a single man in possession of
a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” B. “Allow me to say, however , that your
fair partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often
repeated.” C. “I remember hearing you once say, Mr Darcy , that you hardly ever
forgave , that your resentment once created was unappeasable.” D. “for give me
leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with
the highest rank of the kingdom – provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at
the same time maintained.” these are all from same book. why the author used
comma before that sometimes, but not other times? Usually when we write, we use
“that” without a comma. can you explain?
Marian: I’ll be happy to, but first I do need a little more information from you. Could
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you tell me your name, and what sort of assignment you’re working on? done
Sam: my name is sam. dont make me lack of patience, just explain. this is not any
thing like assignment. I read to notice and learn things. if you can’t answer say it
Marian: Sam, I’ll be happy to explain, but I do need to ask you to be civil when you
speak to me. done
Sam: Please explain.
Marian: Well, actually one of the commas you’ve underlined is an error, or at least
it would be today. You’re reading a book that’s almost two hundred years old, and
the rules for using commas
have changed in that time. done
Sam: so novels are not correct English? famous novels even?
Marian: As I’ve said, even a famous novel from long ago won’t follow all today’s
rules for things like commas. And even a novel published this year may have a few
“mistakes,” especially when an author is trying for some special effects. Does that
make sense? done
Sam: you don’t answer my question. wasting my time.
Marian: I’m trying to answer. Let’s look at your examples again. The comma in your
sentence A is just plain wrong by today’s rules. I know it’s a famous sentence from
a famous novel, but today
everyone would consider that comma an error. Okay? done
Sam: but the novel is English, not American. are you English?
Marian: No, but believe me, in England today that particular comma would also be
wrong. You were right when you said earlier that today we don’t use commas
before “that” in situations like this.
Sam: so all those commas are error?
Marian: No, just that first one. The commas you underlined in sentences B and C
are quite correct. But don’t think of them as “commas before that” in these cases.
Instead, think of the sentence B
comma as one of two commas around “however.” Think of the sentence C comma
as one of two around “Mr. Darcy.” Do you see what I mean? done
Sam: youre not clear. incompetent. you need skills, but you lack.
Marian: I’ve tried to help you, but I’m sorry to say we’ve almost run out of the
available time. If you want to complain, you can click back to our tutoring center
home page and make a complaint.
Sam: I will but first let me call you an idiot.
(Student disconnects. )
Discussion
We begin our examination of ESOL conferences with the online synchronous chat
conference, a format that closely resembles the dialogue and give-and-take of the
traditional face-to-face conference. Our first example is a synchronous chat conference
session that clearly has gone wrong, and we want to assure readers who are relatively
new to online conferencing that, while it did indeed occur, it is not typical. Most
instructors will never encounter such a truculent student as Sam; on the contrary,
instructors with traditional writing center experience may find that students (and
instructors as well, for that matter) behave better screen-to-screen than face-to-face.
We present this extreme example, though, because it raises some issues that lurk
beneath the surface of quite a few conferencing sessions that are much less painful. In
every session, a student comes not only with a specific request for information or
guidance, but also with a personality and a personal history. In the case of ESOL
students, that personal history may well include years of frustration and defeat, and a
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maddening feeling that they will never manage to reach the level of competence and
sophistication that they attained long ago in their first language. Students are at the same
time sizing up their instructors, and their past dealings with instructors are shaping their
reactions to each new experience. Similarly, in every conferencing session an instructor
is presenting a persona intended to help the student, and simultaneously is trying to get
an accurate sense of the new student’s needs and attitudes.
Marian, with her consistently positive and helpful tone, presents exactly the persona that
most online instructors find suitable. She is ready to assert her authority when necessary,
as in her request at line 18 that Sam “be more civil when you speak to me,” but she’s
also ready to get back to her normal, rather chatty style as soon as possible.
Marian’s early assessment of Sam seems to be that she is faced with an unusual student
with a strong will, and her assessment seems entirely sensible. If his account can be
trusted, he is teaching himself, or at least supplementing the other ESOL instruction he is
receiving, by reading very advanced material and using it as a source for pointers on
grammar and punctuation. Marian must be somewhat uneasy with Sam’s approach,
given the obvious difference between the task he’s set himself and his present linguistic
competence. Writing with shorthand words like “u” for “you” and lack of capitalization are
common practices in online chat forums; this case illustrates the latter practice regarding
non-capitalization of formal nouns and sentence beginnings. Yet, there are some
specific markers in Sam’s talk that indicate his ESOL linguistic level. People who are still
writing things like “from same book” (line 12) and “dont make me lack of patience” (line
16) aren’t usually considered ready for Jane Austen.
Marian very quickly formulates two goals for this session, and they seem to us to be
appropriate. First, she wants to assure him that he shouldn’t start putting commas before
“that” in the kind of construction he’s concerned with here. Further, she wants—if
possible—to move him away from using early nineteenth-century texts as guides to
twenty-first century usage. The goals are excellent, Marian’s tone is appropriate, and her
information is accurate, yet the session turns (or remains) sour. Perhaps nothing could
have worked really well for Sam on this particular day, but Marian could have made
things a bit better by paying more attention to Sam’s need for “face,” by “selling” her own
qualifications more than she did, and by watching the clock more carefully toward the
end of the session.
Recommendation 1: Know how to “give face”
We get the expression “saving face” from Chinese, which also is the source of the very
useful phrase “giving face.” One native Chinese-speaking colleague explains the
concept of “face” as: “showing your respect for people; avoiding anything that would
embarrass them; trying to praise and making sure that necessary criticism isn’t
aggressive.” Saving face, which is a concept similar to self-esteem, involves politeness
strategies (Grundy 133; see also Brown and Levinson) that may seem especially
necessary in online settings. As educators, we recognize that online conference-based
instruction—for both native and non-native speakers—is like any other writing instruction
in that novice writers are submitting their work for review and tend to have anxiety about
what the reader will say; one’s “face” is always at risk.
Sam appears to be a person with a great need for face, a need that isn’t satisfied in this
session. This is a student who has undertaken an immensely challenging task, all
apparently on his own initiative. We imagine him as someone who reads serious
literature in his own language, and has decided it’s time to recover his self-respect by
getting away from all the simplified “baby English” he feels he’s been given in his ESOL
classes. Marian does an excellent job of never talking down to Sam—one sees
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throughout that she considers him intelligent, something especially important for ESOL
students to sense—but Sam probably needs more praise than she gives him. Marian
answers Sam’s actual questions very well, but for understandable reasons she misses a
crucial opportunity to reduce his combativeness. Given Sam’s need for face, how could
Marian have engaged the online technology to show such respect?
Because he cannot see her facial expression or body language to receive reassurance
from them, Marian needs to use words in explicitly encouraging ways and, perhaps,
emoticons like smile faces J and winks ;) to meet Sam’s affective needs. For example,
immediately after Sam reveals that he reads tough material “to notice and learn things”
(line 17), he really deserves praise for his effort and ambition, but Marian is quite
naturally upset by his impoliteness and misses the chance to give him the face he seems
to need so much. Similar praise could have been given later in the session, but it would
have been easier to make a face-giving remark here, before more hostility made Marian
feel even more defensive.
Recommendation 2: Sell yourself as an instructor
Every student will have some doubts about a new instructor, and Sam reveals early on
(as in “if you can’t answer say it” at line 17) that he’s not one to give ESOL instructors any
sort of automatic respect. We never would suggest claiming authority by anything as
crude as “I’ll have you know that I graduated with honors from XYZ University,” but there
are subtler ways of showing that one is worth listening to as an instructor. Marian knows
that she’s dealing with a hypercritical student, but she doesn’t show much interest in
establishing her credentials, though she has an excellent chance to do so.
Marian correctly says that the sentences Sam quotes were written about two hundred
years ago, and she refers to sentence “A” as “a famous sentence from a famous novel”
(line 30). It seems likely, then, that she recognizes that the novel is Pride and Prejudice
and that sentence “A” is the novel’s opening sentence. Identifying the novel and the
sentence might have gone a long way toward establishing her credentials with this
student, and expressing her pleasure at talking with a fellow Janeite (even if the
enthusiasm for Austen had to be feigned) might have served the dual purpose of
showing Marian’s credentials and giving face to Sam. This claim also would have helped
Marian later to express regret that Austen’s novels aren’t the right models for present-day
usage, and it might have made Sam receptive to a suggestion about reading
contemporary writers like Joan Didion and Amy Tan.
We suspect that Sam also would have accepted Marian’s guidance more readily if she
had been ready to speak like an “expert” once in a while.[6] We don’t recommend
pontificating as a way of helping most students, but Sam might have shown more respect
for Marian if she had, at about line 29, made some sort of declaration like this: “In
general, the trend for the last three centuries has been to use commas less and less, so
many things written long ago now seem over-punctuated by today’s standards.”
Instructors might feel diffident at first about sounding so authoritative, especially when
their training may lead them to be nondirective and collaborative with their students.
However, in an online setting especially, speaking like an expert requires that an ESOL
instructor put one’s aptitude and knowledge in writing (which carries, by the way, the
concomitant requirement that one be correct in one’s statement). Most ESOL students
would welcome a clear statement of how English works when such a statement is
possible. They hear enough of things like “Maybe it’s just my feeling, but . . .” since there
are many times when that’s all we can honestly say, so when an instructor can offer a
reliable rule, he or she should be encouraged to do so.
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Recommendation 3: Make an art of clock-watching
When Sam erupts in a final round of abuse and then disconnects, it’s in response to
Marian’s attempt to show him why sometimes one does see a perfectly correct comma
preceding the word “that” (lines 36–39). It’s obvious to us as we watch Marian work
through this session that she knows what she’s talking about and can present the facts
about English usage with clarity, but Sam’s claim here is that she’s “not clear.”
And maybe Sam has a point. What Marian says is well worded and completely accurate,
but she’s compressing into three typed sentences an idea that most teachers would
spend at least two minutes on if they were addressing a class. A classroom teacher
probably would start by getting students to agree that “however” and “Mr. Darcy”
constitute little breaks in the flow of the sentences they’re in. Next, one might have the
class come up with their own parenthetical expressions to inject into sentences
containing “that,” and might even introduce the term “parenthetical expression” to the
class. One of us usually erases the commas, supplies parentheses in their place, and
then goes back to commas, trying to show how necessary it is to complete the set of
commas. Finally, one would get to Marian’s main point, which is that using a comma
before “that” in this situation doesn’t mean that we should write, “Many people believe,
that the economy is improving.”
Marian probably goes through a similar routine when this sort of question comes up in a
classroom or with a student in a traditional setting, but she’s working in a conferencing
situation where time and space limits may be observed to increase accessibility to
students. Although she doesn’t have a lot of time left in this conference, she could take a
little more time with this material—perhaps even pasting into the chat window a
pre-prepared “template” example of this common problem to solidify her lesson. Further,
Marian could use textual aids available in many chat platforms like font size and color,
highlighting, and formatting to aid her teaching.
All instructors come up against problems of this sort, and there is no perfect way to deal
with them. It’s unlikely in this case that Marian could have hurried things along earlier in
the session, so here at the end she is left with very few choices. If Marian is working for
an online program where students can sign up for, or connect to, a new session right
away, then probably her best option would be to say at line 36 something like, “The
commas underlined in sentences ‘B’ and ‘C’ are quite correct. I’d like to show you why
those commas are needed there, Sam, but I see that our time is almost up, and we’re not
allowed to go over our time limit. You can, though, sign up for a second conference
tonight, and I think we’ll be able to clear up any questions you have about those commas
in just ten minutes or so. Would you like to do that, Sam?”
If a same-day follow-up session is not allowed under the center’s rules, then Marian can
(a) invite her student to sign up for another session on another day, (b) avoid launching
herself into this topic altogether, or (c) try for a mini-explanation. The mini-explanation
that she writes about commas in lines 36–39 is well conceived, but so tightly packed that
most students will be confused by it.
Case 2: Online Synchronous Whiteboard Conference
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Discussion
A conference, whether it takes place online or in a traditional instructional setting, is a
conversation, and in principle is tailored to the needs and abilities of the student. For
example, both Marian in Case 1 and Dennis in Case 2 (above) apply conversational
strategies that signal turn-taking, such as the word “done,” “end,” or “stop” to indicate the
speaker is finished typing.[7] This short conference takes place using a synchronous
electronic whiteboard, which shares the advantages of a chalkboard in terms of writing
and drawing flexibility, as well as its spatial limitations, while also allowing some chat to
occur. Case 2 reveals a session that never becomes a true conference, however, since
Dennis makes no attempt to deal with Raghbir as an individual with particular needs.
Dennis tries to look behind the student’s words to sense her intentions and he makes
some guesses about what she wants, but he never checks out his guesses. Furthermore,
even though Dennis makes good use of the whiteboard’s graphic tools to emphasize his
meaning and to guide his student, he demonstrates that he’s unable to handle the
subject he thinks he should be presenting to Raghbir.
Recommendation 4: Find out what the student wants
Raghbir says she wants to know how “to identify clause” (line 01), and Dennis
immediately thinks he knows what she’s asking for. As we said of Case 1, a synchronous
conference session tends to have the look and feel of a dialogue in its give-and-take,
one-to-one nature. While a synchronous whiteboard session naturally has the same
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capacity, this example reveals a conference that is highly monologic in that Dennis asks
for no clarification from Raghbir before proceeding with his explanation. Raghbir’s
question actually could have meant:
How do I know that a group of words is a clause rather than a phrase?
How do I know whether a clause is dependent or independent?
How do I know whether I’m looking at a noun clause, an adjective clause, or an
adverbial clause?
Can you help me understand what my book says about restrictive and
non-restrictive adjective clauses?
My teacher uses a lot of obscure terms for adverbial clauses, things like
concession, contrast, and purpose. Can you make sense of those categories for
me?
Without finding out what’s on Raghbir’s mind, Dennis spends the entire session on
matters that have no connection with what Raghbir thinks she needs—and her final
question (“what kind of clause was ur example?”) reveals this instructional disconnect.
Recommendation 5: Learn how to talk to a particular student
Before launching into his mini-lecture on clauses, Dennis knows, as far as we can see,
almost nothing about the student. He knows that her name is Raghbir Kaur, and he can
reasonably guess from that name that she’s a female Sikh. He may be correct if he
assumes that her first language is Punjabi, but that’s about as far as he can go. However,
if Dennis wants to conduct a real, personal tutorial, even if all his guesses are correct,
this information isn’t nearly enough to go on. And, of course, he could be quite wrong,
especially about the question of what Raghbir’s first language is. Most Sikhs are indeed
Punjabis, but there are converts to Sikhism who speak no Punjabi at all, and a Sikh child
whose family is established in an English-speaking country may very well be more
comfortable in English than in Punjabi.
It’s not unusual for online instructors and tutors to find themselves unable to decide
whether a student is or is not a native speaker of English; in this case, as in many, there
is no reliable way to reach a decision. Raghbir’s omission of the article when she writes
“the easiest way to identify clause” may tell us that she’s an ESOL student, but then
again that omission may just be a typo. Her ease with the online style when she writes
“ur example” and “are u there” may indicate native-speaker fluency, or it may show only
that she’s part of the international online culture. Given only this sample of Raghbir’s
writing, no tutor could say much about her linguistic situation.
If Dennis had chatted with Raghbir for a while, rather than holding forth on clauses
immediately, he might have proceeded with a much better sense of who Raghbir was.
Dennis shouldn’t, of course, waste time and violate the unwritten rules of respecting
online privacy by asking Raghbir personal questions. There’s no need to know, for
instance, where she lives or what her college major is, though he may want to ask what
course she happens to be taking that pays special attention to clauses, and whether
she’s preparing for an exam on clauses or just trying to understand her instructor’s
warning that her writing shows problems with clauses.
In some way, though, he needs to get a sense of what Raghbir already knows. He’ll
inevitably be discussing grammar in this tutorial, and he needs to decide quickly what, if
any, technical terms he can count on Raghbir knowing. This information is crucial, but it
needn’t be collected by asking direct questions like “How long have you studied
English?” or “Do you understand terms like ‘subordinating conjunction’ or ‘finite verb’?” If
Dennis had spent some time asking more about what Raghbir really wants in this
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session, her answers—not only what she said, but how she said it—would probably
have given him all the information he needed to adjust his language and general
approach to her needs and her level of knowledge.
In the end, knowing Raghbir’s ESOL or non-ESOL status is not really crucial. Good tutors
don’t address all native English speakers in the same way, and there’s no reason that
they should automatically shift into some sort of “ESOL-Speak” when addressing
non-native speakers. As much as we can, we should be speaking to every student as an
individual, and we cannot do that unless we take some time to interact with them before
answering their requests.
Recommendation 6: Know what you’re talking about
Readers who know a good deal about grammar will realize that Dennis is talking
nonsense here. Readers with less training in the mysteries of grammar should make an
effort to unlearn anything they think they absorbed while reading this session. We can’t
find a single sentence in the lecture that makes a clear and correct statement about the
things he’s discussing, and in some places—such as where he tells Raghbir that it’s just
fine to attach a dependent clause to a sentence by means of a semicolon—he’s giving
her advice that, if followed, will result in more red marks on her essays. The textual
nature of an online conference may automatically lend the instructor’s words weight, so
that even if the student—like Sam in Case 1—doesn’t necessarily respect the instructor
as an authority, he or she probably will expect the conference’s advice to be correct.
Further, he may show the archived transcript to his or her teacher or share it with another
ESOL student as a study aid. Thus, it is especially critical that ESOL instructors know
what they are talking about when they instruct online.
In Case 2, we’re assuming that Dennis is working within a writing center—online or
otherwise—that encourages students to ask questions about English grammar. Such a
writing center implies that students will receive reliable answers. Raghbir may or may not
be an ESOL student, but there is nothing specifically ESOL-related about her question.
Her uncertainties about clauses are shared by most native speakers taking college
English classes, and, unfortunately, Dennis hasn’t provided information that would help
any student. Such problems need to be addressed in Dennis’ training, but he also could
help himself (and Raghbir) by having a reliable writing handbook by his computer.
Case 3: Online Asynchronous Essay Conference
Paragraph Version 3 with Conference (Instructor Local Comments in Bold/Brackets):
Essay Title: “computers”
Course: intro to writing
Assignment description: compare and contrast paragraph
Help requested: grammar and mechanics
Even though laptops and desktops are computers, they have sizes, costs, special
features, and profitability. [Shouldn’t you be using another phrase in place of “even
though”? It sounds as though you are suggesting that all the items in the list are not
essential features of computers.] Many computers have been manufactured in
numerous models over the years. The two most common models are the laptops and the
desktop. The average size of a laptop is seven pounds and a desktop is about 25 lbs.
The cost of laptop is $1000 more expensive on price, than a the desktop. [And I hink you
may want the phrase in price rather than on price. To cost in price means the actual
cost.] Also for work purposes the laptop is more helpful because it seven pounds, and is
not considered a desktop sitting on one place. Special features that are used in both
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computers are, CD drives, music ability, and getting to the internet. If using a laptop both
at work and in home, it is better because it is more profitable than the desktop. [I think
that you may have used the wrong word: profitable than the desktop. Do you mean
portable instead of profitable? Also, at work and in home don’t match.] If using the
desktop, it is less profitable so it is too heavy to carry to work. No matter what choice the
person makes, the same result remain that laptops and desktops are different in many
ways. [Zakaria, please watch out for subject-verb number agreement. Singular
subjects take on singular verbs and plural subjects take on plural verbs. How would
you correct this? Hint: Subjects with the “s” at the end are usually plural, and verb
with “s” at the end are usually singular.]
Instructor Global Comments:
Hi, Zakaria. My name is Richard and I’m your tutor today. Although I certainly
understand, from your development of the paragraph, that this paragraph is going to
be a strong contrast/comparison between the two models, and although your main
idea is very solid, I do not get a good start to this paragraph. So, in response to your
main idea, I can definitely say that it is a good idea, well developed and made
interesting to your readers, your introductory sentences are very confusing.
Zakaria, one of the basic problems you have is with comma usage. You don’t need a
comma before the first item of a list. For instance, in, “Even though laptops and
desktops are computers, they have, sizes, costs, special features, and profitability,” there
is no need of a comma before “sizes.” When you enclose phrases with commas, or if
there is a phrase between a comma and a period, you can check if the comma use is
correct by seeing whether you can enclose the phrase within brackets without
changing the meaning of the sentence. Good luck revising, Zakaria. I’ll be happy to
look at your next draft!
Discussion
Conferencing online through the asynchronous medium can be challenging because it
is difficult to know whether the student will “get it” or not. However, if we view the
asynchronous essay conference as one where students participate and “talk” through
their submission requests and their subsequent revision choices, then it becomes easier
to see the conversational and dialogical aspects of this kind of conferencing.[8] In Case
3, the conference goes off-track from its beginning because Richard doesn’t see
Zakaria’s paragraph within a fuller context. Further, he appears confused about what
Zakaria is communicating and then provides confusing advice to Zakaria, missing
opportunities to teach (rather than tell) about writing.
Recommendation 7: Contextualize the conference
There are a number of ways to contextualize an asynchronous conference—to
understand what the student is presenting through a piece of writing without face-to-face
or synchronous interaction. One of the distinct benefits of this type of conferencing is that
generally it provides instructors with the time to think about the writing and what it says
about the writer’s needs.
Contextualizing can mean having access to an electronic archive where one can view
previous essay conferences. With such access (and usually with just a few keystrokes),
instructors can figure out to what extent previous conferences may have been successful
by doing an electronic document comparison of a previous draft to the current one.
Where there is no change at all or only surface level change, a student most likely has
misunderstood the previous conference, indicating a lack of communication from
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instructor to student. If too much has changed in the ESOL writer’s draft that is not
supported either by demonstrated competence in previous writing or the prior
conference, then the student may have been too frustrated to complete the next draft
through his or her own abilities and sought the assistance of a native speaker, who then
provided too much “help.” Below, is a fictional example of the second possibility, where
Zakaria’s present linguistic abilities suggest that a native speaker has written most of the
revision (see underlines):
Over the past century, computers have been manufactured in various models.
The two most common types of these models are the laptop and the desktop.
Even though laptops and desktops are similar in many ways, they have
significant differences: size and weight, cost, special features, and range of
uses.
If Richard had looked in his archives and compared previous conferences for context, he
would have seen that Zakaria has submitted three drafts of Case 3’s paragraph, of which
the complete conference above is the third. Draft 2 would show absolutely no changes
from Draft 1. This lack of change indicates that despite the first instructor’s efforts to teach
him about topic development or sentence rules, Zakaria might have been too confused
to revise his paragraph at all. Of course, one also could think that Zakaria simply was
waiting for someone to “do it for him” as with our fictional example above, but we prefer
to take a more optimistic view of ESOL students—that they want help and will use it well
when it is presented clearly enough.
But what if there aren’t previous conferences for Richard to review either because the
submission is the student’s first one or because the writing center doesn’t archive
conferences? How could Richard contextualize this conference? There are at least two
things that instructors can do in such a case. The first possible step is to look to the
student’s submission form for the course, assignment, and writing genre. This is a
common first step that instructors usually are trained to do in face-to-face or synchronous
online environments. Zakaria has stated that he’s in an introductory writing class and that
he is supposed to write a “comparison and contrast paragraph.” Zakaria’s general
linguistic competence, as evidenced by expressions like “at work and in home” and “The
cost of laptop is $1000 more expensive on price,” suggests that he needs ESOL
instruction. Richard probably has read Zakaria’s submission request and he most likely
knows that in this single paragraph Zakaria’s teacher expects the “five paragraph”
structure of introduction/thesis, three main points, and conclusion. So Richard has
contextualized the conference to the degree that he addresses the paragraph as a
“whole” piece and doesn’t suggest that Zakaria write a longer “essay.”
A second step to contextualizing without previous essay submissions is simply to watch
the length of one’s conference. In an asynchronous conference, some instructors try to
make up for the lack of familiar face-to-face contact by writing far more text than the
student has presented. Although instructors may need to explain far more to ESOL
students than to native speakers, we’ve seen a few absurd cases where the instructors
have written up to four times what the student has written, clearly overwhelming even to
competent native speakers! Richard has avoided this trap; his ESOL conference is little
more than one and a half times the length of Zakaria’s paragraph. However, some of
Richard’s advice is written in such a garbled manner as to be meaningless to Zakaria,
who still is struggling with the vocabulary for comparing a laptop to a desktop computer.
In fact, we think that Richard may have erred on the side of too little said in this
conference, another issue of length, in that much of what he says is useless and unclear,
which brings us to Recommendation 8.
Recommendation 8: Use clear language
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In a face-to-face conference, one can “talk around” a “rule” or writing issue until the
student indicates verbally or through body language that he or she understands it.
Similarly, in a synchronous online conference, one has the immediate benefit of student
feedback to ensure that the communication is working. Such feedback doesn’t ensure
against misinformation, as in Case 2 above, where Dennis’ garbled grammar rules
demonstrate that instructors need to know what they are talking about. In an
asynchronous ESOL conference, however, the feedback isn’t immediate—as we
discussed above—but it does come eventually in the student’s revisions. There is
another way to get such feedback, however, and that is from the conference itself.
Instructors can describe a student’s writing by using vocabulary that ESOL students are
likely to have learned, and they can check their conferences for clear (and correct)
language usage, putting themselves in the place of students with lesser linguistic
competence.
It seems obvious that Richard suffers from some of the same basic misunderstandings of
punctuation rules as Dennis, as we can see when he suggests that Zakaria check for
comma correctness by enclosing phrases in a list with imaginary brackets. Aside from
this serious misinformation, however, Richard struggles with the basics of putting into
words what he sees in Zakaria’s writing. Thus he writes in lines 22–23 that even though
he thinks the paragraph will be “strong,” he does “not get a good start to this paragraph.
So, in response to your main idea, I can definitely say that it is a good idea, well
developed and made interesting to your readers, your introductory several sentences
are very confusing.” In this short synopsis, Richard offers a meager attempt at
praise—only he simply predicts future strength and neglects the current paragraph—and
then writes a muddled sentence that reveals Richard’s own confusion. More helpful to
Zakaria would be praise of the current paragraph, which could include (1) Zakaria’s
correct understanding that this paragraph needs a topic sentence, (2) that the topic
sentence rightly includes several points for development, and (3) that each of the points
has at least one sentence devoted to it. Then, since Zakaria has asked for help with
content development, Richard could give face by assuring Zakaria that this request is a
wise choice and then writing questions that prompt more details for each idea.
Another way that Richard misses the chance to use vocabulary that Zakaria will
understand comes in the embedded local commentary. For example, in lines 11–12
Richard offers the word “ portable ” for “profitable,” which doesn’t make sense in context.
Helping an ESOL student by providing the correct word can be a good strategy, as we all
know that one develops vocabulary gradually. However, most ESOL students have
learned a lot of their English from teachers who use formal labels for words. Thus
Zakaria would benefit more if Richard had described profitable and portable as
adjectives that could modify the noun laptop. Richard could then suggest that Zakaria
look up profitable and portable in his English dictionary to see where he went wrong to
begin with. Another place where Richard could use formal vocabulary is in dealing with
the phrases in price,at price, at work, and in home. When Zakaria sees that the issue is
“idiomatic phrasing” that native speakers learn from the cradle, he can feel reassured
that his error isn’t so much that his phrasing doesn’t “match,” as that idiomatic phrasing
requires certain word choices that simply need to be memorized over time.
Crucial to using such clear language in an asynchronous conference are both a good
understanding of elements that comprise a strong piece of writing and experience with
articulating these elements. Even instructors who have taught English writing for years
may need practice articulating in writing what is happening in an essay and how to
address it. We think, however, that such practice makes us all better teachers in any
conference environment. Richard’s program director would do well to provide guided,
individualized practice and assessment through simulated conferences.
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Recommendation 9: Proofread
Checking for clear and correct language choices may be challenging if the instructor is in
a hurry or operating under time limits designed to increase accessibility. Yet checking
one’s written conference is critical if an instructor is to maintain any authority and to be
helpful to the student. Thus, Richard should have caught his mistyping of verb for verbs
in line 18 of the embedded commentary. More important, he has written in line 23–25 of
the global commentary a confusing sentence that many consider to be seriously faulty.
Since it creates an unclear message and its errors mirror those of many students—native
and non-native speakers alike—he should have caught his own faulty sentence caused
by a comma splice. Indeed, we expect that instructors of English, whether they are
professional teachers or less experienced peer tutors, should be able to recognize such
errors in their own writing. In Richard’s case, this error should have signaled to him what
he likely teaches his students: that his own confused sentence needs to be untangled
and rephrased for clarity. Not doing so reveals his own lack of sophistication as a
instructor, which in turn causes an authority crisis in the written conference. How can
Zakaria trust such a confusing and confused instructor, and how can he determine what
parts of the conference he can implement safely?
Recommendation 10: Teach by doing
The final recommendation that we offer is one that every instructor needs to use as often
as possible. If students could learn how to write better simply by being told a rule or to
“do ABC,” then a handbook would be all the supplementary help they would need.
However, ESOL students particularly need—as we all do—not only examples of correct
and clear writing that apply the rule or principle, but also opportunities to practice writing
correctly and to correct their own errors. Thus, Recommendation 10 regards both the
instructor’s need to “show, not tell” and the student’s need for guided opportunities to
“do.”[9]
Richard applies this recommendation at the end of his local commentary to Zakaria
when he explains the subject-verb rule of using an “s” with plural present tense verbs
only. After using a double underline to emphasize the problem area, ensuring that
Zakaria knows where the problem is, Richard asks Zakaria to make the correction
himself. In doing so, Richard gives Zakaria a chance to learn by doing. The conference
would be stronger, however, if Richard had applied this practice in other areas, such as
the troublesome comma rule. As we can see in lines 26–31, Richard has expressed this
rule in a garbled manner and has not asked Zakaria to apply it. Although he has avoided
the urge to “correct” for Zakaria, Richard has not taught Zakaria with examples, nor has
he noted that there are two places in the paragraph where Zakaria can correct this
problem. Had he done so, Richard would have improved the conference not only by
actually teaching a point that Zakaria can model, but also by selling himself as an
instructor and using clearer language. With a chalkboard, a piece of paper, or an
electronic whiteboard, instructors can draw lines and circles to help students make
connections. With synchronous online chats and asynchronous conferences, instructors
can make creative use of bullets, lists, colored highlights, and font style and sizes. Here
is an example that can apply in any setting, face-to-face or online:
RULE: When using commas, be careful not to separate the subject and the verb
of the sentence from the object with a comma. Subjects and their objects belong
together:
INCORRECT: I have, bread, peanut butter, and ham for lunch.
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CORRECT: I have bread, peanut butter, and ham for lunch.
Let’s look at your sentence:
Even though laptops and desktops are computers, they[subject]have[verb],
sizes[object of the verb], costs, special features, and profitability.
Zakaria’s next steps:
Using the model I gave you above, where should you delete the comma from
your sentence? There is a similar error later in your paragraph. Please find the
sentence and correct the comma error using this same pattern.
Conclusion
Certainly, the ten recommendations we have outlined are applicable in any conferencing
setting whether online or face-to-face, with non-native or native speakers of English.
However, as we hope we have demonstrated, the nuances of applying these
recommendations require different strategies in the context of ESOL students who seek
assistance through online media.
Further, we think it is especially important for instructor training program directors to
engage in internal program investigation and empirical research to learn more about the
both theory and strategies for ESOL instruction when it occurs in online settings. Such
research could take advantage of archived conference sessions where investigators can
examine such concerns as student-instructor language, affect, applied revision
strategies, and how these characteristics and products of online ESOL conferences can
improve instructional strategies both specific and global in nature. Particular online
writing programs might find different priorities given their student populations,
administrative expectations, and instructional missions. Whenever possible, we think that
investigators might publish and publicly discuss the results of their research to help fill
the gap in literature relative to teaching and assisting ESOL students in online settings.
Finally, in Appendix 1 and 2, we have provided two additional cases that can be used for
instructor training purposes. Among the recommendations that trainers might explore
with their staff are looking for the intention behind the student’s words, using the
available resources, and developing excellent keyboard skills (a recommendation that
may parallel speaking skills in face-to-face settings). Practicing with such cases, to which
program directors might add selections from their own institutional settings, enables
online instructors to develop greater flexibility and dexterity for instructing non-native
speakers of English. As an added bonus, such practice will help online instructors
develop overall stronger online instructional skills that are applicable to all student
populations.
Notes
1 In a way, the frequent citation and use of this highly practical article speaks volumes for
what has not yet been studied and written about ESOL conferencing practices. In a brief
reference search, the authors found this article printed in three separate sources.
2 See also Sharon A. Meyers, “Reassessing the Proofreading Trap.”
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3 In light of the hybrid nature of online instruction, we will refer to any kind of
educator—to include professional tutors—who works with students in online
conference-based settings as an instructor. Because their experience levels, and
therefore their authority, in ESOL instruction differ in important ways, we will refer to peer
tutors simply as tutors.
4 We recommend that program directors consider engaging the five commonly-held
educational principles that Hewett and Ehmann recommend in Preparing Educators for
Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Practices: investigation, immersion,
individualization, association, and reflection. Investigation, for example, occurs when
one adopts an empirical research strategy that enables a systematic investigation into
one’s training and instructional practices. With a willingness to examine the less
successful elements of one’s program, thoughtful, iteratively-developed change can
occur. Other elements of investigation include identifying specific goals for the research;
plans to use the data to improve training; and whenever possible, sharing the data with
the online trainers and instructors in the program. Immersion involves recognizing the
instructor-trainees as adult learners who can benefit from doing all of their training in
online settings where they will teach; in this way, learning to teach online is experienced
in a low-risk setting where one experiments with and practices new skills.
Individualization calls for systematic training that allows trainees to know where they are
in the process, yet a flexible approach that engages their own learning styles, and
consequentially can reinforce ways to approach students as learners with individual
learning styles. Association provides instructor-trainees with a common social context
wherein they can develop professional relationships with other trainees and
experienced online instructors, as well as achieve human-to-human communication in a
technologically-driven instructional setting. As with immersion, a consciously developed
association can enable educators to practice online communicative and educational
skills that will benefit their students in immeasurable ways. Finally, reflection involves
providing clearly stated and methodical feedback strategies so that instructor-trainees
can develop and internalize effective and relevant self-assessment in an unfamiliar
instructional setting. Opportunities for professional development also are valuable to a
reflective program. See Chapter 2 of Hewett and Ehmann for a complete explanation of
these principles.
5 Using authentic sessions, we slightly modified these 3 cases, as well as the two
appearing in Appendix 1 and 2, with the purpose of protecting the identities of students,
tutors, instructors, and institutions involved. We also adapted Case 1 and Appendix 1
from the whiteboard platform in which they originally occurred to an instant
chat/message platform, as the instructional interactions most clearly followed the
structure of such a text messaging platform and did not use the unique text/graphical
features of a whiteboard session. We gratefully acknowledge Smarthinking for their
generous permission to explore their online Archives and their support of this research.
6 This is a recommendation that Rafoth (“Tutoring”) also addresses, although he
approaches the problem of student trust as one that is connected to non-directive
feedback and the appearance of being “wishy-washy” (102).
7 See also Hewett and Ehmann 122.
8 See Hewett and Ehmann; Hewett, “Theoretical” and “Generating”; also see Coogan.
9 Such processes of teaching by doing relate to similar “discovery” scenarios in Meyer
and Smith’s discussion of working with ESOL-based error patterns (see, for example,
216-217). Such patterns reveal an “interlanguage” or intermediate system for learning
the new language based on rules that he or she understands about it (216).
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102–10.
Appendix 1
Online Synchronous Chat Conference
Lupe: I’m taking Grammar 11 and Writing 11. I have a lot of problems with my
articles. What should I do?
Celia: Hi, I’m Celia! Articles in English can be confusing. Can you give me your
name, and then tell me what is giving you the most trouble?
Lupe: My name is Guadalupe -- just Lupe is nice. I think “The.” How can I use the
second mention of count and non-count nouns?
Celia: Well, you know the right questions and the right words, Lupe! “The” is what
you use when you’ve already mentioned something. You do that because you’ve
already mentioned it; the “something” becomes specific, and “the” is the article to
use when something is specific. Does that make sense?
Lupe: Yes, but they do use “the” when there is only one of something, or in front of
a noun? And that make me confused.
Celia: Lupe, you’re not alone. Lots of people are confused by the use of articles in
English! If you want the honest truth, most of us who are native speakers only know
what to do because it “sounds right,” and not because we can tell you the rules! But
there are some general guidelines and I’ll see if I can help you understand them.
“The” is called a “definite” article – and that means when you use “the” you’re
generally talking about something specific, or definite. Let’s look at some
examples. An apple is a good snack. I used “an” apple because I don’t mean any
particular apple – just any one. The apple on the desk is for my snack. I used
“the” because I mean a very specific apple – the one on the desk. Does that help?
Lupe: I think so.
Celia: Did you have any other sentences you wanted to look at today?
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Lupe: When I say “ Last afternoon I drunk the dark coffee in the word.” Is these
sentences ok?
Celia: Well, I’m a bit confused because you can’t drink coffee in a word. Do you
mean something like in a cup? Or where did you drink the coffee?
Lupe: “world”
Celia: In English that doesn’t make much sense because we don’t think of coffee in
the world. We think of it in a container of some sort, or you can drink it in a place,
but just not in the world. I know that isn’t helping you very much, but it’s the way we
use certain words, and that’s very confusing to someone who isn’t a native
speaker. I’m sure your language does similar things. So, where did you drink the
coffee? Or, where was the coffee that you drank? Let’s start with that.
Lupe : I know “coffee” is non-count but in my language we say these kind of
expression then when I try to write in English it sound like that for me. But I drunk
the coffee in a Cuban restaurant call “Expresso.”
Celia: You’ve got it! You drank “the” coffee in a Cuban restaurant. Why “the”?
Because you’re talking about a specific cup of coffee – the one you drank in a
restaurant! If you say “I drink coffee when I go out to dinner” then you wouldn’t use
“the” because you’re not talking about a specific cup of coffee. But when you say “in
the Cuban restaurant” then you’ve made it a specific cup of coffee – so you use
“the.”
Lupe: Oh, ok. I’m finished Thanks you very much. Bye.
Celia: Bye, Lupe. It was very nice talking with you.
(Student disconnects)
Appendix 2
Online Asynchronous Essay Conference
Asynchronous Conference on Essay (Tutor Local Comments in Bold/Brackets):
Essay Title:“Summer”
Course: ESOL Writing 3
Assignment description: Describe your favorite season
Help requested: check my writing, please
I like summer. The feeling of summer to me is colorful and invigorating. Fortunately, there
are four seasons in the country in which I live. No matter if I live in Japan or America, I
always look forward the summer coming. [We always need the preposition “to” after
“look forward, Naoko.] Summer makes me excited because of the weather, nature and
its activities. I can enjoy many things in this season.
In America, the weather in summer is milder in summer than in the winter or even spring.
Unlike winter, the temperature is always between sixty to ninety degrees fahrenheit in
this season. I think the temperature is suitable for humans. The light winds make us
comfortable when they are blowing. Sometimes we have little rains instead of a
snowstorm. The rains are helpful for the soil, trees and flowers. As a result, the gardens
are revived in summer. [This is going really well, Naoko. You have a lot to say, and you
express yourself clearly. I do have a suggestion here, though. Even in Japan, no one
could accurately talk about the whole country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa or even
just to Kyushu, as having the same weather, right? Here, you’re saying that summer
is the same all over the U.S., but of course that’s not true. How about specifying the
part of this country that you’re talking about?]
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Besides the weather, there is a change in nature. If you notice the sky, you will find the
pretty blue sky becoming more clear and bright. The sun rises at approximately six
o’clock in the morning. When I get up early, the sunshine already permeates
everywhere. The scenery before my eyes is full activity; [We’d say “full of.”] for example,
I see the dense leaves of trees and many kinds of growing flower. I really like this
refreshing season. There are many choices for us to do outdoors in summer. [Do we
“do” a choice? I think we make a choice, or we have choices of things to do.] For
example, I can jog in the park or climbing a mountain. [I notice in going into the files
that your previous tutor talked aboutmaking similar ideas parallel grammatically.
Here, if you say “I can jog” you need to continue the idea with “climb,” not
“climbing.”] I can also go on a picnic with my family on the weekend. In addition,
fly-fishing is a special activity in this season because the trout are active in the summer
where I live. I can follow my husband to go fly-fishing in some particular areas. Here I can
not only enjoy the natural scenery, but also have a lot of fun catching fish. Camping is
one of the popular activities in summer, In any national park, there are many areas
provided for camping. [Check your punctuation in this sentence, please, Naoko.]
There are so many interesting plans in summer that my weekend schedules are always
occupied.
Indeed, summer is a wonderful season because of the mind [I’ll bet you didn’t mean
“mind” here, did you? Be sure to check all your writing for typing errors like this.]
weather, the changes in nature and the abundance of outdoor activities. You should
enjoy the great season as much as I do. Get outdoors and appreciate the scenery. Don’t
miss this wonderful summer!
Naoko Asynchronous Conference on Essay (Tutor Global Comments in Bold):
Hi, Naoko! My name is Rachel. This was really good to read because you write
welland have lots of interesting things to say. Most of your writing problems are
minor mattersinvolving idioms. I’ve pointed out a few things you’ll want to change,
but I need to warn you that I haven’t tried to clean up every little example of things
that aren’t exactly normal in English. For example, your use of the verb “permeate”
might seem very natural if you only looked at the dictionary definition of the word,
but if you ask some U.S. friends what word they’d use there, they’ll probably suggest
something different.
Now here’s my last suggestion, but bear in mind that I might be wrong about this,
since I don’t know exactly that your instructor said in giving you this assignment.
You’ve organized this paper in a way that many English teachers call “the
five-paragraph essay,”and because of this I wonder why the essay is actually three
paragraphs long. In ParagraphOne, you introduce your subject and you tell your
readers that you’re going to discuss three aspects of your subject: the weather,
nature, and the activities that are possible in the summer. Many readers will say to
themselves “Ah, now I’m going to see a paragraph on the weather, a paragraph on
nature, and a paragraph on activities, and then I’ll see a concluding paragraph.”
That makes me wonder why you have four paragraphs, with the third paragraph
discussing both nature and activities.
Wait a minute – maybe you really intended a new paragraph to begin at “There
aremany choices,” but just forgot to leave space between the paragraphs. If so, you
can fix that easily, and I’ll stop worrying about it. But notice that readers can
recognize paragraph divisions better if you always indent at the beginning of each
paragraph, as I have in this message to you. Both ways – indented paragraphs and
unindented paragraphs – can be used, but indented paragraphs are probably what
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will be expected by most college English departments, so it might be a good idea to
get into the habit of indenting.
Thanks for letting me read this enjoyable paper, Naoko, especially since I’ve been
working on it in the middle of winter, with snow on the ground! I hope I come across
your work again sometime when I’m reading essays in the queue.
[4]
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Provenance:
[4].
Citation Format: Hewett, Beth L., and Robert Lynn. "Training ESOL Instructors and
Tutors for Online Conferencing." The Writing Instructor. 2007.
http://www.writinginstructor.com/esol [5] (Date Accessed).
Review Process: Beth L. Hewett and Robert Lynn's essay was accepted for publication
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Links:
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[2] http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/6.2/index.html
[3] http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num3/meskill/
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