The lived experience of thesis writers in group writing conferences: The quest for “perfect” and “critical”

Abstract

While group writing conferences have become a popular means of encouraging social interactions among doctoral students, little is known about how these group interactions influence a writer’s learning of the thesis genre. Taking a genre as social practice perspective (Tardy, 2009), this study uses the analytical lens of perezhivanie (lived experience) (Vygotsky, 1994) to investigate how doctoral students perceive group writing conferences. Previous studies of thesis writers’ experiences have suggested the interconnectedness of cognition, emotions, and the social contexts in their learning processes. The study focuses on the role that the oral interactions around the text play within doctoral students’ social situations of learning thesis writing. The participants are two L2 doctoral students in group writing conferences run by the learning centre at an Australian university. Data were collected through observation and audio-recording of group discussions, interviews with students and facilitators, and students’ writing drafts. The findings reveal the students’ ‘models’ in their minds as drivers of their learning thesis writing. Underlying those perceived ‘models’ were some social and ideological forces related to ‘native-speaker’ English. The study illuminates the role of writing conferences in assisting students’ co-constructing processes of the thesis genre in their social situations.