Short discussions

Having a short discussion or asking a quick question were the most common ways participants sought support. These short discussions were always incidental and occurred during chance meetings in corridors, while commuting to school, before and after class or during non-English classes, during regular study sessions convened for other purposes, or took place online. Short discussions often had affective as much as academic goals, functioning as a quick way for participants to compare their progress and increase confidence in their writing before they submitted it to the teacher or peer editor. I will first describe interactions among peers, face-to-face and online, followed by interactions with the class teachers.

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Short interactions were often impromptu. Yoko described her face-to-face interactions with classmates after they finished class:

Yoko: After my EAP class, on Thursday, we have Honours, so we move to the classroom, and the road of, we talk, ‘I have one more class, but if we finished this class we can go back home and sleep, so we do our best, do my best, do your best.’

Interviewer: Do you talk about the homework? More specifically? Yoko: Sometimes I hear, listen how to do the homework. Like,

if I finish the homework, but I don’t have confidence about this, so I listened how to finish, ‘Please show me.’ Interviewer: When do you ask them?

Yoko: After class. EAP or AF. We don’t leave the classroom immediately, we remained classroom, we have EAP class tomorrow, ‘You did the homework? Oh yes’, like. She say, ‘Yes, oh, me too, please show me.’ And share.

(Yoko, interview, 8.6.16) At the extract illustrates, short interactions were often place-based rather than

determined by social relations. Participants did not make important choices about with whom they interacted but took advantage of opportunities as they arose, in this case on the way between classes.

Kokoro and other male students from the EAP Advanced class who lived in campus dormitories often engaged in short discussions in the Self-Access Learning Centre (SALC), but he and other male interviewees were keen to emphasise the interactions were not arranged. Kokoro responded to a question about why he met certain people: “[it’s] a coincidence (.) They are often in SALC. And I’m also in SALC” (Kokoro, interview, 8.6.16). Not only did male students appear to rely on shorter, coincidental interactions with other males, but arranging to meet classmates was considered a practice of female GP students. Largely unprompted in a discussion of seeking support from GP classmates, Masahiro, an additional participant and friend of Kokoro, stated, “I think, male students (.) there are no borders among male

students, but female students divide the group” (Masahiro, interview, 4.12.16). From Masahiro’s perspective, male students engaged in shorter discussions, while female

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students divided into “groups”, implicitly to engage in longer, arranged interactions. In one account of such a short discussion, Kokoro described asking for advice from a male classmate. Kokoro had been assigned Yoko as his peer editor but he “couldn’t understand about why this part is so wrong?” (Kokoro, interview, 18.5.16). Kokoro approached Kenichi because he “didn’t have enough time to discuss outside class” with Yoko and “When I wanted to type the essay, [Kenichi was] just next to me” (Kokoro, interview, 18.5.16). Their discussion was brief, as Kenichi agreed with Yoko’s comment that Kokoro’s writing lacked “konkyo [relevance]” to the essay topic. Except for this, Kokoro stated that Kenichi provided “no advice” (interview, 8.6.16). Thus, male students living in dormitories frequently met in the SALC but were resistant to the idea of arranging longer discussions with peers. I will discuss the ramifications of these choices and the gender relations they indexed in Chapters 5 and 6.

In terms of the purpose, students most often had short discussions while in the process of writing the first draft during which they compared the draft’s topics, organisation, or length and level of detail. Discussions often occurred in response to anxiety about a new assignment and as a way to discuss its requirements. For example, Tomomi described feeling “a little scary” about the first draft of business essay:

Interviewer: Did you have the opportunity to take any photos? Tomomi: One photo. [She shows me a selfie with two other

friends]. This is the GP members, my close friend, and this is in the school festival’s photo. But during our lunchtime, we talked about the business essay. Jim said after the school festival, we have to do the business essay, so we feel a little scary. Is it difficult? How can we write specific explain? So we chat.

Interviewer: What did Jim tell you about the business essay before the school festival?

Tomomi: Jim said, ‘If you choose the store, shop, you can write the essay, start writing the essay fluency.’ So (1.0) But I do not have an idea in this time, so I asked my friends, ‘Do you decide any shops or stores to the business essay?’

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(Tomomi, interview, 19.10.16) In the quote, Tomomi used the opportunity to allay her anxiety and compare ideas with her friends.

Similarly, Yoko described how she and a small group of friends moved from empathy about the difficulties in the GP to a short discussion of their academic writing. These discussions started with an exclamation, “Yabai!”. This colloquial phrase among young people in Japan can have many meanings depending on the context or intonation, analogous to the exclamation “Dude!” in English (Gould, 2013; Kiesling, 2004), but Yoko and her friends used it to express feelings of difficulty or hardship. Yoko described a typical interaction, beginning with “Yabai!”:

Interviewer: Did you talk to anybody, for example, about the outline, about draft two before you wrote draft two?

Yoko: Hmm (1.0) hmm (1.0) (1.0). nandaro [what] we always say ‘Yabai!’ [(It’s) tough!]

Interviewer: In the library?

Yoko: Not only the library, we eat some food, we say ‘Yabai!’ about essay [laughter]

Interviewer: Is that good? Does that help you? Like support? Yoko: No [laughing] it’s not helpful! It is, yabai, is the

beginning to talking. ‘Yabai yo ne?’ [Tough, isn’t it?], and then someone say ‘Yabai!”

Interviewer: And what’s next? What’s after that?

Yoko: What (.) what kind of ‘Yabai!’ ‘I don't have evidence’ ‘Oh, me too.’ What (1.0) and (1.0) “What did you do on your essay”, draft two toka or outline. ‘I just’, not copy paste, but, ‘someone (article or website) said history, and I choose some words and then I wrote’, someone said, other person said, ‘I just write the time order only’ and then I get some information that is useful for me.

(Yoko, interview, 31.1.17) In Yoko’s description, the exclamation “Yabai!” was “the beginning to talking”, followed by a discussion of “what kind of ‘Yabai!’”; in this example, Yoko and her friends discussed their use of research and organisation of their essay.

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Short discussions with classmates were not always successful. For instance, when Yoko was unable to revise her essay based on Hiroto’s limited feedback, she attempted to engage him in a discussion after class:

And I saw (.) only one, there is only about (1.0) grammar (1.0) so I asked him “What about my coherence, or logical?” I asked him in class, after class, but in class. He said there is no problem. But I don’t have confidence of my draft two, so I asked another person.

(Yoko, interview, 24.10.16) As the extract illustrates, Hiroto had failed to consider other aspects of writing,

“coherence, or logical”, which Yoko considers to be part of the peer review process. As a result, Yoko decided to invest her time in “another person”. Short discussions among friends also were less useful. In first semester, Tomomi gave three accounts in which the advice she received in a short discussion with Usami was largely unhelpful. For instance, in the last of these, Tomomi sought her friend’s advice about changing one of the topics of her body paragraph:

Interviewer: Did you talk to your friends about this, do you remember? Tomomi: Maybe Usami (1.0). But her opinion is (.) nandaro not

helpful ga iisugi dakedo [is saying too much, but] Interviewer: [laughter]

Tomomi: Nandaro (1.0) sonnani [not so]

Interviewer: How do you say in Japanese? Her opinion is? Tomomi: Her opinion soko made (.) ko- kyoukan ga dekiru

((inaudible due to whispering)) nakatta.[I couldn’t agree with that]

(Tomomi, interview, 25.7.16) Tomomi initially characterised Usami’s support as “not helpful”. She quickly

backtracked with the phrase “ga ii sugi”. I have translated this above as “saying too much” but this could also be understood as the less emphatic “going too far”. However, participants rarely gave accounts in which they disagreed with support. Tomomi’s description of Usami’s support as “not helpful” prefigures the more negative way she came to evaluate her friend, described in detail in Chapter 5.

Some participants reported short discussions with senpai who worked as teaching assistants (TAs) or organised club activities. With the exception of Usami,

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who arranged to meet a TA she knew for an extended discussion about her essay, interactions with senpai were rare. Tomomi, Yoko and Kokoro each mentioned one interaction during our interviews. These interactions were initiated by the senpai. For instance, during his interview to join the Economics Theory Club, one senpai and former GP student gave him advice about balancing English and economics study: “English to economics no kurabete, douchi ni fokasu shitai [compare English and economics (then think about) which (you) want to focus on]” (Kokoro, interview, 8.6.16).

While most participants preferred face-to-face discussions, some shorter, online interactions did happen through Line, a popular mobile phone messaging application similar to WhatsApp. Because of the nature of the medium, participants asked short questions, usually sending private messages to small groups of classmates who were also their friends. Participants sometimes attached a photograph of a

comment or a sentence in an essay they had revised, seeking confirmation from their peers that their revisions have been correct. They also empathised with the difficulties of the GP, as illustrated by Chihiro’s description of her messaging group:

My GP member four girls, include me. We make Line group. We exchange the thinking, homework. Outline, paragraph. Kyo no shukudai muzukashikute wakaranaikatta [today’s homework was difficult, I didn’t get it] [laughter]. Shukadai wo doko made yarebaii kana more detail doko made more detail ga ii kana? [what’s the best way of doing the homework, up to where is more detail, might more detail be good?].

(Chihiro, interview, 6.6.16) In the extract, as well as discussing the meaning of concepts like “more detail”, the group also allowed the members to admit when they had not understood homework. However, online interactions were generally not related to affective support or the strengthening of network ties. Tomomi explained why she rarely used Line to communicate with classmates: “I feel difficulty and anxiety about GP, so I want to talk chokusetsu [directly] but in the Line it’s only sentence, it’s only words, but I think only sentence is not good to explain my feelings” (interview, 25.7.16). For students, interacting face-to-face was necessary for affective support.

Participants also sometimes engaged in short discussions with the EAP class teacher in response to written peer or teacher feedback. Most participants approached

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in the classroom immediately before or after class hours once or twice a semester, in comparison to the several times they consulted peers. Very often, these discussions had a specific purpose: to bolster participants’ confidence in their choices. When participants wanted to ignore a comment from their peer editor, they checked with the teacher. Participants also checked with the teacher when they were uncertain in their revisions, or to see if they had understood teacher feedback. However, unlike peer feedback, participants always approached teachers with a specific question in mind. When participants did not understand how to revise their writing more broadly, they preferred arranged, extended discussions with friends or worked alone.