Many synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) studies have been conducted on the nature of online interaction across a range of pragmatic issues. However, the detailed analyses of resistance to advice have received less attention. Using the methodology of conversation analysis (CA), the present study focuses on L2 peer review activities in a synchronous online context: that of giving and receiving advice based on participants’ writing drafts. In L2 peer review activities, advice givers are momentarily positioned as the more knowledgeable party on the issue being discussed, while advice recipients can be viewed as having a subordinate status. I show that advice recipients invoke authority, provide a justification, or initiate inquiries to indicate resistance in a delicate manner. I argue that these resistance strategies cooperate to establish the recipients’ identities as competent, independent participants and to assert their primary rights over their manuscripts. The study reveals that L2 SCMC peer response is not only a means for participants to develop rhetorical knowledge, but also to negotiate advice and manage interactional practices.

Applying the single case analysis methodology, this study investigates how a peer tutee demonstrated his understanding of his peer tutor’s advice by using a particular type of formulation, response formulations to advice, to negotiate the pair’s participation framework in second language (L2) online peer tutorials. Although the tutor initially held the floor more often during the verbal interaction in the online tutorial, the tutee was able to move from peripheral to fuller participation by offering response formulations to advice. Two types of response formulations to advice were identified: (1) expressing the gist of the tutor’s advice to indicate direct comprehension, and (2) constructing an upshot to add a new viewpoint to the previous utterance by conveying unstated information (e.g., offering an account of what was not discussed in previous discourse). The tutee’s response formulations to advice provided the tutor with an opportunity to access the tutee’s L2 knowledge and thereby offer more mediation to enhance the tutee’s metalinguistic knowledge of the target language. The tutee’s upshot formulation in particular also influenced the type of advice he received. Overall, this study highlights how peer tutees’ use of response formulations to advice, enhanced by the affordances of online mediation such as real-time audio interaction, facilitates greater conversational participation and deeper engagement, which leads to more meaningful, cooperative, and effective tutorials.