Coding the thinking aloud protocols

The following section presents the different coding schemes that have been devised or employed for the protocol and text analyses.

actually doing. This second analysis aimed at identifying the students’ specific concerns.

To illustrate this point, saying that Tricia spent most of her time setting goals does not specify what kind of goal she chose to set. Setting content goals is very different from setting procedural goals which, in turn, is very different from setting rhetorical ones.

Another coding scheme was then devised to specify the activities the students engaged in.

This specific set of categories are hereafter referred to as deeper concerns or subcategories.

3.6.1.1. Coding main and deeper concerns

This section aims at presenting, defining, and exemplifying the students’ main (capitalized and italicized) and deeper (underlined and italicized) concerns.

• INTERACTION

Student-instructor exchanges that occurred along the thinking aloud sessions.

• CONTENT MANIPULATION

posing questions on content (what) - asking questions to themselves not only to find out what to say next but also to further elaborate on developing issues [‘ transpor esse obstáculos ... Qual obstáculo?’ or ‘... uma comparação entre as línguas ... como é que se compara?]

borrowing - drawing upon source text information [‘ O Lado também fala aqui ... que é importante a gente fazer ... a comparação ... entre a língua estrangeira ... e a língua materna’]

elaborating - manipulating content to be integrated in the evolving text [‘... qual a importância da motivação? ... motivação ... se ele estiver motivado a aprender ... se o aluno não tiver motivado, ele não vai aprender’]

GOAL SETTING

procedural goal - content-free goals aiming at organizing, directing, guiding the writer along the task [‘ ...vou trabalhar com 2 ou mais aspectos ...’ or ‘Eu vou começar dizendo ... eu vou mostrar para os professores a definição da análise contrastiva’]

content goal - content plans or guides that are available to the writer [‘... eu queria falar também da não motivação do aluno que é fundamental ... do aluno que não está motivado ...’ or ‘Eu quero falar do aluno que está motivado a aprender’]

• METACOGNITION

monitoring accomplished goals - concern for accomplishing goals [‘... e agora o quê que eu faço?... já falei com o quê eu ia trabalhar ... falei o que quê eu ia fazer ... deixa eu ver aqui ...’ or ‘Tá defini motivação, falei dos dois tipos e agora?’]

text evaluation - worrying about or evaluating the appropriateness of oral or written words, ideas or paragraphs [‘it is ...se quiser ... mas não é is ... não é is ... o is é que não tá dando ... porque ...’ or ‘... não vou falar de estudante ... estudante? ... será que posso falar de seres humanos? ... será que posso? ... não ... all persons?’]

audience - taking the reader into account when making a decision about displaying content [‘...show? ... contrastive analysis show us the ... similarities and differences between ...

language one ... será que eles vão entender? ...’ or ‘... senão eu não teria me preocupado em dar exemplo. Se fosse para uma pessoa que conhecesse o assunto eu passaria direto’]

discourse convention - showing awareness of writing mechanics (comma; colon, etc.), text structure and organization (introduction, conclusion); stylistics (avoiding too much repetition); being coherent: [‘acho que preciso de um parágrafo aqui the one thing ...’,

‘Vou colocar de acordo com, vou colocar motivation is, vou dizer a fonte’ or ‘... não posso falar pessoas ... tenho que falar de estudantes’], respectively.

posing question with the purpose of guiding their rhetorical moves - asking strategic questions on how to approach an issue, reflecting Tricia and Brian ’s internalized heuristics to guide their composing process even at an elementary level [‘... para que os estudantes ... o estudante ... para que os estudantes ... se comuniquem ... communicate ... para que eles se comuniquem ... como eu vou fazer isso? ... o segundo exercício vai

dar ... como eu vou fazer isso? ...’] or [‘...dois principais aspectos ... principais p’ra mim ... two principal aspects ... quais são? ... vou colocar dois pontos ... p’ra colocar eles ... o primeiro vai ser motivation ... motivation and personality ... e agora o quê eu faço? .. já falei com o que eu ia trabalhar ...’]

• TRANSLATION CONCERNS

word - local limited concern about a specific word in the foreign language [‘como é que eu digo é importante mencionar para vocês?’ or ‘não é a palavra que eu queria’]

idea - general unlimited concern about the intended meaning [‘... eu sei que influencia ...

mas dizer como é que influencia é que é o problema ... será que eu consigo? ... não vou nem olhar para ali ...’]

• SENSE OF AUTHORSHIP

authorship plus - displaying an authorial sense by taking on the responsibility of making decisions, being in control of the situation, searching for solutions to posed problems

‘eu acho que é necessário ligar’ or ‘Vou começar fazendo uma ressalva ... a princípio eu gostaria de fazer alguma ressalva ... que é que o texto não é para ajudar o professor de língua mas ... todos aqueles que trabalham com a aprendizagem ...’]

authorship minus - displaying non-sense or low sense of authorship by denying one’s authorial role or by not taking on the responsibility of making decisions, of not controling the situation, of not searching for solutions to posed problems, of engaging in a self-evaluative process by blaming or criticizing oneself [‘...não pode ser ... mas eu não tô conseguindo escrever ... por quê?... por quê?...chega!’, ‘Vou escrever o que der na telha’, ‘Eu concordo discordando’ or ‘Eu dou um trabalho danado p’ra escrever’]

Interrater reliability for the category coding was 94%, 91% and 95% for Tricia’s verbal protocols one, two and three, respectively. In the case of Brian, it was 100%, 92%

and 93%. For the subcategory coding, the reliability was 96%, 90% and 92% for each one of Tricia’s verbal protocols, respectively. In Brian’s case, it was 95%, 92% and 91%.

Of some initial difficulty for the co-rater was differentiating metacognition from students sense of authorship (authorship plus). In fact, authorship plus calls for writers’

authorial sense, which is manifested by means of metacognitive actions such as monitoring acccomplished goals, evaluating produced texts, anticipating audience’s reactions, conforming to academic discourse rules, and guiding composing process while shaping content. Not only does sense of authorship encompass metacognitive actions such as these, but also one’s very sense of being in control of the writing situation. To tap such a sense, general statements revealing Tricia’s and Brian’s control of the situation, confidence in their actions, sense of what to do and why to do it were identified. Because sense of authorship as category and subcategory emerged from my close readings of the entire protocols, this might have been the cause of the rater’s initial difficulties. Briefly speaking, authorship plus counteracted despair, self-critique, the feeling of being lost or not in control of the situation. Despite such a difficulty, very satisfactory rates of agreement were achieved, as indicated above.

3.6.1.2. Coding sustained activities

Episodes were coded according to the prevailing sustained focus they presented whether being either on form or content. However, whenever episodes presented no sustained sequence of at least three t-units on a given category, they were coded according to the most frequent one. The following segment was coded as form-oriented since of the five t-units that constitute the episode, three focused on setting procedural goals:

... vou dizer vou usar o segundo text (procedural goal) ... vou fazer um outline (procedural goal) ... vou falar de quê? ... de quê? (posing question on content) ... Oh, meu Deus! ... primeiro vou fazer um ... um ... eu tô sem concentração (authorship minus) ... primeiro eu vou falar ... vou dizer alguma coisa sobre ... ahm não! Vou fazer um texto ... um texto ... (procedural goal) (l. 23-26 / TAP3B¹⁴)

14 TAP3B means Brian’s third thinking aloud protocol

Unlike for the previous procedures, no co-rating was called for because coding episodes consisted of nothing else than observing and counting up the occurrence of subcategories in the t-units that constituted each episode.