For blog post to start thinking
about your research project, Thursday, March 9: Anticipating your research proposal and considering
the issues and research practices from Hyland and the articles we’ve read, what
issue(s) and practices appeal to you most?
What questions do you have about those issues that would be researchable?
Ideas for research proposal:
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to SL writing, there are a lot of areas that call my attention, and many issues that I would like to explore. I don’t know if this is because I am a second language learner and writer myself. I have had trouble “landing.”
Right now, inspired by my work in the Writing Center with students of Spanish, I have been thinking about studying writing in Spanish as a foreign language. I would love to design a completely qualitative study, focusing on the process of writing in Spanish for heritage language learners (although I am open to change to FL learners).
After last class (thank you all for your suggestions) this is what I have:
A case study on the writing processes (maybe specifically drafting/translating from L1) of Heritage language learners of Spanish.
Question: In what ways does the amount of input of Spanish language at home affect the composing process of HLs writing in Spanish?
As for method, I think what we have read in class so far can be very helpful, especially the studies on composing aloud. I think interviews are important to create a profile of the participants and understand their different backgrounds and proficiency levels. Other data collection methods would be: the texts, and observations, including researcher’s notes. I feel like my question sounds like a mixed method approach would also be possible, but I’d rather do only a qualitative analysis.
I already have some names of the scholars that have published and researched extensively in the area, so I plan to start by researching them and find out what the current gap is. This will help me refine the main question and add other questions.
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ReplyDeleteWriting is essential to success in the graduate school, yet undergraduate writing often does not prepare students for the challenges of graduate-level writing (Starke-Meyerring, 2011), and graduate students report inadequate writing support (Gillespie, 2007). Building on research emphasizing the social nature of graduate-level writing (Larcombe et al. 2007; Lee & Boud, 2003; Maher et al. 2008), my three-year and ongoing study (IRBID# 201508762) explores the ways doctoral students in education talk about grammar and word choice in the context of a discipline-specific writing center.
ReplyDeleteResearch Questions
1. What kinds of sentence and word-level talk do dyads engage in?
2. In what ways does this talk invite (lead to?) critical thinking and disciplinary literacy?
Theories and Methods
I use Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2015; Gee, 2014; Rogers, 2011) as both a theory for framing participants’ talk about their professional writing and a method for analyzing this talk. Data include audio-recorded interactions, interviews, field-notes, and observations. Data analysis involves two cycle coding, member checking, and a recursive process of applying discourse analysis tools in order to uncover naturalized discourses about functional talk in writing support.
We've been exposed to a lot of interesting topics and methodologies in this class. Like Claudia, I find so many of them tempting. I'm really interested in the role deliberate metaprocess activities might play in writing proficiency improvement. I'm also interested in peers scaffolding for one another (collaborative scaffolding) and the role that reading could play in writing proficiency. Over the past few weeks, I've been chewing on how I could create a study that incorporates as many of my interests as possible while still having a tight enough focus. I don't think I'm quite there yet, so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on what needs to change in my current plan.
ReplyDeleteTwo studies, both in Hyland, that really caught my attention were the better to give than receive study (p. 101-105) and the process log/diary study (113-115), so I'm thinking about leaning heavily on these two studies for both topic/research question and methodology. Instead of looking at receiving vs giving, I think I'd like to look at providing feedback on someone else's written product vs reflecting on your own. I'd like to focus on L2 graduate students, and it would be good to pair students who were doing the same assignments in the same classes. Maybe I could assign different students in the same class to different conditions, but there could be some problem with exposure to the processes/experiences of the other condition. It would probably be easier to find undergrad courses with enough students to get a good sample. I'd like to do a whole year, but again, that could be a tall order and I might have to be content with just a semester.
I think I would borrow from the first study for the training idea, but this time I'd provide the same exact training to both groups, only that one group would be focused on applying what they learn to their own writing and the other group would be focused on applying it to the writing of other people. I'd like both groups to mark up the drafts they are working on and then complete a narrative (either like a commenting letter that the fellows program at the writing center does for the feedback group or a process log like the 2nd study I referenced in Hyland or a portfolio-style commentary for the reflective group). I think I'd like both groups to be working with the same writing tasks. Both the marked up drafts and the feedback/diary narratives would be part of the dataset, but I'd probably also need to look at the actual writing that the feedback group did for their course as well, in order to see how the feedback provision exercise impacted the way they were producing their own papers. I might be able to combine the analysis procedures from the two Hyland studies to create my own data analysis approach for this study. I haven't decided what I'd be looking at in order to determine improvement. Would I look at accuracy issues? maybe? probably? But I'm really more interested in finding ways to look at rhetorical proficiency (and I'd probably include some moves analysis content in the trainings). It might also be interesting to get interviews from all of the students about how they experienced the interventions at the end of the study.
I feel like I'll need to do some significant reading to build a lit review and flesh out my ideas, so I'd be happy for any suggestions about studies/articles I should educate myself on.
I went home after our class and started to really think about what I might want to research and how I might better relate it to my larger research interests. That was when I remembered something that had been mentioned by the Chin Burmese community in Columbus Junction a couple of times. Some of them had mentioned that there were a little concerned about preserving their history and culture for their children. They also noted that there were not children's books that they could use and that they wish there were. One expressed interest in "possibly" writing one and while everyone (Chin community, preschool teachers, and researchers) agree that this is a fantastic idea no one is doing anything with it. So I thought I might take this up.
ReplyDeleteMy interest for this would be how the community collaboratively writes this book. Since I just thought about this I don't really have solid research questions, but possible research questions are:
1) what are the different relationship patterns (e.g. collaborative, dominant/passive, dominant/dominant, etc.) that appear?
2) how do they determine the information to be included?
3) what are the different stages that they go through to write the book?
love this!!! they are now the writers for their readers!
DeleteIn my study, I want to find out if there are any informal genre writing that university ESL students need, besides academic and business writing.
ReplyDeleteMy possible research questions are:
1. What is/are some commonly used informal genre writing do ESL students involve outside of the class?
2. What are the strengths and weaknesses that they have in this/these type(s) of writing?
3. Does it have any impact on their perceptions of writing in English?
Purpose: this study aims to find out if the informal genre writing is neglected by curriculum designers and test developers whose constant concentration has been given to formal writing, but is in need by ESL students.
Methodology: mixed methods (questionnaire+interview)
My original idea of my study is to compare both medium regarding students’ and teachers’ perceptions regarding collaborative writing and corrective feedback. I would like to interview students and teachers to examine main points. The main points I like to examine 1) how they define the notion of collaborative writing 2) which components (local error or global error) that teachers focus while providing and corrective feedback
ReplyDeleteCase study: The perceived differences between online and in-person services of receiving feedback from writing centers
1. What are writing consultants’ beliefs about giving feedback (the notion of collaborative feedback) including corrective feedback to students?
a. which components (local error or global error) that teachers focus while providing and corrective feedback
b. Do they have different expectancy from different mediums?
c. What are the goals of receiving feedback (accuracy, complexity, fluency)
2. What are graduate students’ preferences for receiving feedback from the writing center?
a. which components (local error or global error) that students focus while having corrective feedback
b. Do they have different expectancy from different mediums?
c. What are the goals of receiving feedback (accuracy, complexity, fluency)
d. How do learner factors (motivation and interest about writing/ self-beliefs about writing) affect or activate in receiving feedback?
3. How do these different mediums affect the dynamic engagement surrounding feedback?
I would also like to include Cognitive/behavioral/affective engagement factors in their WCF through observation and interview