Idea Building in L2 Composition

As an ESL instructor from China, I often see my students struggle with vocabulary and grammar when they are working on their writing assignments or tasks. Many times students suffer from want of words, so much that they have little efforts to spare on more important stuff relating to ideas, including the collection and organization of ideas. What they asked the most were questions like "what is the exact English word for xxx?", or "where should I put the words in a sentence?" It seems like their only problem is lack of vocabulary or proper grammar.

Well, if it were true, I probably have one of the easiest jobs in the world. It was not difficult to answer the questions about words and sentence structures, because as a teacher, I surely have sufficient  knowledge about vocabulary and  grammar.

But the point is, it wasn't true. In fact, the more I answered the questions, the less likely my students would become qualified writers. Because then they would develop a misconception about writing, that the process of writing is similar to solving a jigsaw puzzle. The picture was already there. What you need to do is to find out the right pieces and put them in the right place.

But writing is noting like jigsaw puzzle. In most cases, when you start to write, you have no idea what the picture will turn out to be. You might have some vague clues, but it might end up into something completely different than you have expected.  This is applicable even if you write with a prompt, like the writing my students often do in language proficiency tests such as IELTS and TOEFL.

Writing starts from authentic ideas, but ideas don't come from nowhere. Therefore, if I were asked what skills and competencies I want my students to develop when learning writing, my answer would be "idea building". I would hope that they know how to do their research and become familiar with existing ideas, and the way they are expressed. On that basis, I would also hope that my students could generate their own ideas and build up on one another's ideas in a proper manner. It's like creating a universe in one's mind, where all the ideas find their places, and connect and interact with one another. 

Are there any educational technologies that can help achieve it? The answer is probably yes. Knowledge Forum could have already created a prototype, but I will need further research to clarify my thoughts. 

Why Toronto students don’t have uniform textbooks

 

A friend of mine asked me, “Why Toronto students don’t have uniform textbooks?”

The question gave me a lot of thoughts. It is true that teachers will send students home with duotangs, and sometimes ziplocked picture books for kindergarten students to read at home. But I have never seen textbooks.

I asked S, who is a teacher at TDSB and my colleague in Knowledge Building (KB) design group.

S told me that teachers often use big publishers such as Nelson or Pearson as teaching materials, but this is not obligatory. On one hand, uniform textbooks make teaching rigid, as it would require all teachers and students to not only move toward the same goal, but also follow the specified trajectory. It ignores the diversity in teaching and curbs children's creativity. With the existence of standardized tests, teachers are already dancing with heavy shackles. They don’t need any more restrictions.

From the point of view of KB, one of its 12 principles is "Constructive use of Authoritative Sources". Textbooks are a kind of authoritative source, which is very helpful for students to understand and master the basic knowledge. We should not deny the use and importance of textbooks. But if we over-emphasize the role of textbooks and the correctness of textbook content, students will become passive recipients of information. Consequently, the purpose of learning is simplified to mastering known facts and developing technical skills. Over time, students will lose their ability to think critically and create new knowledge.

A Shift in Topic Focus

During the course of this semester, I did not believe that my topic had changed drastically or evolved significantly, partly because I presented on the topic at a colloquium in March in the context of the specific theme of that colloquium. However, for fun, I decided to make a wordle of one of my paragraphs in the final proposal to look at the differences between it and to a wordle I made for an earlier blog post. 

First Wordle

Present Wordle

While “Lollards,” “texts,” “influence,” and “practices” are still more common than others, I find it interesting that it now includes “society” and “literacy” as key words. Clearly my topic has shifted slightly over the course of the semester.

By presenting my paper at the Book History and Print Culture Colloquium, I was given an opportunity to share my topic to other scholars who were actually interested in my topic and asked questions that made me see the Lollards a little differently and helped focus my topic, especially for the contribution to knowledge part. The questions I received included: "Since the Lollards were secretive and did not actively share their beliefs, do you think that they felt elitist?" and "While women had access to the books, did you find any evidence of female ownership of the texts they used?"

I found these questions really useful in two different ways. For the first question, I answered that yes, they probably felt elitist as part of their belief system was that they were part of the Elect (a very Calvinist ideology). Thinking about it, a number of scholars depict them as a closed sect that was prosecuted for their beliefs, and are portrayed as a marginalized group. Yet, I'm not sure if perceived themselves as an elite group and in my own work I describe them as a marginalized, almost fringe group, that influenced others. Perhaps when I have access to primary sources, and can conduct archival research, I will look into this and study the language that used through language analysis methodologies. 

For the second question, I answered that no, I did not find any examples of female ownership of books, or even the passing of books through female inheritance. All the examples I came across in my secondary sources were of men owning books and passing on their books to male family members, never female. Since I don't have access to primary sources, it makes me question whether my secondary sources didn't find examples of female ownership, or found them and chose not to include them in their studies. I think this would be an important area to study since many historians argue that the Lollard group gave women greater agency than orthodox religious practices. 

This relates to the primary method I will be using, which is language analysis. When examining primary sources, historians look at the language used to find meaning held within it. They look for biases, intended audiences, the author's value-judgements, and rhetorical devices (Strange, 2012, p. 167). Using this method also provides contextual information about the creation of the document, including social and political influences on the author. Yet historians "must be wary of imposing meanings on language, especially when the written records omits what we want to know" (Strange, 2012, p. 178). Therefore, I will be using this method, not to evaluate the language in primary sources, but the language used by the secondary sources and analyzing their interpretations of the primary sources I cannot access.

Source:

Strange, J. (2012). Reading Language as a Historical Source. In Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (Eds.), Research Methods for History (pp.167-183). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Week 12, Final Thoughts

My research as it has evolved during the course, to a degree became a lot more specific, which is the central goal. Narrowing it down to a research proposal that would be ‘doable’ and something that stakeholders would want to fund was interesting to map out. Things that I had previously not considered in depth, by this I mean digital copyright law as opposed to general copyright law (which include examples related to genetic mutation/modification as frequently discussed in my undergrad sociology courses…) were given a lot more attention in this course and during the formulation of my research proposals. Somethings that I am still grappling with are the ways to define and not define specific parameters in a grounded theory based-study. Bias, particularly in grounded theory studies as I discover can be difficult to avoid, but important to mention, perhaps as a limitation.

Lilian Le-Dang

Narrowing in on the Fundamental Question

Although the subject of my research has remained consistent throughout the course, I have found that I have developed my ability to narrow in and take things one step at a time.  Initially, my proposed research question was asking too many things at once.  I asked:  How do information policy, regulation, and law in Canada reflect the privacy concerns of fitness tracker users regarding the generation and potential collection of biometric data by third party data-seekers such as advertisers and data brokers?  In my attempt to develop a method that would go about answering this question, I came to a realization that I am asking too many things at one time, and that there’s a necessity to break it down into sections in order to arrive at the answer.  These sections actually function as individual research questions on their own, so I had revised my research question to ask one fundamental question that would act as a starting point in answering my initial question.  My revised question is:  How do users of fitness trackers or wearable health electronics perceive the privacy of their biometric data with regard to how it is collected, stored, and shared by applications linked to their devices?

I believe ambition is a good thing, and to me, a worthwhile proposed question for research should be one that is ambitious in its effort to provide answers to a certain way in which society functions.  I believe this is what I was doing with my initial research question, as I was eager to determine how information policy, regulation, and law in Canada reflected the desires and needs of Canadian citizens and users of new and emerging technologies.  However, before that question can be answered, I realized the first step is to gain an understanding of what these desires and needs are, which on its own is a very complex and fundamental question which must undergo its own research.

I continue to struggle with this question, as it is a difficult process to try to conclude on what a user group’s opinions, attitudes, and level of awareness are to a certain subject.  This is something that can be very emotionally charged and not necessarily concrete, however, by continuing to learn about such things as the sample survey process and gathering information based on behaviours and attitudes, I find myself coming closer to being able to ask the right questions to wearable device users in order to answer my own.

How Does A Research Question Evolve?

My topic remains, but my focus shifted, completely.

When the course started in January, I had a lot of questions concerning various aspects of copyright: its definition, content, language, purpose, effects, etc.

Now I have even more questions about copyright: its stakeholders, concept, philosophy, construction, etc.

Apparently, I have moved a step further. My original questions stayed at the superficial level of the topic. Four months later, I am able to pay attention to issues that give birth to my original superficial questions without being over-tangled by these issues. And that realization pleases myself.

So, how did I get here? To answer this question, let me take a long quotation from an article on WikiEducator (The research question, n.d.):

“How does a research question evolve?

A researcher starts with an area of interest: a topic or subject. These areas may arise from confusion that the researcher has about a particular topic, from problems that need solving, or from simple intellectual curiosity. But topics and subjects are very broad, and the process of formulating a question is a way of narrowing and focusing the area of study until it becomes truly researchable.

Developing a good research question is an on-going and iterative process. As the researcher does the background work to understand the topic, the topic will modify and change until a searchable and meaningful question emerges that will then become the primary research focus.”

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I became interested in copyright because I was confused by it. Copyright caused problems to my work. I started talking to people (my peers and professors) about my confusion, and was advised to approach it in various ways with a variety of methods, in which process I learned to clarify my confusion so that people would be able to give me better suggestions. In the process of my research I read a lot of and watched a lot of boring stuffs, but some resources were so amazing that they made me think in ways that have never occurred to me before. And that’s when significant iterations in my research questions happened.  

I didn’t expect that the simple action of coming up with a question could be so productive. But I’m still wrestling with my research question. I was originally interested in developing practical solution to real life problems through my research, but now I find my research is becoming more like a “pure research” than an “applied research”. So, does that happen often? What can I do when it happens?

Reference 

The Research Question. (n.d.) In WikiEducator. Retrieved April 8, 2016, from http://wikieducator.org/How_to_get_started_on_research/The_research_question

Oh where has this research gone?

My research has taken quite a turn in the last few weeks. Most of my education until the iSchool was original research-oriented so this class was a very strange experiment in its own right. Having to come up with a research topic and manipulate it in this way was surprisingly difficult.

I started off thinking about how scholars communicate online and the implications of these communications on scholarly communications (altmetrics and all). I'm still interested in this topic, but not in way where I wanted to undertake a huge research project to think about it.

Through jumping from article to article on Twitter a while ago, I started seeing little glimpses of amateur (or citizen) science. I did a little bit of digging and realized that this was a relatively untapped area of research.

Source: Regalado & Mastracci

What made me really fascinated by this topic is that I see it all the time at the library where I work. Regulars come in to do their research and they are members of the public. There is such a wealth of literature on the information-seeking behavior of professional scientists. And yet, there has been little done on citizen scientists.

I think that I became more excited about this topic (even if it sadly came later in the term) because it's more closely aligned with what I'm most passionate about: outreach and social justice in libraries. So even though this final proposal won't be as flushed out as I would hope, I actually ended up finding a topic that I am genuinely interested in. Now, I can go back through the course material and figure out how to potentially make it happen.