4.3. The affective component in Tricia’s and Brian’s composing processes
4.3.1. Tricia’s and Brian’s apprehensive states
A record of the students’ observable physical reactions was possible through the videotaping of the thinking aloud sessions and through the students’ spontaneous comments about their own feelings. Their physical reactions and their spontaneous comments became
raw material for later methods of data collection such as the stimulated recall, long-term retrospective report, and the agree-disagree attitudinal test. This methodological procedure reflects the rigor of this analysis which lies in my triangulation of the process data elicited from multiple sources.
Tricia’s discomfort levels were evident during the first thinking aloud session and were signaled by manifestations such as stuttering and her laughing at ease31. Her own perception of her discomfort levels became evident through her evaluative comments during the very thinking aloud session: [‘E quero...viu quando eu fico nervosa ... eu fico gaga...’ (l. 74)] or [‘Eu sou shy professora...não vai sair eu não né...só a minha voz, né?’ (l.
127)]. Another event that might also be suggestive of her discomfort levels was her rigorous text evaluation (underlined below), at the very moment she was still trying to generate an idea:
A definição da Análise Contrastiva ... eu queria mostrar a vocês ... a definição da Análise Contrastiva... não lembro onde tá a definição no texto ... a definição que é ...
que é ... esse que é tá feio ... acho que tenho que fazer tudo de novo ... first of all ... I will show you the definition of contrastive analysis ... ponto ... que ... esse que tá horrível ... Vou colocar ponto ... Acho que vou botar it ... It is ...se quiser ... mas não é is ... não é is ... o is é que não tá dando ...
(l. 86-91) On this account, Flower and Hayes (1977) note that a particular feature of novice writing process is to be caught up too early in a rather strict form-oriented stance which usually disrupts the idea generation process. As Rose (1980, 1984) puts it, such a form-oriented approach may cause writing blocks. Moreover, Tricia’s focus on the self at the beginning of the thinking aloud session was interpreted as a strong index of apprehension.
As an attempt to check whether she was apprehensive due to the writing situation or due to my presence, I left her by herself for sometime. At that moment, I assumed that if her
apprehensive state had been caused by my presence, my leaving the room would have released such a feeling and her ideas would have flowed more easily. The excerpt of the thinking aloud protocol below illustrates this point32. The underlined chunks signal her focus on the self:
... a Análise Contrastiva ... a Análise Contrastiva ... como é que vou dizer? ... [reads writing prompt] ... posso botar assim? ... sem entrar em definição ... acho que fica melhor ... I will ... not comment ... present! ... what is CA ... what are you mean by Contrastive analysis ... eu dou um trabalho para escrever danado... I will present what is CA ... and ... what is CA and ... to show the most important ... point ... não ... pera aí ... [laughs] ... I will show what CA is ... gente, tô emperrada! ... eu irei ...
eu irei ... mostrar o que seria a Análise Contrastiva ... na qual ... na qual ... ah, yes!
... na qual mostra ... na qual o quê? ... [reads writing prompt] ... ah, sim! ... agora peguei ... which ... which identify ... which identify point ... o que é Análise Contrastiva?... o que é Análise Contrastiva? ... na qual mostra o que é a Análise Contrastiva ... o que é a Análise Contrastiva ... isso então tá errado ... isso aqui é uma introdução ... do jeito que eu ia botando ...
l. 5
l. 10
The attentive reader can notice a shift of Tricia’s focus from line six onwards. That was the specific moment that I noticed her self-critique process and interpreted it as strongly suggesting some discomfort level with my presence in the experimental setting and, then, decided to leave the room.
With regard to Brian’s physical reactions, the data revealed that, unlike Tricia’s, Brian’s discomfort levels lasted longer and occurred not only along the first thinking aloud session but also along the last one. The most observable indexes of Brian’s discomfort levels were: shaking his legs uninterruptedly, sighing at the end of idea transcriptions, wiping out his nose, holding his pen tightly and changing it from one hand to another uninterruptedly along the first thinking aloud session; and covering his face with his hands, appealing to God, moving his pen from one place to another, looking at his watch from time to time and shaking legs, during the third thinking aloud session.
31 No other observable manifestation was noticed across the remaining tasks.
Brian’s perception of his apprehensive state toward writing also became evident in his spontaneous self-comments along thinking aloud sessions one and three, respectively:
[‘Eu tenho um problema. Eu não gosto de escrever eu fico ansioso. Você vai ver, vai chegar uma hora em que eu não vou conseguir escrever. Você vai ver de tão nervoso.’ (l. 40-41 / TAP1)] or [‘não pode ser ... mas eu não tô conseguindo escrever ... por quê? ... Por quê?...
Chega!’ (l. 65-66 / TAP3)].
Apprehension appears to have played a more disabling role in Brian’s composing process than in Tricia’s. The question that emerges from here is what might have been the reasons for these emotional manifestations lasting longer for Brian than for Tricia?
Although I can not determine the exact causes of his emotional state, I can speculate that Brian seemed far more apprehensive than Tricia in class, suggesting a high apprehensive state not only in the writing sessions but also in the Applied Linguistics class. This suggests a more dispositional rather than situational apprehensive state (for details see, Bailey, 1983 and Daly and Hailey, 1984). Second, his apprehension was more evident (e.g. stuttering, sweating, shaking legs, wiping his forehead) when Tricia missed classes and the focus, automatically, lay on him. Third, his negative attitude toward writing [‘I really don’t like what I write’ (Qn133)], and finally the psychological pressure of fearing not to be capable of meeting the deadline established for the termination of the course were some reasonable causes of Brian’s apprehensive state that emerged throughout the process-tracing analysis.
Retrospectively (Appendix F), Brian confirmed all of the above causes directly or indirectly. Below is his indirect reflection with regard to his being on the spot. On this account, he said:
32 This segment is from line 91 to 101 in Appendix J.
33 Qn1 stands for the first questionnaire in Appendix E.
R - As aulas só comigo eram estressante não eram?
Brian - Não porque eu gostava da aula e eu adoro o assunto. Com a Tricia, ela me ajudava porque aí eu não era o centro de atenções. Eu gostava da aula por isso não era estressante, mas com ela eu escutava a opinião dela também.
(Q#18 / LTRR) I do not believe that Brian’s apprehensive state was thoroughly dispositional; it is likely that social and cultural situational facts were also responsible for it. These facts may be: (a) a social status - being a university professor in the Northeast of Brazil still means holding a respectable and powerful position; or (b) a cultural bias - as a man, it might have been embarrassing for him to show his shortcomings and difficulties to a female instructor of about his age. Although this is mere speculation, factors as these may be seen as detrimental to the learning process, in general, or to the composing process, in more specific terms, and as such deserve further investigation to allow researchers to be in a better position to pinpoint their adverse effects upon these very same processes.
In the following sections, Tricia’s and Brian’s attitude toward writing and their beliefs about writing and the causes they attributed to their difficulties along task completion are discussed in order to allow a more and more comprehensive picture of the role of the affective domain in the students’ composing processes as well as to help us gain some insights into the reasons that might have contributed to Brian’s more enduring apprehensive manifestations while composing across tasks.