ABSTRACT. This article investigates tutor dominance in academic
writing tutorials within the framework of institutional discourse.
Tutor gender and tutee gender and language proficiency, as well as
the interaction of the three, are considered as exponents of
interactant dominance. Pragmatic measures of tutor dominance
selected are frequency of directives, directive type, and mitigation
strategies. Analysis indicates that these features of tutors' speech
remain relatively constant in interactions with male and female
tutees or with native and nonnative speakers of English. These
results suggest that institutional context outweighs gender and
language proficiency in the definition of participant roles and the
sanctioning of tutor dominance behaviors.
This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of inter-actions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-ma-triculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students' papers, but how much the tutors engage their tutees in a meaningful dialogue that brings satisfaction to the ESL students. Findings also suggest that deliber-ate efforts should be made to equip ESL writers with necessary metalanguage to communicate their goals for their visit.
The Writing Space was developed by Elizabeth Busekrus. Missouri Baptist University Writing Coaches post prompts in the hopes of creating a conversation between students and the coaches. She has written an essay about this project in WLN Sept. Oct. 2014 titled "The Writing Space: A Forum for the Technological Age."