eng paper post

Introduction
The purpose of this research project is to discover if and how tutors can affect writers’ confidence. Whether or not a tutor can invoke confidence in students and how, has many implications for tutoring and teaching pedagogy. Collaboration is successful in a tutoring session when a writer is comfortable and confident enough to participate. An unconfident writer isn’t likely to be comfortable with participation therefore making the session unproductive. Writers come to tutoring with a negative attitude about their writing ability. The hope is that a tutor’s influence can offset writers’ self-defeating attitudes and insecurities about their writing abilities and inspire confidence that will encourage a writer to collaborate in a tutoring session.
Literature Review
Scaffolding in the Writing Center: A Microanalysis of a Experienced Tutor’s Verbal and Nonverbal Tutoring Strategies, written by Isabelle regards the positive implications of Vygotskian scaffolding applied to the practice of tutoring writing. In traditional scaffolding a task is designed to be a little too difficult for a learner to handle on their own. A tutor takes command over the parts of a task that are too difficult while the learner works on the parts that are within his capabilities.
Nonverbal communication like verbal communication is essential in scaffolding tutoring strategy. Eye contact, posture and other movement show how people feel about each other and their level of engagement. This study looked at tutors’ hand gestures, posture and facial displays to examine emotional and representational aspects of nonverbal communication.
Direct instruction is a strategy whereby the tutor tells the student what to do. Cognitive scaffolding is a strategy whereby the tutor provides meaningful guidance so that students can independently revise and come up with ideas. Motivational scaffolding involves keeping students engaged in the writing task while remaining confident. With this strategy the tutor minimizes students’ frustration through sympathy and empathy. The three scaffolding strategies used during a conference supported writers emotionally during the writing process.
Fear, Teaching Composition and Students’ Discursive Choices: Re-Thinking Connections Between Emotions and College Student Writing written by Sally Chandler looks at the role emotions play in effecting the composing process for undergraduate writers. The study follows an undergraduate class of writers who were required to conduct tutoring sessions. At the end of the term, they wrote reflective analysis papers about their own writing process. Students’ essays were analyzed for their social and emotional contexts. In the end it was discovered that emotions overshadow academic writing students seek to produce.
The research found that students would need to detach themselves from their old writing habits and develop more mature ones. The loss of confidence is a central issue in composition and students who need to change, experience drastic internal conflict. Effective teaching allows students to feel comfortable enough to let go of psychological defenses. Instructors can alleviate emotional tension associated with composition so that the experience is more productive.
A Writing Teacher is like a Psychoanalyst, Only Less Well Paid is written by Jay Parini who feels that it is his job to help students uncover their unique voice as writers buried in the collective popular voices of the time. The job of the teacher then is much like a psychoanalyst who must help clients uncover their unique personae in a world of other influences. In connecting this concept of a writing teacher being like a psychoanalyst to confidence in the writing center, it is important that tutors develop a capacity to inspire confidence in writers so that they have the courage to actively participate in sessions and grow as writers.
Freud in the Writing Center: the Psychoanalytics of Tutoring Well by Cristina Murphy further expounds on the idea of Jay Parini that tutoring is like psychoanalysis. The article emphasizes the emotional aspect of writing tutoring. The tutor’s relationship to the student is primarily supportive and affective. The tutor like a therapist in order to be affective must demonstrate unconditional positive regard. There needs to be an empathetic bond formed where the student feels safe and secure.
Writers are dealing with insecurities associated their abilities as writers or students. They experience “anxiety, self doubt, negative cognition and procrastination”. The power is in the words exchanged between tutor and student like client and therapist. Language is used to convey emotions to change perceptions of the self and other people/things while shaping and empowering consciousness.
Method
Data for this study was collected during the allotted 1 hour tutoring sessions for an undergraduate course titled Peer Tutoring and Writing at Kean University in the CAS writing center. An observer watched six sessions of tutoring conducted by his classmates and himself and took notes on each session. Students were chosen at random, those who consented to participation in the study. Students’ ages varied and undergraduate level ranged from freshman to seniors. They came for various reasons including; revision, help generating ideas, understanding assignments and course readings and draft development. Most students were undergraduate freshman aged between 17 and 19 coming for revision of their papers in English 1030. Some students evaluated the tutor. This method was also used in Scaffolding in the Writing Center: A Microanalysis of a Experienced Tutor’s Verbal and Nonverbal Tutoring Strategies, written by Isabelle Thompson (although the conferences were also videotaped).
The central features of the notes were the instances of tutor action or inaction, verbal and nonverbal that led to periods of students expressing confidence reactions. A confidence reaction was in the form of increased involvement with the assignment. Students’ increased involvement in conversation denoted confidence. Eye contact and body language cues also determined confidence. Heightened speech also was a showcase of confidence. A lack of confidence was expressed in the form of minimal or no eye contact, reserved body language, passive speech and tone of voice and self-defeating statements.
Analysis
As discussed by Isabelle Thompson in her work with cognitive scaffolding, the tutor is a facilitator more or less, whose job is to help students by tutoring in a way so that students are challenged yet coddled. The tutor may set up a scenario where the student can choose between prompted alternatives or leave a blank in conversation for the student to fill in. Students who feel like they are going to be right are more likely to participate in collaboration (pg 445 last paragraph). In segment 1 of session #1 the tutor is a professor in the English department at Kean University. The student is a freshman female in English 1030. She came in appearing nervous, especially after consenting to the observation. Her body language is jittery and she speaks in a quiet passive voice.
[T= Tutor S= Student]
T: Asks student what the characters say about confrontation. “Write them down.”
S: [Hesitates] Lists some points on the paper as directed by the tutor.
[Pause while writing]
S: Reads what she wrote T: Nods head at the same time
T: Rephrases what the student says in a more concise, grammatically correct, positive tone of voice; nodding head to show that she is correct in her response. “Uh huh, ok.” “Good, so what I hear you saying is…” S: Looks up and makes eye contact.
T: Praises student’s good responses after paraphrasing.
T: Asks more questions pertaining to the assignment.
S: Answers more rapidly and with a stronger tone of voice while maintaining eye contact.

Jay Parini discusses the writing teacher’s role in helping students discover their unique voice. In this session, the tutor’s use of paraphrasing allows the student to maintain ownership of her own created response while reforming it in academic language. This is essential to confidence development in writers.
The cognitive scaffolding used by the tutor in the form of validating what the student says was correct and understandable elicits confidence reactions in the students in the form of maintained eye contact, stronger tone of voice and quicker responses The motivational scaffolding came in the form of the tutor saying, “Good” and nodding her head in approval. These strategies were effective in promoting confidence.
This particular interaction also shows the emotional benefit of using paraphrasing. In paraphrasing, the tutor takes the students limited vocabulary and rewords it in a way that is clearer to herself and the student. In doing this the tutor shows the student that she recognizes her comprehension skills. The student then feels that her intelligence is recognized and she is now more eager to participate in the conversation.
Acknowledging a correct response and/or being genuinely excited about a student’s work is a factor that contributes to successful conferences. In segment 1 of session #2 the tutor is a professor in the English department at Kean University. The student is a senior who is working on a paper for an upper level English class concerning “Critical Theory”. The session is conducted in front of a class and the student verbally expresses her apprehension about participating. The segment picks up when the student explains that she is unable to revise her paper for a grade. The following is segment 1 from observation # 2:
T: (Angry, flushed face) Expresses grievance and frustration with the instructor for not allowing the student to revise paper. Tutor has a relationship with instructor and student and was under the assumption that the assignment could be revised. “I’m going to talk to him (referring to the instructor)”
S: Student recognizes tutors frustration. She makes eye contact.
T/S: Converse about their contempt for the situation. They seem on one accord emotionally.
T/S: Student and tutor engage in meaningful conversation about the assignment which adds to students understanding.

Murphy (YEAR) explains how vulnerable students need to feel empathy from the tutor. The tutor attended to the affective needs of the student as they both vented their frustration.
Chandler (YEAR) also explains that emotions affect the composition process. Fear and anxiety play a role in creating academic writing. The student’s fear that her intelligence will be judged by her peers in this session contributed to her initial apprehension to participate. The tutor effectively used a strategy of empathy that allowed the student to feel comfortable enough to let go of her psychological defense evident in her eventual participation.
The student recognizes the tutors’ genuine concern. Feeling that she is understood, the student moves along in a collaborative conversation with the tutor about the assignment. The conversation is productive in that it adds to the students understanding of the assignment. Her confidence is expressed in her willingness to participate even though she was previously reluctant about being observed by a class. The student’s perception of the tutor as an authority in writing and in the English department who supports her probably also contributes to her confidence during the session.
Segment 2 of observation # 2 shows the tutors unconditional positive regard for a student who has been making self-defeating statements. The tutor in this segment demonstrated those qualities which led to the explicit confidence reactions.
T: Explains to student what she would do how she would do it. She explains for a second time what critical theory is and gives an example. She then questions whether or not student had applied critical theory to her paper in that way.
S: Student explains what she did and her mistakes at attempting “new criticism”. She says “I really don’t know”. “This probably doesn’t make any sense but…”
T: Tutor says she also understands the student’s mistake but asserts that her previous explanation of “new criticism” was good. Nods head feverously while smiling and saying, “that’s exactly right!”
S: Smiles widely looking very happy. The previously relatively quiet student is now more assertive than ever. “I know now (referring to understanding new criticism)”

Although the student makes a mistake the tutor uses a strategy to show her unconditional positive regard. Christina Murphy explains that unconditional positive regard is essential in any one on one relationship such as therapist-client and student-tutor. In doing this, the tutor is able to elicit a confidence reaction in the form of smiling and explicitly in the form of the student saying, “I know now.”
Discussion
Based on the data presented in this research it is posited that verbal and nonverbal praise, motivation, and reassurance from tutors contribute to increased confidence and comfort in writers and in a tutoring session, which leads to a more collaborative experience on behalf of the writer. In a broader context, tutors must cater to the higher order concern of writer emotion before engaging in help with the composition process to be effective.
As a two year writing tutor and in my observations specifically conducted for this assignment, I have generally found that students are more responsive and willing to collaborate once they feel like their intelligence is recognized and/or validated by the tutor. “In the course of this type of interaction, the student makes themselves vulnerable in opening themselves up to understanding or misunderstanding, judgment or acceptance, approval or disapproval. Pg 298 Frued” A student isn’t likely to reveal anymore deficiency during a tutoring session by opening their mouths to possibly verbalize their ignorance. Instead, a student remains quiet avoiding conversation in hopes that their tutor will be directive. It is important for a tutor to recognize the courage that it takes for a student to admit deficiency and seek help from a peer. Praising students’ effort and recognizing their intelligence make them feel more confident and likely to collaborate.
The current research has a huge limitation in the number of participants observed being too small. In order to successfully conduct a study about tutors’ role in writer confidence, that number would need to be a lot larger.
Conclusion
The current research has attempted to add to the body of knowledge related to writing center discourse. This study focused on how a tutor can elicit confidence reactions in writers. According to the empirical findings and supported by a literature review, tutors are in-fact able to elicit confidence reactions in writers. Tutors who are genuine in their concern, exhibited in their shared excitement and frustration about the assignment are better able to encourage student participation. Praising and recognizing a student’s intelligence can offset self-defeat and promote confidence.
An ability to invoke confidence has a huge implication for teaching pedagogy. Teachers being able to invoke confidence in their students about their abilities are extremely important. In low-income minority neighborhoods, a lack of confidence is characteristic of a large portion of the student population. These children grow up feeling “less than” capable in the classroom. If a teacher from these neighborhoods is able to instill confidence in these children about their academic abilities then they might be able to perform better in school which leads to a more productive and rewarding life.