Revising Orally: The Transformative Process from Text to Talk in the Writing Tutorial

Year 2018, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 109 - 122, 30.06.2018

Juhi Kim

Abstract

Writing as a collaborative process’ is the major philosophy of writing instruction in
the contemporary university writing center. The view of writing as a process, not as a
product, puts the emphasis of instruction on the process of writing instead of the
product of writing, which focuses on the ‘talk’ of the instruction, not the text. In this
light, the writing tutorial in the writing center is a conversational procedure for the
work of writing, and the instruction for writing is enacted through the talk and
transferred to the future revision. This study examines how an L2 writer interacts
with an L1 tutor during the writing tutorial and how the shift of the focus of writing
instruction from the text to talk is played out in their actual tutorial. Through the
analysis of their talk-in-interaction for the work of the tutorial, this study will
investigate how the L1 tutor and L2 tutee revise a paper ‘orally’ through talk and
what it means to instruct writing by talk, not by text, for the work of the tutorial in
the frame of the process-oriented philosophy of writing instruction. 

Keywords

Writing Center, Writing Tutorial, L2 Writers, Revising, Collaboration

References

• Atkinson, J.M. & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.