International and US-educated multilingual writers, based on their different experiences in English language acquisition and education, bring different strengths and needs to the project of academic writing. In an attempt to explore the implications of these differences for providing and making use of oral feedback on writing, the present study examined the way writing center tutorials with international multilingual writers differed from tutorials with US-educated multilingual writers. Sources of data include videotaped tutorial sessions, audiotaped follow-up interviews with both students and tutors, and pre- and post-revision drafts of student writing. All students and tutors in this study attended to rhetorical, grammatical, lexical, phonological, orthographical, and academic aspects of language and writing during their tutorials, but there were differences in the relative attention paid to each aspect for international students and US-educated multilingual students. The differences reflected relative strengths and weaknesses of the students and their texts that are likely related to their educational and English language acquisition backgrounds, as well as their levels of academic literacy in the first language.

Overall, findings suggested that the two groups of students were working toward separate goals: the international students' goal is academic writing in English; the US-educated students' goal is academic writing in English. Despite these differences, there were practices on the part of the tutors that were either more effective or less effective for both groups of students. In other words, effective feedback practices worked for all students, and less effective feedback practices were generally ineffective for all students as well. Practices that facilitated the initiation, giving, or making use of oral feedback included (a) reading aloud, (b) providing specific, descriptive positive feedback, (c) using interactive signals, and (d) making links between talk and writing. Factors that constrained these processes were (a) limited oral proficiency, (b) over-reliance on reference materials, (c) form-based (as opposed to meaning-based) approaches to grammar, and (d) rushing to frame a problem as grammatical. Implications are suggested for providing oral feedback on second language writing, as well as for considering the role of language in writing.