Questioning in Writing Centre Consultations

Abstract

Writing centre consultations are described as one-on-one, tutor-guided interactions driven by institutional and disciplinary objectives and individual students' needs. An important component in these writing centre interactions is tutors’ use of questions as part of tutoring strategies. Tutors use questions to direct students towards a better understanding or towards an appropriate answer and to encourage students to ask questions in order to motivate learning and sustain their participation in the consultation. Previous research predominantly focused on what questions disclose about the role of tutors and how they are used to control dialogue throughout the consultation. A lack of research exists regarding the specific types and functions of questioning strategies used in writing consultations. This study examines the functions of the different questioning strategies used by tutors in writing consultations and how these strategies promote students’ engagement and learning. The naturally occurring conversations of participants in writing centre consultations were recorded and transcribed. Two cycles of coding organised the data according to predetermined coding schemes, based on theories in pragmatics (specifically that of micro- and macropragmatics), for a grammatical (textual) analysis and pragmatic analyses in order to examine interrelationships between the different coding types and functions and the tutors’ illocutionary intents. The grammatical analysis examined the declarative and interrogative grammatical structures of tutor questions. Interrogative questions were coded as either yes/no or wh-questions. Consultants primarily used yes/no questions to elicit yes/no responses from students when discussing specific ideas in students’ writing and used wh-questions to elicit specific information concerning an aspect or concept of a student’s writing. The pragmatic analyses included micro- and macropragmatic analyses to establish consultants’ illocutionary intents when asking questions. The questions were identified as Directive, Presumptive, Politeness, Information-gap, Leading and Scaffolding questions. The macropragmatic analysis examined the conversational, physical and psychological acts (emotions, e.g., laughter) guiding tutor questions to determine the extra-linguistic context guiding tutor questions.