Settings
This project is a rather small ethnography which attempts to understand the ways students in a first year writing course (English 103) make sense of the feedback they receive from both peers and the teachers. In particular, I will be looking at how this feedback actually influences the revision process as the students work towards a final draft that will be graded by the instructor. To do so, I will look at the interactions among a group of three students and between individual students and the instructor.
The students’ interaction took place on a specific peer-review sessions, which was designated to take place during a regular class period. The group of peers I was able to observe consisted of a group of three students who were actively engaged in the class and their own writing. Each member of the three-student group read aloud another’s draft, and the students made suggestions, asked questions, and corrected technical matters as they read. On the peer review day, the drafts each student brought were the first attempts at completing the guidelines of a position paper as stated in the course website. This was the only peer-review session I was able to observe because the entire class did this work on a single day.
The classroom is in the basement of a building that includes residence halls on the upper floors. The room itself is relatively large, and it houses enough computers for every student to have their own workstation. The number of students is set to reach the maximum capacity of the computer classroom. The door faces the large whiteboard and teacher’s desk, which has a computer set up for full audio-visual presentations. The group I observed worked at the large table a few feet from the whiteboard, which offered the three students and myself ample space. This group comprised the only group of three students, and the rest of the class worked in cramped pairs throughout the room.
After this initial session, I was able to follow up with two of these three student by observing their one-on-one teacher conferences. In addition to two of these three initial students, four other students volunteered to allow me to observe their teacher conferences and make copies of what their peers said. I was able to collect those earlier pieces of information from all four of the students, and all six graciously allowed me to copy their final, graded drafts. The entire project was concluded with an email interview, since I did not want to impose on their time, but this last reflection only garnered two responses.
The teacher conferences took place over a two-day period, and each students met with the instructor for about twenty minutes. Her office is a small, window-less room that is shared by a fellow teaching assistant. The two have added some personal items, mostly books and knick-knacks or decorative fabrics. The furniture was limited to what the university would provide, which meant bulky desks, wooden-board shelves, and deflated office chairs. On the first day of observations, the instructor had the overhead, fluorescent lights on for the entire day. Also, for these two conferences, her officemate was silently reading, adding a fourth person to the small room. The bright white lights overhead mad the room feel like it was an extension of the institutional hallway outside, as if the students were going to see their principal. On the second day of observations, the four conferences were instead bathed in the warm yellow light of a low-watt halogen standing in the corner of the room. The audience was also limited to just the instructor, the students, and myself. The light made the room feel cozier, like an inviting refuge or den.
Each conference was designed, by the instructor, to maximize time; while the students perused their last graded assignment for the first time, the instructor delved into the second attempt the students made at completing the position paper. She often thought out loud while reading the current drafts the students brought. She would comment when the students’ writing and ideas made sense, but, most often, thwould point out when the students went off course inside a paragraph or when information did not fit the stated goals.
The students’ interaction took place on a specific peer-review sessions, which was designated to take place during a regular class period. The group of peers I was able to observe consisted of a group of three students who were actively engaged in the class and their own writing. Each member of the three-student group read aloud another’s draft, and the students made suggestions, asked questions, and corrected technical matters as they read. On the peer review day, the drafts each student brought were the first attempts at completing the guidelines of a position paper as stated in the course website. This was the only peer-review session I was able to observe because the entire class did this work on a single day.
The classroom is in the basement of a building that includes residence halls on the upper floors. The room itself is relatively large, and it houses enough computers for every student to have their own workstation. The number of students is set to reach the maximum capacity of the computer classroom. The door faces the large whiteboard and teacher’s desk, which has a computer set up for full audio-visual presentations. The group I observed worked at the large table a few feet from the whiteboard, which offered the three students and myself ample space. This group comprised the only group of three students, and the rest of the class worked in cramped pairs throughout the room.
After this initial session, I was able to follow up with two of these three student by observing their one-on-one teacher conferences. In addition to two of these three initial students, four other students volunteered to allow me to observe their teacher conferences and make copies of what their peers said. I was able to collect those earlier pieces of information from all four of the students, and all six graciously allowed me to copy their final, graded drafts. The entire project was concluded with an email interview, since I did not want to impose on their time, but this last reflection only garnered two responses.
The teacher conferences took place over a two-day period, and each students met with the instructor for about twenty minutes. Her office is a small, window-less room that is shared by a fellow teaching assistant. The two have added some personal items, mostly books and knick-knacks or decorative fabrics. The furniture was limited to what the university would provide, which meant bulky desks, wooden-board shelves, and deflated office chairs. On the first day of observations, the instructor had the overhead, fluorescent lights on for the entire day. Also, for these two conferences, her officemate was silently reading, adding a fourth person to the small room. The bright white lights overhead mad the room feel like it was an extension of the institutional hallway outside, as if the students were going to see their principal. On the second day of observations, the four conferences were instead bathed in the warm yellow light of a low-watt halogen standing in the corner of the room. The audience was also limited to just the instructor, the students, and myself. The light made the room feel cozier, like an inviting refuge or den.
Each conference was designed, by the instructor, to maximize time; while the students perused their last graded assignment for the first time, the instructor delved into the second attempt the students made at completing the position paper. She often thought out loud while reading the current drafts the students brought. She would comment when the students’ writing and ideas made sense, but, most often, thwould point out when the students went off course inside a paragraph or when information did not fit the stated goals.