When I took sociolinguistics (it was called Language Variation in Society at the time, but I think they're changing the name.. either way it's ENG 4120), we filled the whole board with a detailed list of all the things that go on during a speech event, and it's really too much to get all of them. I noticed that I was looking so closely at how the participants were talking and moving that I really didn't know what they were talking about. I did write down specific things they said, but it was stuff like, "Do you have any ideas?" "Let's look at the organization." "So what I hear you saying is..." (can you tell I mostly did tutor quotes?) I knew what was going on; the writer was unsure about what the essay was about. But I wasn't so in tune that I would have been able to answer a detailed question about the session. Does that makes sense?
I think it is more important to make note of the hows instead of the whats. Because no two sessions will have the same content, so it will be hard to make generalizations and comparisons. But how the session is handled - what the tutor does and how the writer responds can be looked at on a larger scale.
But that still leaves a lot of options for what to write down! In the sessions I observed in class, I was writing down what stuck out to me most... But I don't know if that will yield consistent notes throughout the sessions I watch. So this is still a conundrum to me.
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