Running head: ESL TUTORING

New Approaches to ESL Tutoring: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Alayna Stein
The University of Wisconsin La Crosse

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New Approaches to ESL Tutoring: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

The UW-L Writing Center is an invaluable resource for students, and is becoming
increasingly so for International and English as a second language (ESL) students. From the Fall
2012 to the Spring 2014 semester, the percentage of appointments made by ESL/International
students increased from 28% to 36% (V. Crank, personal communication, March 5, 2015).
Because of this, it is important that our center and the tutors that work there are knowledgeable
of how to provide the most effective help for these students.
When working with ESL students, native English speaking tutors sometimes struggle,
noting lack of comprehension as a barrier. Writing center director and linguist researcher Jane
Cogie also notes another issue; that ESL students and tutors usually have different goals for their
appointments. She highlights the findings of linguists Blau and Halls research, stating that there
is a frequently noted conflict between the agendas of ESL learners, eager for error correction,
and the agendas of tutors, who are typically trained to focus first on whole-essay concerns
(Cogie, 2006, p. 49). However, linguist Sharon Myers contended that given the goal of best
helping ESL writers, sentence-level error correction should be addressed. She states, It is
indeed the linguistic component (vocabulary and syntax) as much or more than what is
considered the writing (rhetorical) component that ESL students need most (Myers, 2003, p.
52). So while it might be the tutors instinct to focus on what we refer to as higher-order
concerns such as organization and idea development, an ESL students lower-order concerns
of word choice and sentence formation may need first to be addressed before getting to higherorder concerns for sake of comprehension between student and tutor.

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To further address the gap between student tutoring and needs of ESL or remedial native
English speaking students, I am currently conducting research with a fellow UW-L psychology
student to determine impacts of manipulating goal-orientations on students writing performance.
Previous literature indicates that individuals can be categorized into one of two general
goal orientations performance versus mastery. Research suggests that goal orientation is the
determinant of students approaches to learning and achievement situations, effort expenditure,
and persistence (Dupeyrat & Marine, 2005). A performance goal orientation reflects a need to
demonstrate competence, especially in competition with others, with the ultimate goal of being
judged favorably (Dekker & Fischer, 2008). These individuals tend to hold external motives,
being influenced by instrumental gains such as a passing grade (Ormrod, 2013; Wrzesniewksi et
al., 2014). Mastery goals, in contrast, align with internal motivations and growth mindsets. One
who holds mastery goals believes that competence develops over time through practice and
effort. Holding a growth mindset with an understanding of intelligence as flexible, that it can be
changed if enough effort is invested, encourages individuals to view errors as normal and a
useful method of improving performance (Ormrod, 2013).
While working with ESL students in writing centers, tutors must also consider cultural
influences on motivations, and thus a client's needs. Past research has found that performance
goals are more prevalent in Eastern societies, such as China, that place strong emphasis on
maintaining the success of the group. These environments stress the importance of social
evaluations. In autonomous societies where value is placed on the individuals goals, such as the
United States, the researchers found higher levels of mastery goal orientation (Dekker & Fischer,
2008). Because Western pedagogy views external motivation, task completion and grade seeking
as negative qualities of a learner, writing tutors ethnocentrically rely on their training of focusing

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on whole-essay concerns rather than sentence-level errors as a presumably reasonable method of

working with ESL students, in an effort to encourage individualism in the writing process.
However, Myers emphasizes that ESL students sentence levels concerns are legitimate, and that
they view errors as something to be eliminated rather than as artifacts of (...) developmental
progress (Myers, 2003, p. 52). Indeed, for an ESL writer, the biggest issues might be at the
sentence level, as Myers states, (ESL students) usually have a good idea of what they want to
say, but are often at a loss as to how to say it (2003, p. 52), leading back to, ultimately, the root
issue of comprehension and cultural misconceptions.
Considering these challenges along with the previous success of mastery goalorientations for remedial Native English speaking students, our ongoing research seeks to
explore a new approach to working with ESL students that struggle with writing. To test this
approach, both native English and ESL students will receive either a mastery or performance
goal instructional prompt, for a total of four comparison groups, and then complete an online
writing task using the English language software, Writers Help, used by the UW-L Writing
Center. The prompts are scripted as follows: for mastery-goal orientation, the prompt reads,
What we are interested in is how students develop their writing skills using Writers Help.
Were getting students with different levels of writing experience and collecting data on how
they learn to write and improve using Writers Help, and for performance-goal orientation, the
prompt reads, What we are interested in is how well some students perform on Writers Help
exercises compared to others. Were getting students with different levels of writing experience
and collecting data on how well they perform compared to others. We predict that both native
English and ESL students will perform better on the writing task with mastery prompts. While

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we expect native speakers with mastery goals to show the highest level of performance overall,
we expect that the mastery prompt will have its greatest impact on ESL students.
An important assumption of the success of these prompts is language comprehension on
the part of the ESL student. It is important to address this issue because, as researcher Efren
Perez discovered in his 2011 research with Latino political attitude surveys, ignoring it can
yield misleading inferences about hypothesized relationships between variables (p. 434). From
his research, Perez also found that there seems to be an intimate connection for multilingual
learners between content familiarity and comprehension (Perez, 2011). Researchers at the Ohio
State University developing comprehensive sociolinguistic research learning tools found that
when content is familiar to students they have increased comprehension, and long-term
retention of material increases if meaningful associations can be made between students existing
knowledge and experiences and content (Wanjema, et al., 2013). Additionally, sociolinguistic
researchers Carrell and Wise found directional relationships between prior knowledge and topic
interest in second language readers (Carrel & Wise, 1998). Because multilingual learners are
presumably familiar with language learning strategies as a result of their content area focus on
and familiarity with language learning pedagogies, their comprehension of the prompts is
promising for the validity of my research methodology. The importance that previous literature
places on meaningful associations and language comprehension also suggests the need for a
more direct application of the findings of our original study for ESL tutoring.
If the findings of our original study supports the use of mastery-goal orientation training
for improved writing in an online lab-based exercise, further research should be conducted to
address the application of these findings to ESL writing tutoring sessions in writing centers,

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which would also allow for the control of comprehension errors. The current proposal outlines
that objective and will aim to answer the following questions:

Are these findings generalizable to serve a practical purpose?

Will mastery-goal orientations be more successful in a collaborative appointment where

the meaning behind the words used in the prompt can be explained if comprehension
prevented benefits for ESL students using online software?

To answer these questions, both native English Speaking students and ESL students who have
appointments at the UW-L Writing Center will be randomly assigned to receive either the
mastery or performance orientation prompt at the onset of their appointment. Before the
appointment begins, the tutor will read a version of the prompt used in the original study to the
student and ask the student if they understand. The language of the prompts used in the original
study will be changed slightly to reflect the context of a writing center appointment, as opposed
to a Writers Help exercise. If the student understands, then the tutor will proceed with the
appointment. If the student does not understand, then the tutor will engage the student in a
conversation until comprehension of the prompts meaning is reached, and then proceed with the
appointment. At the end of the appointment, the student will be asked to fill out tutor-evaluation
form that is currently used by the UW-L Writing Center. However, there will be one additional
question, asking students to choose the one answer that best fits them. The question will read,
After this appointment, I feel, a) I have a better paper, or b) I am a better writer. Due to the
subjective nature of each appointment and the number of possible confounding factors that could
contribute to the answer of the question, data will be collected over a semester of appointments
and responses will be analyzed for a correlation effect between which prompt the student

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received (indicated by the tutor at the top of the tutor-evaluation sheet), and which answer they
chose.
I predict that students who receive the mastery-orientation prompt will choose answer b)
I am a better writer more often than students who receive the performance-orientation prompt.
I also predict, matching my earlier research, that for ESL students there will be a stronger
correlation than for native English speaking students between mastery-orientation prompts and
choosing answer b, suggesting that the prompt has a stronger impact for ESL writers.
If these hypotheses are supported, I will have evidence to suggest that providing masteryorientation prompts to students before appointments will aim these appointments toward a more
successful alignment with the UW-L Writing Center motto, better writers, not just better
papers, and also that providing the opportunity to engage in conversation regarding learning
approaches will help to close the gap between current tutoring strategies and the needs of ESL
writers using writing centers.

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8
References

Carrell, P. L., & Wise, T. E. (1998). The relationship between prior knowledge and topic interest
in second language reading. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(3), 285-309.
Cogie, J. (2006). ESL student participation in writing center sessions. The Writing Center
Journal, 26(2), 48-66.
Dekker, S., & Fischer, R. (2008). Cultural differences in academic motivation goals: A metaanalysis across 13 societies. The Journal of Educational Research, 102(2), 99-110.
Dupeyrat, C., & Marine, C. (2005). Implicit theories of intelligence, goal orientation, cognitive
engagement, and achievement: A test of Dwecks model with returning to school adults.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30(1), 43-59.
Myers, S. A. (2003). Reassessing the proofreading trap: ESL tutoring and writing instruction.
The Writing Center Journal, 24(1), 51-70.
Ormrod, J. E. (2013). Educational psychology: Developing learners. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson.
Perez, E. O. (2011). The origins and implications of language effects in multilingual surveys: A
MIMIC approach with application to Latino political attitudes. Political Analysis, 19(4),
434-454.
Wanjema, S., Carmichael, K., Walker, A., & Campbell-Kibler, K. (2013). The Ohio speaks
project: Engaging undergraduates in sociolinguistic research. American Speech, 88(2),
223-235.
Wrzesniewski, A., Schwartz, B., Cong, X., Kane, M., Omar, A. & Kolditz, T. (2014). Multiple
types of motives dont multiply the motivation of West Point cadets. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 111(30), 10990-10995.