A new perspective into writing regulation: Regulation episodes in expert research article writing

Montserrat Castelló Badia, Ana Iñesta Codina

Producció científica: Contribució a una conferènciaContribució

Resum

The present study tests a new unit of analysis, the Regulation Episode, with the objective of identifying patterns in the writing regulation activities implemented by 2 expert writers while producing a research article in Spanish as their L1 in ecological conditions. Qualitative analysis of video-recorded writing sessions (Writer 1: 660 hours in 11 writing sessions; Writer 2: 1016 hours in 12 writing sessions), all produced drafts (Writer 1: 14; Writer 2: 13) and writing diaries (Writer 1: 11; Writer 2: 15) showed that Regulation Episodes took place along the writing processes. Two morphological factors were found to characterize Regulation Episodes: explicitness/implicitness (whether or not Episodes appeared after writers' challenge declaration) and continuity/discontinuity (whether or not Episodes required more than one session to solve the challenge). Also, explicit Episodes focused on molar challenges while implicit episodes focused on local, especially those related to the construction of their authorial voice. We understand by Regulation Episode the sequences of actions that authors strategically implement with the objective of solving a difficulty or challenge identified during the writing process. We expected that this unit of analysis would allow us to approach the regulation of a challenging task such as research article (RA) writing in a comprehensive way and find meaningful writing strategy patterns in ecological conditions. Participants were two experienced researchers in the field of psychology, who decided to write a RA in Spanish as their academic writing L1[1] in co-authorship conditions. For the purpose of research, Writer 1 and Writer 2 accepted to work separately on the whole article to compare their versions and negotiate a joined one for submission. Writer 1 devoted 660 hours distributed in 11 sessions to write the RA while Writer 2 devoted 1016 hours distributed in 12 writing sessions. Two independent judges participated in the categorization of the data at two different levels of analysis. Macro-level analysis involved distinguishing the objectives, challenges, solutions as declared in the writing diaries participants were asked to fill in for every writing session, as well as in the process and retrospective interviews. Micro-level analysis, on the other hand, involved analyzing the transcripts of the researchers' video-recorded writing activity (for each of the writing sessions) to identify the actions implemented while working on the RA as well as infer the intentionality underlying these actions. Results obtained through macro-analysis confirmed the existence of Explicit REs in the writing process of both participants, which were found to be either continuous (challenge and solutions are cited and implemented in one same writing session) or discontinuous (challenge and solutions are cited and implemented in different writing sessions). Finally, micro-level analysis showed evidence of intentional challenge resolution that had not been explicitly identified by the writers. We considered this to be evidence of implicit Regulation Episodes, which we defined as those sequences of actions of at least 10 bursts[2], some of which are aimed at reformulating or adjusting various elements of the sentence, showing an intention to address a challenge, despite not having made any explicit reference to it during the writing process. Examples of these two kinds of Regulation Episodes will be shown in the session. [1] In the context of the study there are two official languages, Spanish and Catalan, and while the writers considered Catalan to be their first language, they considered Spanish to be their first language for academic writing purposes. [2] We use the unit of burst in the same way as Chenoweth & Hayes (2001, 2003) or Beare & Bourdages (2007).
Idioma originalAnglès
Estat de la publicacióPublicada - 30 d’ag. 2011
EsdevenimentEARLI Conference 2011 -
Durada: 30 d’ag. 20113 de set. 2011

Conferència

ConferènciaEARLI Conference 2011
Període30/08/113/09/11

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