| English writing,as one of the most important communicating skills in English learning,has shown its great significance with more frequent international cooperation and a stronger voice of China.Therefore,developing excellent English writing skills has become an important task for scholars in each field.However,teaching English writing in China's colleges is still far from satisfactory,and most students in colleges haven't proficiently acquired writing skills(Fan,2016),which calls for further studies in English writing teaching.Based on this background,domestic scholars begin to pay attention to the development of students' independent writing ability outside the classroom,and the English Writing Center becomes a feasible choice for college English professionals(He,2018).The present study draws upon Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory(SCT)to study the design philosophy and future tendency of an English writing center in a Chinese college.This research is conducive to English professionals to broaden their horizons of writing teaching,innovate writing teaching methods and provide an important reference for how to set up and manage English Writing Centers in colleges and universities in China.Studies have shown that Writing Centers were initially developed in the 1970 s to meet the ends of true education.The English Writing Center,also known as the English Writing Lab,is a unique writing space that is independent of classroom teaching.The aim is to help students better improve their writing skills and enhance their writing abilities by offering them one-to-one tutoring,workshop,etc.(Mahaffy,2007).The English Writing Center is set up to help learners from different fields improve their writing abilities by solving the difficulties they encounter in writing and gaining guidance on some aspects ofwriting.Related research began to flourish in the 1980 s.Studies have been carried out from the language socialization perspective,scaffolding of motivation and cognition(Okuda&Anderson,2018;Mackiewicz,Jo&Thompson,Isabelle,2014)etc.And the research orientations included the guiding object,the purpose of the author,the classification of writing topics,the operation mode,and the future development direction,etc.In contrast,the research of the English writing center in China is mostly an introduction to Writing Centers overseas or a reflection on the Writing Center's implication to college students in China.Empirical research on English Writing Center is less explored in China.This study intends to study the design philosophy,implementation and the future tendency of one-to-one tutoring and workshop in college English Writing Centers in China from the SCT of Bandura.This thesis mainly addresses two questions:1.How is one-to-one tutoring conducted considering its design philosophy,implementation and future tendency in the English Writing Center?2.How is the workshop conducted considering its design philosophy,implementation and future tendency in the English Writing Center?The research method adopted in the present research is a triangle measurement,which combines two questionnaires,personal interviews and observations so as to investigate the research questions from multi-dimension.The participants were students from a national university in Northeast China who are enrolled in an English writing center.Since the major activities in the English Writing Center are one-on-one tutoring and workshops,the research is carried out from these two aspects.The researcher observed one-on-one tutoring and issued one copy of the questionnaire to the participant,and totally 21 copies were collected to investigate one-to-one tutoring.After that 4individuals were selected for personal interviews.As for the workshop,25 students or faculties needed to make appointments before the first workshop began,and they would attend ten workshops in total.After tracking 10 workshops,the 25 participants in the workshop were invited to complete the other questionnaire and four of them were interviewed.As is observed by the researcher,the interviewees performed actively in the English Writing Center and agreed to participate in the research.Research tools are two questionnaires,interviews and observation checklists.The analysis of the data shows the findings as follows.First,in the process of one-to-one tutoring,the tutor focuses on the paper that the participant needs to revise,and guides the student according to his or her needs.The findings reveal that one-to-one guidance in this English Writing Center has the feature of pertinence and the function of stimulating learner autonomy.In other words,compared with the traditional writing class,individual difference and personal needs are given full attention in one-to-one tutoring so that it can stimulate participant's interest in writing and develop self-learning awareness and behavior.As for the implementation,findings show that the time length of one-to-one tutoring is short,and the apportionment method also needs improving.It is suggested that an appointment software should be developed,on which the participants can make appointment and choose the time length and tutor.Secondly,the research finding shows that the workshop is a topic-based academic writing teaching.It has two design philosophy: 1)observational learning;2)focus on academic writing teaching.Different from the typical workshop which generally consists of a mini-course,independent writing,teacher-student discussion and sharing(Muscgla,1993),the workshop in the present study includes mini-lesson and observational learning.The instructor firstly presents writing knowledge related to the topic,and then hand-out are given to the participants to find out how the writing knowledge is used by experienced writers in the reading materials.In addition,all the teaching content including the topic design and the hand-out are about academic writing,which shows that the goal of the English Writing Center is to help the participants' with their writings and develop their academic literacy.This finding proves that the Workshop in the English Writing Center satisfies the students' academic writing needs and the requirements of colleges and universities for the students' academic writing under the background of the “Double First-Class” Initiative.As for the implementation of the workshop,time length isn't reasonable enough considering no time left in the workshop for the participants to discuss the reading materials.Finally,research findings also indicate that although the students learned about academic writing standards,increased their interest in academic English,and improved their academic writing awareness by the study in the workshop,the academic writing of students still stayed in cognition because of the lack of academic environment.That is to say,the participants have less motivation for practicing academic writing.Based on SCT,the researcher further suggests that the workshop should hold some academic writing activities or competitions to create an academic environment for students to write,which may further improve students' academic writing awareness and their academic writing ability.This study is expected to shed further light on the essence of EFL writing from the perspective of SCT,the exploratory application of observational learning in language learning and the operation of English writing center in a university in China.College English writing professionals should profoundly realize that writing teaching is not just ateaching task in classroom,but be carried out in colleges and universities through various ways,such as establishing Writing Centers in universities or online additional to classroom or to meet students' individualized needs,especially on academic writing learning.Nevertheless,the present study is only a case study of a university English writing center in China and there inevitably exists some limitations.It is expected that implications can be made for the establishment of English Writing Centers in China. |
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