For Thursday, Feb 23: Read Hyland, Chapter 6, and use the first page of yesterday's worksheet (items 3-7) to analyze your assigned study in your next blog entry. (Amanda, please use the second page of the handout to propose a new empirical study based on Truscott's synthesis). Thanks!
Case-Study Research on Students Writing from Source
ReplyDeleteLi, Y. and Casanave, C. (2012). Two first-year students’ strategies for writing from sources: Patchwriting or plagiarism? Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 165 – 180.
Aims/Purpose
- Wanted to explore plagiarism when writing using sources; how students understand it, the strategies they use when writing an in-class assignment requiring sources, what are the results of their writing, and how does the instructor respond to each text?
Methods
- Design: Case-study
- Participants: 2 first-year undergraduate student at a university in Hong Kong
- Data collection: textual comparisons between students’ product and that of the sources they were using, student interviews (6 & 5), teacher interviews (2), and observation notes
- Data Analysis: comparing actual texts, examining student interviews and observations for to determine decisions on locating and citing sources, and examining teacher’s interviews for their responses to the students’ texts
Results
- Both seemed to understand the university plagiarism policy conceptually but their papers were full of patchwork or inappropriate citations, even though there were limited number of sources
- One did keyword search, cut and pasted texts, and then altered the grammatical structures and deleted parts of the passages that she didn’t feel were important or were confusing. The text was completed after 2 hours
- The other used textbooks and 9 sources and also borrowed from sources but in a more skillful way. He put references in footnotes to save space (word count) in the paper. The text was completed after several days.
- Both claimed that they did not intend to plagiarize
- The teacher noticed the patchwork of the first student and ran it through Turnitin, but not the second (who got an A and did not run it through Turnitin)
Limitations
- Validity and reliability can come into question because of participant size
- The assignment type and purpose (lower stakes and believed it was a collect and display activity) could play a role in how participants approached the task and how much work they put into it
- It is possible that the sources were too difficult and students knew they needed to use them so they had to resort to copy and alter
Significance
- The type of study has the possibility to generate more details
- These types of assignments are common in university settings so there needed to be a better understanding in how to research them (process and credibility), how to read for them, and then how to write for them (patchwork, synthesize, paraphrase, connect).
The Impact of Teacher Written Feedback on individual writers.
ReplyDeleteBy Fiona Hyland (1998).
Aims:
F. Hyland aimed to take a closer look at teacher feedback: more specifically, the students’ “attitudes and expectations” regarding its purpose and value; how they interpret it and use it. The researcher was also interested in studying whether there were individual differences on those responses and why. The relationship between types of revisions and teacher feedback was also studied.
Methods:
Participants: six students from two different classes on English proficiency agreed to participate as case studies.
Ken Hyland points out the ethnographic nature of this study and presents how F. Hyland employed longitudinal data from nine (9!) different sources: 1) her own knowledge as a teacher of similar courses; 2) pre- and post- course questionnaires; 3) class documents and observations; 4) pre- and post- course interviews with the participants, including the teachers; 5) Think aloud protocols; 6) retrospective interviews with student/participants; 7) analysis of all forms of feedback on all drafts; 8) analysis of all students drafts, paying close attention to revised versions following feedback; and 9) Class and out-of-class observations.
Regarding analysis, F. Hyland categorized feedback according to:
a) Purpose
b) Degree of intervention
c) Focus (meaning, form or academic issues)
d) Span over the text.
Students’ drafts were analyzed using c and d, as well as improvement of the quality of the text. The researcher used other data to validate and refine the analysis, as well as sources “to provide a detailed contextual description.” (p.132)
Limitations
I find it hard to critique such a thorough research design, especially after reading only a summary of it. I guess the first limitation I see is the small number of participants, although given the ethnographic nature of the study, I understand it.
Another limitation is that the results might not be applicable to FL context. This study was conducted in an ESL environment, and I wonder if a similar study performed in an EFL context (or any other FL) would have similar results; considering students might not have access to similar resources.
Results (p.133)
1) Students did try to incorporate the feedback provided by their instructors, but this incorporation varied depending on individual needs, experiences, and each student’s individual approach to writing.
2) Not all revisions were related to teacher feedback: many originated from other sources, such as peer feedback, self-evaluation, and other external sources.
3) Both teacher focused on form on their feedback, despite their different stances on feedback.
4) Students and teachers have different views when it comes to the value of written feedback, therefore F. Hyland perceived communication breakdowns, and therefore suggests the needs of an open dialogue in the purpose and kinds of teacher feedback.
Significance:
I found this study extremely interesting. To know what kind of feedback is most useful to students, with a long-term effect is every writing teacher’s dream (or should be, in my opinion). I have read other studies on feedback, and how sometimes it causes more harm than it helps. F. Hyland shows how the teaching of writing can be improved by addressing specific issues, namely students’ individual needs. She also highlights the importance of “examining feedback as part of a whole teaching and learning context,” (p.133) not as an isolated event. Moreover, this study encourages teachers to put themselves in the students’ shoes and see feedback from their perspective, as well as to encourage them to seek for other sources of feedback and strategies for monitoring their own writing and revision practices.
It studied the effects of feedback in real classroom contexts, as opposed to artificially created ones, like previous studies.
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ReplyDeleteMy mission for this week, should I choose to accept it, is to design a spin-off or replication study of Truscott's 2007 meta-analysis entitled The effect of error correction on learners' ability to write accurately. Truscott is careful to say that his findings should not be taken as implications for praxis, but he made some bold claims: 1) Many of the prior studies that found a positive correlation between correction and accuracy were biased because they weren't taking avoidant behaviors into account, and 2) Perhaps the research question should not be how beneficial correction is but how harmful it is. This synthesis is an interesting one, but it definitely hasn’t had the last word on this hotly-contested issue. I think that the question of avoidance is an important one to raise and well-established in the literature, but I don’t feel comfortable equating avoidance with a sign students wouldn’t have been able to produce the structures they are avoiding accurately, which is what seems to underlie his point and require a logical leap.
ReplyDeleteAs a qualitative researcher at heart, first of all, I feel a bit out of my depth in responding to this type of research. I am sure I have a more simplistic take than someone more knowledgable in both the research methods being used and the issue being explored here. I’m asking I’m asking myself things like, What were student attitudes about/understanding of the corrections? And, were all of the writing samples used to study the effects of correction graded assignments, and, if so, what might the impact of this be on the way students are choosing to incorporate correction? I’m also wondering what form the corrections took, since it’s one thing to say that certain types of correction don’t appear to be effective for improving accuracy and it’s quite another to say that none of them will be.
It would be interesting to carry out a study that fits Truscott's criteria for inclusion in his meta-analysis [longer-term study--1 semester to 1 year--using authentic writing samples, and focusing on accuracy like he does] and attempt to understand some of these questions. I would separate students into 2 conditions: Those whose writing samples would be graded and those whose samples wouldn’t. I would do a mixed method explanatory study like Dobao did, following an initial quantitative strand with a qualitative strand and interview students about whether/how the corrections helped accuracy and whether/how receiving corrections or being graded might impact their approach to the writing tasks. In thinking about this post, I ran across a study that mentioned the importance of feedback aligning with the students’ ZPD. So, applying a sociocultural learning lens, I might also like to look at the nature of the corrections themselves.
Realistically, this might be two studies (one looking at corrections through the lens of ZPD and scaffolding, and one looking at the impact of grading), but I wanted to share both of those ideas in this post. My hope would be that data would point towards greater nuance about the question of correction and accuracy than Truscott’s meta-analysis—working within the strict parameters required of that type of research--was able to find. I think that the reason this topic is so researched is that it could potentially have great pedagogical significance. So I would hope that my study would just be able to tease out a couple of new angles that other researchers might build on as we continue to work to better understand correction.
ReplyDeleteCorpus Research on Learner Uses of Modality
Article: Hyland, K., & Milton, J. (1997). Qualification and certainty in L1 and L2 students' writing. Journal of second language writing, 6(2), 183-205.
Aim: to compare the expression of doubt and certainty in the examination scripts of Cantonese school-leavers writing in English with those of British learners of similar age and education level.
The study addressed three principal research questions:
1. What are the most frequent forms used by each group to express doubt and certainty?
2. To what extent does each group of students boost or hedge its statement?
3. Are there differences in how these two groups handle these meanings?
Methods: two large corpora.
Data collection:
1. A collection of 900 essays; written by Hong Kong students; for the high-school matriculation General Certificate of Education (GCE) A level ‘Use of English’ examination; 500,000 words; graded by markers into six ability bands.
2. 500,000 words; transcribed from GCE A level General Studies scripts written by British school leavers of similar age and education level.
Data analysis:
1. Compile a list of 75 of the most frequently occurring lexical expressions of doubt and certainty in native-speaker usage from the research and pedagogic literature.
2. Examine the corpora to determine the frequency of these words in each grade of the Use of English corpus and in the GCE data. 50 sentences containing each of those items were randomly extracted from each grade and from the L1 sample using a text retrieval programme.
3. Both researchers worked independently to analyze all target items in their sentence contexts.
Limitations:
1. It is better for both researchers to work collaboratively at some point to check each other’s coding to ensure reliability.
2. I would like to read the original article to know more about the HK learner population, such as their formal English education and their writing curriculum. I have critical opinions about why a list of frequent language usage by native-speakers was used to evaluate HK learners’ writing performance.
3. Further explanations of language usages by both groups are desirable to know.
Results:
1. Both student groups depended heavily on a narrow range of items, mainly model verbs (might, may, should) and adverbs (probably, perhaps).
2. The use of these features was particularly problematic for HK learners.
3. The HK learners employed syntactically simpler constructions, relied on a more limited range of devices, and exhibited greater problems in conveying a precise degree of certainty.
4. The academic writing of these learners was characterized by firmer assertions, a more authoritative tone and stronger commitments than the writing of native English speakers. In contrast, the UK group used more markers of tentativeness and caution than the HK students, with about two-thirds of the modifiers serving to hedge, compared with only a third of the HK students’ choices.
5. The essays of the weaker HK students contained fewer devices overall and were characterized by far stronger statements.
Conclusion: the more proficient were the writers in English, the more they approximated the writing of the native speakers.
Significance: The study revealed the distinctive issues which L2 learners may have, while sharing a number of difficulties with novice native writers. It employed corpora to provide insights into authentic learner language, informing how particular groups of students typically express certain meanings or approach rhetorical problems.
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ReplyDeleteGenre Research on Scientific Abstracts
DeleteAyers, G. (2008). The evolutionary nature of genre: an investigation of the short texts accompanying research articles in the scientific journal Nature. English for Specific Purposes, 27(1): 22–41.
Aims?
1) How do recent abstracts (2005) in the journal of Nature differ from those 14 years before (1991)?
2) How have the abstracts changed between 1991-1996 and 1999-2005 (after the electronic version of the journal was made)?
Methods?
Method: Basically comparative analysis focusing on genre was a main method in this study (e.g. comparing between 2005-2006 and 1991-1992 studies, and between pre- and post-1997 studies). For example, genre analysis includes text structure, language choices with psychological and sociocultural factors, practices of writers and expectation of readers, and insights for teaching language (Hyland, 2016, p. 122)
Analysis: Textual analysis (Genre Analysis) followed by interviews with the journal's executive editor and 4 scientists from different fields
For example, genre analysis includes text structure, language choices with psychological and sociocultural factors, practices of writers and expectation of readers, and insights for teaching language (Hyland, 2016, p. 122)
Ayers examined how the tense, voice and lexis and abbreviation were used in pre-1997 studies and found that the introduction and methods were conflated into a single move. In post-1997 studies, Ayers found that the abstracts became more complex and difficult and became longer than before.
Limitations?
The researcher divided the studies before and after 1997. I think the e-version of the journal was made in that period, but Ayers didn’t specify the reason clearly in the textbook.
Ayers didn't explain how he/she selected 61 abstracts from the pre-1997 studies and 32 abstracts from the post-1997 studies (e.g. criteria).
Results?
1) Pre-1997:
- headings covered more news value, structure and tense were focused, and the use of persuasive language and the removal of hedging were tended to use
2) post-1997: new label ‘summary/abstract’, the extension of the text from 50–80 words to 150–180 words, and a more self-contained, the uses of stand-alone relationship to the main paper to summarize the paper explicitly for readers outside the field
- Increased clarity/ standardized structure/ methods become various and complicated / Move: combination the results and conclusion section, expanding the conclusion and discussion part, and including definitions of terms in introduction part
- The purpose of the move is to consider other novice reader or readers from other fields.
Similarities: the uses of tense (using predominant present/ persuasive lexical items, using descriptive adjectives, which indicate a continued concern for the promotional content of the text)
Significance?
Ayers brought big implication in scientific publishing world by analyzing the tendencies in scientific studies (e.g. textual and rhetorical features)
Ayers also emphasized reader-friendly attempts in recent scientific research since the audience become wider which reflects current social trends. For future research, this kind of study can be replicated in other field of studies or can be examined other genre of writings (e.g. letters, emails , reports, or essays etc.)
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ReplyDeleteBarton, D., Ivanic, R., Appleby, Hodge, R. and Tusting, K. (2007) Literacy, lives and learning. London: Routledge.
ReplyDeleteAims
They wanted to know the connections between classroom learning and learning outside the classroom.
Methods
-Participant observation with detailed filled notes
-In depth and repeated interviews, both structured and unstructured
-Case studies which focus on particular issues in detail
-Photography and video recording peoples practice and working with them to record their own; collecting images and documents, as well as examples of free writing, poems
Limitations
The study involves participation of adults without the participation of youth and children
Result
Men and women of different ages and with diverse life circumstances and experience used literacy
-For finding out and learning about findings
-For life purpose
-For literacy learning through every day events
Significance
The study should involve participation of different ages, not only adults.