Topic-Raising in Tutoring Sessions Involving Writing Tutors and Engineering Students
http://businesscommunication.org/conventions/Proceedings/2004/PDFs/06ABC04.PDF
Mackiewicz, Jo M.
Association for Business Communication
2004
Abstract:
The paper examines whether writing tutors control the subject matter discussed in tutoring sessions with engineering students, topic-raising in six tutoring sessions was analyzed. Over 81%
of the topics were raised by tutors, suggesting tutors control subject matter. To examine the
subject matter that tutors and students focused upon, topics were categorized by type. Over 55%
of the topics raised were related to sentence clarity, conciseness, and mechanics. Tutors and
students also raised topics related to content, rhetorical situation, and textual organization and
formatting. Writing tutors and engineering students focus on sentence-level issues even though
students might benefit from more attention to discourse-level issues.
