A Case Study On The Influence Of Teacher Intervention On Students’ Writing Ability In "One-on-One" Tutoring Of Writing Center

As the reform of English education continues to deepen,the teaching concept of “teaching according to needs” has gradually become one of the hot topics in college English teaching practice and research.Since entering the 21 st century,academic English has received more and more attention and favor in the curriculum of some high-level universities.The setting,development,construction,implementation,and promotion of the academic English curriculum has become a development trend of college foreign language curriculum reform,which meets the needs of the connotation development of higher education and the cultivation of high-end talents.Recalling the rise and development of domestic academic English writing teaching,although the research on the factors that affect writing involves many aspects such as academic environment,social relations,learner’s identity goals,writing experience,tutor role,etc.,but the characteristics and role of each influencing factor is not specific enough.Based on the mediation theory and scaffolding theory,this article focuses on analyzing the role of the teacher in the teaching process and the impacts of the tutoring process.This study mainly discusses three questions: 1)Through the analyses of lexical complexity,syntactic complexity,and coherence,how does teacher intervention affect students’ academic writing quality? 2)What prompt strategies does the teacher use in one-on-one tutoring? 3)What are the students’ suggestions and comments towards teacher intervention in one-on-one tutoring?Three students who have been tracked dynamically are chosen to participate in the “Academic English and Literacy Advancement” of Jilin University as the research objects.This case study is mainly divided into three stages: first,the author records how the teacher intervenes in the “one-on-one” tutoring and observes that the graduated prompt approach is the main method adopted by the teacher for intervention.After that,the first draft and the revised draft of the three participants are collected and the lexical complexity,syntactic complexity,and coherence of the two drafts are compared.Finally,a semi-structured interview is conducted with these three students to explore their views and opinions on teacher intervention.In the research process,a combination of quantitative analyses and qualitative analyses are used.In terms of quantitative research,this study selects lexical complexity,syntactic complexity,and coherence to quantitatively analyze the writing text involved in the study.The lexical complexity is analyzed by Web-based Lexical Complexity Analyzer,and the syntactic complexity is analyzed by Web-based L2 Syntactical Complexity Analyzer.The coherence is analyzed by Coh-Metrix 3.0.This article refers to the specific prompt strategies summarized by Kong Wen(2013)according to the graduated prompt approach to probe the prompt strategies that appear in the “one-on-one” tutoring.According to the content of the audio transcription,this research marks and counts each prompt strategy.In terms of qualitative research,this article conducts in-depth interviews with three participants.The interview questions mainly focused on students’ experience of teacher intervention and their views on dynamic assessment teaching.This study draws the following conclusions by analyzing the relevant data and combining the interviews: 1)Teacher intervention can improve students’ writing in lexical complexity,syntactic complexity and text coherence,and effectively improve the quality of students’ academic writing;2)The teacher uses more than three prompt strategies in teaching,and the previous three strategies are the main ones.The application of the prompt strategies indicates that the teacher can gradually guide students to think,find and solve problems.Students not only improve their academic writing in grammar and vocabulary,but also make great progress in their ideological content and text structure;3)Teacher intervention and guidance are indispensably linked with foreign language writing teaching,and students adopt positive attitudes towards teacher intervention.At the same time,students also pointed out the shortcomings of this kind of counseling mode,and put forward opinions and suggestions.This study reveals that for students with motivation to improve academic writing,teacher intervention is an effective way to develop their academic writing skills.In short,this study makes an in-depth analysis of the process of dynamic development in college students’ academic writing ability.Moreover,it attempts to explore the intervention methods adopted by teachers as intermediaries in the process of academic writing teaching and their impacts on the development of college students’ academic writing.Since there are few studies on the impacts of teacher intervention on writing teaching in China,this study can provide reference for related research and help promote the development of academic English writing teaching research in the future.