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

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.