Expert/Novice Pattern

The final pattern that will be explored in this chapter is the expert/novice one. In this pattern, there is low equality (because the expert controls the direction of the task), but high mutuality (because the expert invites the novice to participate in the peer response session). In this study, the expert/novice pattern occurred seven times, and three of the five pairs exhibited this pattern at least once. Each time, the reader was the expert and the writer a novice. In this section, I will explain the ways that this pattern is similar in the current study to other studies that

have used the patterns of interaction framework. Next I will explore new insights about this

pattern that students revealed in stimulated recall interviews.

Other studies using the patterns of interaction framework have noted: (1) that experts do not impose their view, but rather invite novices to participate in the process of completing the task, and (2) that novices often admit their shortcomings and misunderstandings during the task. In this section I will explore how these two features of the expert/novice pattern manifested in peer response transcripts in the current study.

Watanabe (2008) writes that experts in her study listen carefully to novice’s utterances and only provide assistance when they feel it is needed. In Storch (2002), an expert participant invites his partner to contribute to the task, asking “What is your opinion?” (p. 135) when the two are deliberating about which verb tense to choose. Experts completing peer response in Zheng (2012) involve the novice to help them learn by asking questions that serve as “instruction or meaning-explicating invitations” (p. 115). Likewise, one student who adopted an expert role in Watanabe and Swain (2007) “provided assistance that helped the novice learn” (p. 133). An

example these researchers give of this kind of assistance is when an expert student asks the novice “What do you want to say next?” (p. 133) and spends the next several turns helping the novice choose words to finish the paragraph they are jointly composing.

6.1.5.1 Experts provide instruction and scaffolding

In the current study, expert readers exhibit similar behavior to that described above. Rather than state outright what they think their partner should do during revisions, they often ask clarifying questions of the writer first, and they also make it clear to the writer that it is his or her choice whether to include the suggestions during revisions. In the following excerpt, Joe is reading SongWoo’s first paper, a summary-response about the class book. He is unsure of her intended meaning in the paragraph that summarizes her selected section of the novel, so he asks her the following:

Joe: And, here I was confused. [reading from paper] ‘as become good

team’. Is that what you were trying to say? That the Fugees had become a good team? The Fugees or

SongWoo: Can I say ‘as time goes… goes along or something’?

Joe: ‘As time goes by’, yeah you can say that. ‘As time goes by, the

Fugees has become a good team’. You don’t have to use this, you can . . .

SongWoo: Yeah, it’s like you know, to be a good team, the teamwork is very

important, yeah, that’s what I meant.

Joe: Yeah, you can say that. ‘To be a good team, teamwork is very

important.’

SongWoo: Uh huh, uh huh, okay.

(Joe and SongWoo, Peer Response Session One, February 2013) Assuming the expert stance, Joe begins the episode with a question for SongWoo,

encouraging her to participate in the process of making her writing more clear. He also gives her a suggestion about the wording to use (‘As time goes by, the Fugees has become a good team’), a phrase that builds on SongWoo’s question in line before (Can I say ‘as time goes …along or something’?). Although he supplies this sentence, he makes sure to let SongWoo know that “you

don’t have to use this”, displaying a respect for the writer’s autonomy that is line with previous researchers’ observation that experts to do not impose their own view, but rather make

suggestions.

6.1.5.2 Novices admit misunderstanding

Researchers using the patterns of interaction framework have also observed that students

position themselves as novices by verbalizing their misunderstandings or mistakes during the task. In Zheng (2012) a novice admits her shortcomings, admitting to her group members that ‘I don’t know how to express [shy] in English’ (p. 115). In Tan et al. (2010), a novice student asks questions of the expert that belie his lack of confidence in vocabulary knowledge for completing the task; he asks his partner ‘after he returned to work, that would be … rework, so can you say shangban?’ (p. 14). In the current study, novice students exhibit this admission of confusion by asking their expert readers to suggest language they might use during revisions. In the following excerpt, SongWoo (the novice writer) is asking Joe (the expert reader) to give her a suggestion about how to revise a sentence that she admits has confused her:

Joe: Do you want to, like, restructure the sentence? Like you could

structure

SongWoo: Could you …

Joe: Oh, write it down?

SongWoo: Yeah, ah, you just give me a suggestion, cause that sentence

always confused

Joe: Confuse

SongWoo: Yeah, I don’t know how to make it.

Joe: Yeah, you could say, like, ‘the Fugees have a connection between

each other’. Yeah, that’d be better. Is that what you want to say?

SongWoo: Instead of ‘they love each other.’ That’d be better.

(Joe and SongWoo, Peer Response Session One, February 2013) Joe, the expert, begins this episode by asking his partner if she would like to try and restructure one of her sentences. She does not answer his initial question, but rather asks him to write on her draft and give her a suggestion for how she might write the sentence in her revision.

SongWoo admits that “that sentence always confused [me]” and that “I don’t know how to make it”. Joe complies, supplying SongWoo with a sentence that they both agree by the end of the episode is better than the draft sentence. Although the linguistic units discussed are different in prior studies and in the current one (single words and whole sentences, respectively), novices behave in a similar way when they admit their confusion and ask for help or clarification.

While I was able to identify two key features of the expert/novice pattern in the current study that had been identified previously, I also noted a feature of this pattern in my data that seems unique to peer response. In an attempt to scaffold novice writers toward making revisions that improve their papers, one expert used his own paper as a model. In the excerpt below, Dan and Alex are reviewing their third writing assignment, a persuasive research paper. They started the session reading Alex’s paper, and Dan positioned himself as an expert. One of the

suggestions that Dan made for Alex is that Alex should revise his first paragraph to include an opening that catches the reader’s attention. At the end of the session, Dan calls attention back to Alex’s draft and suggests a possible revision, using his own paper as a model:

Dan: Oh, like what I told you about using, like, how to catch, like, the

readers?

Alex: Mhm.

Dan: Like, um, my first sentence? It says “in today’s society, going to

college after high school seems to be the way the river flows”. Right?

Alex: Mhm.

Dan: I could have just said “In today’s societies most people go to

college after high school”. But, you know, I said in a different way to like, unusual way, to like

Alex: I got you. Catch the attentions.

Dan: So you could do something like that.

Alex: Okay. I can, I will try.

In other studies that use patterns of interaction, experts do not have their own work to reference, because they are completing a collaborative task. Zheng (2012) does use peer

response, but this study does not report experts using their own papers as a reference in the way described above. The current study has thus contributed to our understanding of the features of the expert/novice pattern in a peer response-specific context.

6.1.5.3 Insights from stimulated recall

Further contributions to our understanding of this pattern come from stimulated recall interviews with both expert readers and novice writers. In stimulated recall sessions, novices revealed that they appreciate the expert’s advice. In the following excerpt, Alex (the novice writer) is talking about how he appreciates Dan (the expert reader)’s tendency to first focus on what he likes about Alex’s writing:

Alex: Uh, he’s a good advisor.

Interviewer: You think so?

Alex: Yeah I think so. He talked about my essay in two parts, the good part and

the bad part, it’s good for the peer review. Interviewer: So you think that makes a good peer reviewer?

Alex: Mmhmm.

Interviewer: Why?

Alex: Um, because he suggests me a lot, advise me a lot, and he fix my

mistake.

Interviewer: Mmhmm. So why is it good to talk about good things and then bad things?

Alex: If he talk about the bad things, I can just fix it, and he talk about good

things I can just keep on working on this part so I can maybe be better on the good thing.

Interviewer: So you’d like to know the things that you’re doing well, so you can keep doing them?

Alex: Yes.

(Dan and Alex, Stimulated Recall Interview Two, March 2013) While novices value the positive feedback they get from experts, those who position themselves as experts also believe that by assuming this role, they are benefitting their partners. Specifically, they seem to believe that writing development is best fostered when students have

to correct their own mistakes. In the following excerpt, Dan is talking about how he tries not to fix Alex’s problems, but rather simply point them out:

Dan: So, I know, like I know his weaknesses, and I guess his strengths … I

know and he knows that he has grammar issues, so I try not to comment on that as much cause he knows he has problems and he tries to fix them. So I try not to talk about it as much as I would with other people who have similar problems to focus on, like, the main ideas he’s missing, or

something like that. Interviewer: Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Dan: So, I guess that does, like play a role in peer reviewing.

Interviewer: Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Dan: Getting to know his style of writing.

Interviewer: Okay, okay. And, is that um, a conversation that the two of you had, or, did it just kind of happen naturally?

Dan: I think that, uh, reading his paper a couple of times.

Interviewer: Okay, okay. But did the two of you ever talk about, “oh, you have grammar issues so I’m not going to comment on them?”, or you just sort of came to that realization on your own?

Dan: I think I came to that realization on my own. And he knows it too, that’s

why. Cause, last time I addressed it, he was like “oh yeah, I know”. He was like that.

(Dan, Stimulated Recall Interview Three, April 2013) As the expert reader, Dan is making thoughtful decisions about the areas for

improvement in his novice partner’s paper. While it is true that the instructor asked students not to comment on grammar in their partners’ papers, Dan seems to have his own reasons for doing so. He reveals that although he knows that Alex has grammar issues, he chooses not to comment on them so that Alex can “try to fix them” on his own. Dan believes that the process of

correcting his own grammar errors is beneficial for Alex, and he wants to give him room to do so.