Thursday, October 30, 2008

In-Class, Oct. 31st: WORKSHOP

WORKSHOP

Read your email: it contains the newest blog article, and sample versions of our best Abstracts, Lit Reviews, and Annotated Bibs!!!

Today, we'll have a workshop, where you can do the following:

1) repair and email out survey (last chance...)
2) finish the other two graphs and 5-7 sentence statements
3) repair Abstract, Lit Review, Annotated Bib
4) Develop your mini lesson, if you haven't held it yet
5) Prepare next blog summary
6) Prepare response to next blog article


The next blog summary is due on Monday, Nov. 3rd, by Colin Ott.
The responses are due Wednesday, Nov. 5th, at class time (otherwise, you won't be able to do the in-class activity).

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Next Mini Lessons

Mini Lesson Order (that's all of them. If you weren't on this list and haven't held one yet, contact me as soon as possible!!!):

Friday, Oct. 31st:
Workshop on graphs, and corrections of Annotated Bibliographies and Lit Reviews


Monday, Nov. 3rd:
1) Stephanie Jacques (articles for ESL)
2) Jeffrey Ryden (topic of choice)
3) Brittany Lingle (not only, but also; neither, nor; either, or)


Friday, Nov. 7th:
1) Michaela Bazar (apostrophe)
2) Randi McFadden (tenses)
3) Abby Hoover (semi-colon and colon)


Monday, Nov. 10th:
1) Colin Ott (topic of choice)
2) Charlotte Jackanicz (topic of choice)
3) Charah Gates (if there; otherwise later) (subject-verb agreement)

Those with "topic of choice": Let me know your ideas; if you don't have any, come to my office hours and borrow one of my nice grammar books ;-)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

In-Class, Wed. 29th: Workshop: Graphs

Change in schedule:
Today, Wednesday, Oct. 29th, we will hear ONE mini lesson: Jamie Wolf ("style")

Then, we'll have a workshop about graphs which will continue Friday, Oct. 31st.
_______________________________________________

Workshop in-class on Wednesday, Oct. 29th:
GRAPHS

(If you miss this class, do the steps at home so you won't get left behind!)

Today, we are preparing the three graphs that go in the Research Essay under the Results section.

NOTE: Those will be the exact graphs we are going to use later - we will merely exchange the numbers. Today, we simply invent numbers, but the graphs will be the same - xls will update automatically when you modify the numbers in your xls table in two weeks, when the survey results are in.


WHICH QUESTIONS TO PICK FOR GRAPHS:

1) pick your first matrix

2) pick your second matrix
3) pick one other very important question to your topic

4) do NOT pick a demographic question!!! (gender, age, race, income, major, etc.)

You can have more than three graphs (maximum: 6), but the minimum is three.


TASKS:

1) open your survey, and minimize it

2) open xls

3) take your first matrix, and type the headline for your graph (= your survey question) into xls

4) create a table in xls with rows and colums for your matrix question

ATTENTION: Do NOT leave any blank fields, because this will mess up your graph!!!

5) Invent numbers (how many people would have said what. We'll replace those later.)

6) Highlight your whole xls table (WITHOUT your headline! Do NOT highlight any blank fields, for this will mess up your graph!), and then click on the symbol on the top of your xls screen which looks like this:







This symbol will create the graph for you automatically. You only need to choose which kind of graph you want. The first one we will create is a vertical bar diagram. Later, you can create a horizontal bar diagram, a column diagram, a pie diagram, a line diagram, etc. - anything that truly displays your findings, and makes sense.




EXAMPLE for xls table:

Teachers: How often and where do dyslexic students get diagnosed?


................................often....sometimes.....rarely.....never

first grade................10........23...................5..............2

second grade..........20.........44..................4...............7

third grade..............57.........29..................3...............9

fourth grade............78..........9...................7...............0

middle school..........60........20.................10..............2

early high school....70..........8...................0...............0

late high school ......30........40.................20..............9

college....................0.........0................70............30


And here is the graph that goes with your table (you just need to type the title above it):








7) Write a 5-7 sentences statement about the main results you can see from your graph, cumulating in a hypothesis/general statement:

Using the graph above, I would say that:

"According to the results, teachers say that students get often diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade (78%). With regard to third grade, 57% of the teachers say that students get often diagnosed, with regard to middle school 60%, and with regard to early high school, 70%. In college, according to teachers' experience, students get rarely (70%) or never (30%) diagnosed with dyslexia. In first and second grade, very few students get diagnosed; only 10% of the teachers think that first-graders get often diagnosed, and 20% of the teachers believe that second-graders get often diagnosed.

These findings suggest that according to teachers' experience, the best time to diagnose dyslexia in students is in fourth grade, and that first through third grade is too early to diagnose a reading disability such as dyslexia. It is further suggested that by the time they enter college, students are already diagnosed."

(This is JUST an example I invented; it's not true, of course!!!)

HOMEWORK for Friday, Oct. 31st, by class time:

Email me your one graph that you created in class today as an xls sheet attached to your email, also containing your table and your 5-7 sentences statement.

On Friday, Oct. 31st, we will have another WORKSHOP to create the remaining two graphs about your second matrix, and another important question from your survey of your choice (with invented numbers).

HOMEWORK for Monday, Nov. 3rd, by class time:

Email me your complete xls sheet with all three (different) graphs, three tables, and three 5-7 sentences statements!!! As soon as I have approved them, you can copy and paste the GRAPHS and the STATEMENTS into your RESULT section of your Word document. Do NOT insert the three TABLES in there; they are not needed any more, because they just served to create the graphs!

Monday, October 27, 2008

How to do the Lit Review

2. Today, we are having a workshop about how to create the title, keywords, abstract, and Literature Review.

The Literature Review is a major component of your research essay and talks about the status quo of current research about your topic - its achievement, and its shortcomings which you are trying to fill by adding your own research.

It is a SYNTHESIS of your 3 external sources, not a SUMMARY. Merge, contrast, and compare your sources to one another, and find their shortcomings that you are going to fill with your own research.

Read the following description of what the fourfold Literature Review is intended for. On this site, you will also find a link to the APA Style Manual which helps you create the citations for your Lit Review. Remember the rules: Quotes that are under 4 lines go in your text flow and have quotation marks, and you indicate your source in parentheses: (Miller 2008, 59). Quotes that are 4 lines and over are indented, have NO quotation marks, and also have the source indication in parentheses. (See example text below.)

Then, create your own Literature Review, and type it into the Word document with the 12 headlines we created together. Due date for the finished Lit Review is Wednesday, Oct. 29th, at class time.

LENGTH REQUIREMENT:
Below is a sample of a Literature Review I wrote for an education course:
(This is also the minimum length yours should be; if you have 3 external sources, write 2-3 pages (double-spaced; we'll single-space later, after I and your peers have edited your paper.)_______________________________________________________

A C.A.L.L. for Fresh Wind in Grammar Teaching: Computer Assisted Language Learning as Best Practice for Literacy Education

Literature Review

Who wants to learn grammar? Let’s put it another way: who wants to teach it? Given that this highly analytical topic with its morphology, etymology, and diagramming is one of the most unpopular curriculum components in English language arts both in the conception of students and teachers, there must be a best practice to convey it in an agreeable, content-immersed manner proper for our computer age. We notice that students in middle and high schools have a more and more limited knowledge of technical terms such as genitive or accusative, but skills in information technology exceeding those of the teachers. Instead of bemoaning the status quo, we should readily address those skills, for in 2012, technological literacy will become part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the Nation's Report Card, which means that in addition to reading, writing, math, science, history, etc., the technology literacy of students will be measured nationwide.

This important milestone in educational history justifies a more intense integration of information technology into the classrooms, exposing students and teachers alike to new software products and corresponding skills. Why not try it in grammar teaching? It can be argued that instead of drilling the technicalities of Greek and Roman grammar – a language the modern student does not understand – it might make more sense for teachers to use an alternative approach to teaching grammar, such as by imitation strategy, conveying it in the form of computer-assisted instruction in order to address the needs of the modern student.

More and more constructivist teachers change their methodologies by addressing their tech-savvy young audiences in a motivating way. According to Dexter and Anderson (1999), teachers make use of computer technology along a continuum of instructional styles ranging from instruction to construction, exposing their students to either drill and practice, with computer technology as complementation, or, respectively, to active work for knowledge-building, with computers as a tool (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 2). They purport that teachers are not only constant decision-makers, but also learners who have to go with the change in the “nowness” of instruction, and reflect upon their own effectiveness to make their teaching fit modern standards (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 2). In their study about teachers’ use of computers in their instruction, and their perception of the changes thus introduced in existent classroom practices, Dexter and Anderson quote one teacher who exemplifies the general attitude of all teachers interviewed by stating that computers are not driving, but facilitating the changes she makes: “It is not like there is a written curriculum for the computer. We kind of put it together as we go along based on the needs of the students. Like I said, we try and connect it as much as possible to what is happening in the classroom.” (Dexter & Anderson 1999, 9)

Putting it together according to the needs of the students is also the aim of the present study about teaching grammar courses by using computer-assisted language learning (C.A.L.L.) in the form of WebQuests, blogs, online survey builders, etc. There are, however, characteristics of C.A.L.L. that Dexter and colleague do not mention – the immanent dangers, such as limited on-task supervision, the proneness to use Internet lingo in academic settings, plagiarism, and the leaving-behind of students who are less fortunate than the excelling tech geeks, such as the case study of an Amish student who had just learned what a computer was, but not yet how to use its higher functions. Kuang-wu Lee (2000) analyzes in detail the barriers of C.A.L.L., namely the financial obstacles, the availability of soft- and hardware, the technical and theoretical knowledge, and the acceptance of the technology. Despite all those adversaries, Lee concludes that what matters is not the technology, but how we use it, and states that

[c]omputers can/will never substitute teachers but they offer new opportunities for better language practice. They may actually make the process of language learning significantly richer and play a key role in the reform of a country's educational system. The next generation of students will feel a lot more confident with information technology than we do. As a result, they will also be able to use the Internet to communicate more effectively, practice language skills more thoroughly and solve language learning problems more easily. (Lee 2000, n.p.)

While Lee – who tackles the subject from the point of view of foreign language learning – discusses computer technology in general, Zheng and colleagues (2004) go more into detail by describing the perceptions of WebQuests by higher-education learners. After a definition of the role of WebQuests and quotes of what they ought not to be, such as “a panacea for all manner of educational ills,” and “merely worksheets with URLs” (quoted in Zheng et al. 2004, 41), the researchers mention the key features of WebQuests: a) critical thinking, b) knowledge application,c) social skills, d) scaffolded learning. Their survey of the perceptions of males and females of their WebQuest learning led to the results that males and females both have equal opportunities to learn from scaffolding (including the components of content comprehension, learning, and goal attainment) as embedded in WebQuests without any gender preferences, and can perform equally well in cooperative learning. Although the researchers stress the difference between the old construct of WebQuests focusing on knowledge application and critical thinking versus the new one of constructivist problem solving, they underline that there cannot be uniform standards for WebQuests established, since they display a wide range of quality and design (Zheng et al. 2004, 48). The present study is going to analyze university students’ perception of their grammar learning through WebQuests and other computer-assisted functionalities, hopefully coming to some general statements where this C.A.L.L. in literacy will lead us in the future.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

In-Class Mon., 27: Title, Abstract, Keywords, Lit Review

today: WORKSHOP
(If you're not in class today, do these steps at home, so you're not getting left behind!)

Wednesday, 29th: 1 mini lesson (Jamie), workshop about graphs

HOMEWORK for Wed., 29th, class time: email me your Word document containing title, abstract (unfinished), keywords, Lit Review

________________________________________________________

Today, we will need our Word document with the 12 headings.

Our Research Papers are growing substantially. We've finished the Annotated Bibliography, which you can copy and paste into your Word doc as soon as you got them back from me with my remarks. Note: The 10 max. points you get for your Annotated Bibliography have nothing to do with the grade you'll get for your final Research Paper. They simply mean you've done your homework. I've marked format, academic voice, and spelling errors, and whether the homework was submitted on time; I didn't check the content. We will have a peer-editing session in the end, where your peers will evaluate the content of your paper components.

We will also do a readability exercise with our finished research essays to establish our personal readability levels - at what grade level we write. For an academic paper, it should be 16+. If your readability level is lower, you need to change your sentence structure by incorporating more commas and semicolons, and elevated vocabulary. If your Annotated Bibliography in the section of "personal statement" contains a sentence such as "This article was very helpful to me because it helped me to...," this is obviously corresponding to grade level 4 or so, and needs to be reworded to "according to the results, it can be suggested that prospective teachers employ the delineated strategies to improve...."

Now, we are continuing with our Lit Reviews which are due this Wednesday, Oct. 29th, at class time.

But we will also deal with some other headings: the title, the abstract, the keywords. The more you read in your secondary sources, the more keywords will pop up, so type them directly in the space under the abstract reserved for them. It is obvious that we can merely BEGIN with these steps, and will finish them within the next four weeks, since we do not have any results yet, and do not even know the actual number of our "participants." (NOTE: We will only count as "participants of the study" the people who actually answered the survey, NOT all the people we have asked to take the survey!!!)

Today, we will

1) invent a catchy title that foreshadows your topic (keep academic voice, but still make it attention-catching). Also add your name and institution, and the two black lines above and below the abstract. NOTE: You can have a one-sentence title (like "How much Grammar do College Freshmen Know?"), or a double-sentence title with a colon or a dash in between (like "Shakespeare Turning in His Grave - The Decline of Language in High School Students"). Don't make your title too long.

2) Begin the abstract. The word limit is 175 words - no more!!! Keep the readability very high, because your abstract will decide whether or not other researchers are going to read your whole paper.

3) list some keywords (all nouns!)

4) finish up your Lit Review that we began in last Friday's workshop. The easiest way is to print out the 3 external sources (research papers), underline the important findings, and highlight the quotes you want to use with differently-colored markers. NOTE: When you submit your final Research Papers, you will submit them in a folder that also contains your 3 sources. You can give me your high-lighted, annotated sources - in fact, I'd prefer to see that you've worked with your sources, rather than receiving clean paper that looks unread.

You can also open the online source and use two windows on your screen next to one other, so you can type the quotes from the source directly into your Word document. What doesn't work is to copy and paste the quotes, since this is not possible with pdf files (unless you have special software).

NOTE: Be careful when copying your quotes! If the original quote you are using contains a SPELLING MISTAKE, you have to misspell it, too - indicate that it was the mistake of the original author by putting square brackets with the Latin word "sic" (= "so" / "thus it was said") behind the misspelled word or punctuation sign. Example:

"This tree is gorgous [sic]" (Miller 2006, 87).



Below are the guidelines for how to write an effective ABSTRACT (taken from this source). I have made some annotations in maroon.

An abstract contains the following:
  • Motivation:
    Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if your work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on. This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful. (This is your attention-catcher; here, you introduce your topic by mentioning why it is so important in our times. You can also mention the shortcomings of existing literature (your external sources), and the importance of your own study.)

  • Problem statement:
    What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem statement before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already understand why the problem is important. (This is where your research question goes - what did you want to find out?)

  • Approach:
    How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What was the extent of your work (did you look at one application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure? (This is where you briefly describe your participants and methods. Leave out the number and demographics of your participants, since we don't know yet who will actually take your surveys.)

  • Results:
    What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers conclude that something is so many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand you don't have room for all the caveats. (This is the part you leave blank for now; we'll fill it in when we have analyzed our SurveyMonkey results.)

  • Conclusions:
    What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case? (This is what you are going to write in the end, when the paper is completed. Contains your implications and limitations.)

If there are any questions, ask during the workshop in class, or take a look at last semester's sample essays again.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Click here for a list of rules for pronunciation of Esperanto.

Click here for a sentence translator.

HOMEWORK: For the following sentences written in Esperanto, identify the subject and verb. You can do this by copying the sentence to a word document. Highlight the subject in red and the verb in yellow. E-mail this document to Dr. Voss with your name in the document title. (Hint: the sentence translator works both ways!)

Try to identify the subject and verb before you look up the translation, but check your work when you are done. Don’t worry, they are easy!

1. La knabo kuroj rapide.
2. Mi volas lerni Esperanton.
3. Li ŝtelis mian taco!
4. Ŝi piediris hejmon de lernejo.
5. Li hundo peco mi sur mia pugo.

Also: Describe what you thought of this lesson or of Esperanto. Provide English and Esperanto translations as well as a pronunciation guide and attach it to this blog entry as a comment. You can write a short sentence if you like.

Dankon! Havas belan semajnfinon!

In-Class, Oct. 24th: LiveText Presentation

for MONDAY, Oct. 27th: topic = LITERATURE REVIEW

bring your 3 articles printed out; we're going to work with them.
Also, bring differently-colored markers!!!
_________________________________________________


Today, we will hear Jeffrey's presentation on LiveText.

For this, you will all receive a password to log in, so you can follow the presentation on your screens.


At the beginning of the lessons, I will distribute the surveys I've graded already. Please make the corresponding changes at home. If your survey says "approved after corrections," you had only minor spelling mistakes and can email it out after correction if your intro letter was approved also.

If your survey says "submit again," you had major button mistakes or missing matrices, and must email me your link by Saturday, Oct. 25th, midnight, so I can check your repaired survey and bring it to class on Monday for you to email out.

Before you email it to your audience, make sure 1) that you cleared out the fake responses of your peers, 2) that you got the right URL (email it to yourself first to check if it really works; some people just sent me URLs connecting me to SurveyMonkey). Remember to put me in the cc: line!!!

I'll bring the other graded surveys on Monday, Oct. 27th, and we'll email them out in class.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Info about Plagiarism

OK, I think students at a 300-level all know about plagiarism, but it just happened in one of my classes (even if unintentionally), so we have to talk about this.

Sometimes, it's difficult to distinguish whether it is already plagiarism, or just "too close to the text."

Please all read the definition of plagiarism.

I said in class that for your Annotated Bibliographies, you can use the information other researchers have written into their Abstracts and Conclusions, so you don't need to read through the whole research essay and can summarize their findings in a short paragraph. I DID NOT SAY THAT YOU CAN COPY THEIR ENTIRE TEXT WORD FOR WORD into your own summary!!!

This would be plagiarism = academic dishonesty, and can result in 1) failing grade for this paper, 2) failing grade for the whole course, 3) expulsion from the program.

When you submit your final Research Paper, you also have to submit your three sources from your Annotated Bibliography in a hard copy, and I will check whether you have quoted the authors properly in APA style. If you cite, use quotation marks and the proper APA citation, such as (Miller 2006, 78).

This will be extremely important in your Literature Review, where you have to use actual quotes from the three sources you've read, to blend them with your topic (the pros and cons). In an Annotated Bibliography, there must not be any quotations; it is solely your own summary of what you've read, and your personal reaction to it. Even if we write the rest of the research paper in passive voice, you are allowed to use the personal "I" in your Annotated Bibliography. Of course, it would be better to use the passive voice here, too - such as "This article is a valuable resource for education majors, because...," instead of saying "This article is helpful to me as an education major."

Even if you use just ONE sentence from somebody else, or one keyword he/she coined, you have to use quotation marks and the APA citation; you cannot present it as your own.

Quotes that are four lines or longer always have to be indented one tab, and then don't carry quotation marks. After the last word of the quotation, you write the citation (Miller 2006, 78).

Quotes shorter than 4 lines do have quotation marks and go directly in your text flow without indentation.

If you have any questions, or are not sure whether it is plagiarism or not, ask me before you submit your final paper, so we can fix it and you won't face any consequences for plagiarism committed unintentionally. Also, check our Course Schedule about its paragraph on plagiarism.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

In-Class, Wed., Oct. 22nd: Hints for Research Essay

Today, we are hearing two mini lessons:

1. Katrina Kosma
2. Charah Gates, or Jamie Wolf

Then, we are having a WORKSHOP to google two more research essays, and create the other two entries for our Annotated Bibliography which are due this Friday, Oct. 24th, at class time.

I will email you when your entries are correct and approved, and this means you can copy and paste them in your Word document under "Annotated Bibliography" that we created this Monday (the one with the 12 headlines for the research essay components).

Remember to always have your Word document accessible (in an email to yourself), so we can continue to work on our research essays during the following two weeks!

We are not emailing out our surveys yet, since I haven't finished grading all of them yet. Only when I have returned and approved both your letter of introduction AND your graded survey, you can go ahead and email it out to the 20 emails of your audience that you should have collected by now. Put me in the cc: line, so I know your survey has been emailed out!!! I hope to have them all graded by this Friday, Oct. 24th.

_________________________________________________

Here are a few HINTS about your Research Essays:

What I don't want to see in your papers: don't use the words

1) fact
2) truth
3) proof


!!!!!

This means, never say, "It is a fact that.... (AAE should be taught in high school, all college freshmen are bad at grammar, etc.)." Nothing ever is a fact; there are always different opinions, numbers, and debates; it might be a hypothesis, a perception, an observation, an appearance, etc.

Never say, "it is true that," "in truth,..." - we are in no position to decide what the higher truth is!

Never say "proof," such as "my results proved." We are not famous researchers who create proof that can overrule existing research - we are just a class gathering data from a limited pool and writing a paper about that. Our reliability/validity is not very high due to our limitations. You can say, "the outcome of this study was," "the results show that," "according to the results," "the findings were that," "It can be suggested that." But we are not going to prove anything to the world.

Also, never use personifications, such as "the research says" - the research cannot say anything; it is the author of a research paper who purports / claims / argues / maintains / states something. (!!!) Make sure you vary your verbs accordingly.

Further, remember to use academic voice, which means you have to write in passive. ("This study was conducted at.... participants were chosen among.... a survey was emailed to..... the following methods were applied... the results were compared to...."). Don't use the personal pronoun "I."

__________________________________________________

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Oct. 20: Research Essay - 12 Components

What we are doing today, Monday, Oct. 20th (if you miss this class, do these steps at home. IMPORTANT! You'll get left behind if you don't.):

1) find the 12 components of a Research Essay, and create a Word document with these headlines. Email it to yourself.

2) download the 3 sample essays from last semester, and email them to yourself.

3) read 1 of the 3 sample essays together in class, and look at the corresponding survey and report sheet to see how the student from last semester has integrated his/her data. HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Read the other two, so you get a good idea of what you are expected to do!

4) Find 3 research articles (or 4, for the 400 level) that deal with your topic and contain information you want to either confirm or contradict with your own survey results. NOTE: You are ONLY allowed to use published research essays from JSTOR, ERIC, or Google Scholar. No others are accepted; especially not websites and Wikipedia (those are not scientific and can contain many errors).

5) Create an Annotated Bibliography of these 3 or 4 articles.

HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Email me ONE entry for your Annotated Bibliography.
HOMEWORK for Friday, Oct. 24th: Email me the TWO (or three) other entries for your Annotated Bibliography.

When I have graded and approved your entries for your Annotated Bibliography, copy and paste them into your Word document that is going to be your research essay under the corresponding heading.
___________________________________________________


A research essay has 12 main components which are easy to detect: look at the headlines!

TASK 1:

Take 5 min. to briefly look over the following three sample research essays from the Internet (all are a little different, but their main components are always the same), and let's find out in class discussion what the components are (in the right order!!!).
1. article: Genetic Determinants of Bone Mass in Adults
2. article: Exploring the Role of Distance Education....
3. article: about Decision Making Styles

Tell me the components, so I can put them on the blog. You are going to open a Word document, and type those 12 headings in there. This is the beginning of your research essay. Save it on your desktop, and email it to yourself, so you always have access to it, since we are going to work on it in class during the following four weeks.

12 components of Research Essay:

1. Title
2. Your name and institution
3. Abstract
4. Keywords
5. Introduction
6. Literature review
7. Purpose
8. Participants
9. Methods
10. Results
11. a) Discussion (or: Conclusion)
11. b) Limitations
12. Annotated Bibliography (usually: "references," but we do a bit more than that)

As 13., you are going to attach your annex (pdf file of your SurveyMonkey result sheet. If you had open-ended text box questions on your survey, you need to attach the separate Word doc. sheets for the text answers of your subjects, too, since those won't print on your pdf report sheet. You have to click on VIEW on your SurveyMonkey results page, and print them out separately for each question where you had an open-ended text box!)


TASK 2:
Go to the website linked below, and save the three sample essays on your desktop as Word documents. Email them to yourself, so you will always have access to them. They show what last semester's students have done with their survey - they've created a research essay using their own data pool, creating graphs from their results using their SurveyMonkey Report Sheet, and integrating current research about their topic in their literature review, analyzing it in their Annotated Bibliography. The latter will be done in APA format. Use this link to see what your Annotated Bibliography has to look like.

NOTE: If you take this course at a 300 level, you need 3 published and peer-reviewed research essay from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

If you take this course at a 400 level, you need 5 published and peer-reviewed research essays from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

NOTE: While all three essays were A's, the students have made some minor mistakes, for example with citing correctly in the text in APA style, or regarding the academic format, etc. Do not take over uncritically everything they did, but use their papers as examples only.

Here are three sample Research Essays that some of my ENGL300 students wrote this Spring.
The first one deals with autism (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The second one deals with AAE (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The third one deals with Twins. (Report Sheet included.) Here's the corresponding survey.

In-Class Task:

Browse the Internet for 3 (respectively, 4) research articles about your topic. Use the links on top of this blog to search in the ERIC and JSTOR databases, and Google Scholar. No unscientific essays, please!!!

When you've found a title that sounds like it might be usable for your paper, read over it; and if you find good quotations you want to use (either confirming or contradicting what you want to find out with your own survey), create an Annotated Bibliography entry for it, and type it into your Word document. Your homework for Wednesday is to email me one annotation. An annotation in APA consists of the citation line, a very brief and concise summary of 2-3 sentences, and a personal statement of 2-3 sentences. See example of an annotation as linked at the top of this blog. See also this example I wrote for another class:

Hudson, R. F., Lane, H. B., & Pullen, P.C. (2005). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how? The reading teacher, 58 (8), 702-714.

After defining fluency as accurate oral rendering of connected text at conversational rate with suitable prosody, and its importance with regard to the automaticity needed for textual comprehension, Hudson et al. explain different correlations, such as between reading accuracy and proficiency, reading rate and reading proficiency, and prosody and reading proficiency. They provide research-based information on the assessment of reading fluency and accuracy, explaining different measuring instruments for contextual oral reading, e.g. time readings, AIMSweb, DIBELS, GORT-4, NEEP, Reading Fluency Monitor, as well as observations and Zutell & Rasinski’s scale for prosody. Finally, they list evidence-based instructional fluency-development methods, such as (timed) repeated readings, and connected programs (Carbo Recorded Books, Great Leaps Reading, etc.), and answer some common instructional questions.

As a future reading specialist, I want to get to know as many fluency-development methods and forms of assessment as possible (including the “fads”), to find out which practices work best in my classrooms or tutoring sessions, always keeping in mind that a fast reading pace is NOT always a signal for textual comprehension: some children are good at sounding out words fast and show phonemic awareness without understanding what they read, because they are “glued to the print” focusing on the letters instead of prior knowledge, content, context, and inferences. Those children are also in danger of not being able to “read between the lines” and understand what is not explicit, for example humor / sarcasm / irony. To detect the problems of such students (which often go unnoticed due to said fluency) is a major challenge for reading teachers.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Some Hints: how to Edit AFTER Publishing (in class, 17th)

How to go back to EDIT what you've typed into your survey AFTER it has already been opened to the public:

You cannot change the wording or order of your survey questions while people are still answering it and typing into your form - logically, that doesn't work, because what would they see??? Therefore, you must CLOSE your survey to the public BEFORE you EDIT it again according to your peer feedback received.

This is how we do it:


Go to our LABEL, find your survey, click on COLLECT RESPONSES, and click on the little parcel symbol which says OPEN



and CLOSE it.



When you've CLOSED your survey, that means nobody can type in any answers while you are changing your wording. When you've finished repairing your survey, OPEN it again for your audience to answer!

Homework for Monday, Oct. 20th:

1. Finish survey, repair it according to peer feedback (IF our gmail accounts work again; if not, you'll get more time for the final proofreading),

2. Finish your letter of introduction (with a nice attention catcher, and a link to your final survey. Don't put the whole long URL in there, that doesn't look good; instead, hyperlink the word "survey" or "link" in your sentence, "Please click on the following LINK to take my survey." Email me your letter of introduction for approval.

3. Email me the pdf file of the REPORT SHEET you created with some peer answers. In case nobody answered to your survey because it wasn't finished or for some other reason, take your survey yourself (or have some friends take it), so you can create and email me the REPORT SHEET. The answers are all fake, anyway. However, you will need some feedback and GRADING SHEETS from your peers; if you didn't get any by Monday, Oct. 20th, let me know, and I'll assign someone for extra credit to take your survey.
4. Start collecting 20 emails from your audience.

ATTENTION: This morning, all our grammar300.com emails did not work (nobody could read the inbox, or compose).

You can email me your pdf file and letter (and email your peers their feedback and grading sheets) from any private or siu email account you have, in case our gmail class accounts still don't work!!! Just send them to my grammar300.com email, because I can read it ;-) Also, send your peer feedback to the usual address; we suppose gmail will start working soon again. If not, you get a different deadline for reading and incorporating your peers' feedback.







Thursday, October 16, 2008

How to find Results, and create Report Sheet

1. Today, Friday 17th, we are test-taking 5 (or more, if you want extra credit) surveys in class. Email the Survey Grading Sheet to the authors of the surveys, and to me in copy, and include some comment sentences.

Distribute your responses evenly, so that everybody gets some!!! I'll take all surveys, too.

If we have time, we'll do task 2-4 in class - if not, this will be your homework for Monday, Oct. 20th!


2. Then, we're going to look at our RESULTS. Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Open the LABEL of our class, find your survey, but don't open it - just click on the button "ANALYZE," and it will give you a data sheet with blue bars on which you can see the answers of your test takers.

If you want to see what EACH SURVEY TAKER has answered, click on the left menu button "BROWSE RESPONSES," and it will show you a forward and a backward button that leads you to survey taker no. 1, no. 2., no. 5 - whichever you want to see. This might be important for your evaluation. This way, you can also see that the first survey taker was male and African American, the second one female and Caucasian, etc.....

P.S. I am taking your surveys, too, and I am typing my comments into your text boxes, so if you want to see what I had to say read your RESULTS ;-) If there are no comments, I didn't find any big mistakes. I didn't comment on missing parts, like your introductions, just on some very obvious spelling mistakes and/or malfunctioning matrices/buttons. I didn't correct everything, for that's your peers' job. I will fill in your Survey Grading Sheet after you've incorporated your peer feedback, so you'll get a better grade.


3. We will practice to create the pdf file (= REPORT SHEET) that has to be attached as an annex to your research essay later, when you got the real answers from your audience.

To create the REPORT SHEET, click on the left menu button "DOWNLOAD RESPONSES," choose "SUMMARY REPORT," and put the little black dot in the circle for "PDF FORMAT." Then, it will create one for you, and you just need to open it and save it, so you can email it to yourself and print it out.

Only AFTER you've created your pdf REPORT SHEET and have emailed it to yourself for printing, you can proceed with clearing out your responses account, so it will be fresh and empty when your real audience takes your survey.

To CLEAR out your peers' responses, go to the LABEL of our class, find your survey, don't open it, but click on the symbol of the little eraser that says CLEAR, and all your answers will be gone!


4. Create LETTER OF INTRODUCTION (basically the same as the intro on your survey, just a bit more elaborate, with a nice attention catcher in the beginning, such as: Do you believe that twins have language learning development as compared to singletons??? Some current research purports this. In the following survey (LINK of your repaired survey after incorporating your peer and teacher comments) I want to find out whether this is really true. I am a student of...... bla bla bla.)


HOMEWORK for Monday, Oct. 20th, will be to print out your peers' feedback on your REPORT SHEET so I know you all know where to find it, and how to print it. If you don't want to waste paper, you can also email me your report sheet as a pdf file (you don't need to hand in a paper copy).

If you haven't finished sending out the feedback, do so by the deadline of Saturday, Oct. 18th, 8 p.m. that we agreed on in class. That gives the people time from 8 p.m. to noon on Monday, Oct. 20th, to repair and finalize their surveys. The finished final versions of the surveys are due on Monday, Oct. 20th, in class!

Homework is also to finish up the LETTER OF INTRODUCTION we will begin in class today, and to email it to me by midnight on Friday, Oct. 17th, so I can grade it for Monday and give you the permission to email it out.

Also, please read the blog entry from last Monday's class again, because all the dates have changed due to the postponement of the presentations!!!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

How to Create URL

To create a URL for your finished survey,

log into www.surveymonkey.com, find your survey under the label "grammarians300-2,Fall2008," and open your survey.

Then, click on the button "collect responses" on the horizontal menu list on top of your screen.

Then, put the little black bullet in the circle where it says, "create a link to send in your own email message..."

Copy the http://...... link that you get by right-clicking on it, open an email, paste this link with a right-click, and send it to me!

I will put your URL out on the blog on Thursday, Oct. 17th, 10:00 a.m. (deadline), so that everybody can access your survey on Friday morning at class time.

In case you don't manage to create the URL for whatever technological reason, just have your survey completely finished, and we'll create the link in class/after class in my office or the computer lab really quickly.

If your survey is not finished on Friday at class time, your grade for the survey will be lowered by one grade.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Survey Links

ATTENTION, the DATES have changed!!!
Presentations are postponed to Friday, 24th (Jeffrey) and Monday, 27th (Creighton), mini lessons are therefore earlier (Wednesday, 22nd), and surveys can be emailed out earlier (Wednesday, 22nd, after my approval).
_____________________________________________________________

On Wednesday, Oct. 15th, we will have a workshop to finish up our surveys.

We agreed on a deadline for your audience to submit answers to your surveys: Wednesday, November 12th.

Then, we'll finish the surveys. Since it is a WORKSHOP, you will be required to figure the technology out through "learning by doing," and you are also welcome to discuss with your peers and exchange ideas. Remember that there are sample surveys out there, if you don't know how a matrix has to look like, for example.

Each person needs 20 questions, at least 2 of which must be matrices, and the rest varied (single choice answers, multiple answers possible, open-ended text line, open-ended text box, etc.). 4 questions must be demographic (data about subjects, such as age, gender, years of experience, income, years of study, place of living (important if you survey about dialects and slang), etc.). 16 questions are content-based (e.g., "How many minutes of grammar do you teach per lesson?")

When you make up a Likert scale (such as: strongly disagree - disagree - neutral - agree - strongly agree), remember that it is always of advantage to have five items, not four, because some people tend to choose the middle.

Make sure all your button choices make sense, and that there are few spelling mistakes in your survey.

Also, make certain that all your survey questions lead to your purpose (your research question; what you want to find out in your essay, e.g. whether Ebonics should be considered a foreign language or not. For example, to find this out, you probably won't need to ask in the demographics, "what is your monthly income" - unless you want to prove that lower income families would support/reject instruction in Ebonics. Thus, work towards your goal, and avoid useless questions. If, on the other hand, you want to find out whether female high school teachers teach more grammar in English classes than male high school teachers, you MUST ask for their gender, and analyze their answers accordingly.)

However, you WON'T USE all of your questions in your final research essay, in which you analyze the results -- you'll pick the most important ones, or the ones that had the best results. (In case you made a button mistake, your result for this question will be screwed up since the interviewees answered wrongly; DON'T USE screwed-up questions, just forget about them. You will have to make THREE GRAPHS in the end; they will focus on three specific questions important to your research purpose. You won't make a graph out of EVERY question. Some questions are just for your background knowledge, not for graphs, such as the demographics, which you will use in the part of your research essay that deals with PARTICIPANTS. This is what the section PARTICIPANTS might look like: "The participants of this study were 20 elementary school teachers, 12 females, and 8 males, ranging in age from 25-59 years. 15 were English teachers, 1 was a biology teacher, 3 were social studies teachers, and 1 was a history teacher. 80% had more than 5 years of teaching experience, 10% had 2-5 years of teaching experience, and 10% less than one year.... bla bla bla.")

TASK 1: Email me your survey URL
When you've finished your survey, create a hyperlink for it (I will model this), and email me your URL and your topic, so I can put it out on this blog. In case you don't finish your survey in class today, email it to me after class (deadline: Thursday, Oct. 16th, 10 a.m.), so that I can put it out for Friday, Oct. 17th. It does not need to be perfect yet, because we will test your survey and give you feedback on it.

TASK 2: Testing 5 peer surveys, using this Survey Grading Sheet.
Each student needs to take at least five surveys of his/her peers for testing. You can do more if you wish. Try to spread it evenly; don't all test the first five surveys that are published, but also the last ones that come in at the deadline (Thursday, 10 a.m.). Everybody needs feedback! I will take some randomly, too. Just go to the links that will be published here, and take the surveys. Fill in the Survey Grading Sheet for the surveys you test-take, and email this sheet together with some comments written in text to the author of the survey, and to me in copy to get your points for it.

EXTRA CREDIT opportunity: Some of you might have missed a piece of homework (blog entry) after the mid-term grade has been announced. If you want to make up for something missed, let me know and take an additional survey - when you email me the copy of your feedback for this survey, write in it "make up for: ______," so that I can give you a grade for this instead.) You cannot make up for assignments missed BEFORE the mid-term grade, because those grades are submitted and won't change any more.

If you missed a day AFTER the mid-term grade: an unexcused day is worth 5 extra surveys taken! Email me those 5 feedback comments, and type in, "make up for: ..... (date missed)."


TASK 3: Feedback email to 5 peers
As soon as you notice that something does not work, there is a spelling error, something is missing, the order of the question could be better, or you have a good question he/she could add, etc., email the person whose survey you took (you know the name; it's on the survey) and tell him/her what you noticed! In the end, you need to have sent FIVE EMAILS to the authors of the FIVE surveys you had to take. EMAIL ME A COPY of your feedback comments - even if you did not find any mistake - in this case, you tell the person what you liked about his/her survey. Deadline for emailing the feedback to your peers (with a copy to me) is Monday, Oct. 20th, at class time. If you haven't done your 5 feedback emails by then, you will miss points.

P.S. For those of you who abbreviate your first name - don't do it on the survey, or your peers won't be able to email you any feedback, since I created all grammar300.com emails with your long first name!!!



Preview of TENTATIVE SCHEDULE (might be subject to change, depending on how good/fast we are/I can grade ;-) ):

ATTENTION, date change for 2 presentations (a week later, so we'll email out the surveys earlier!!!):
On Friday, Oct. 24th, we will hear a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden.
On Monday, Oct. 27th, we will hear a presentation by Creighton Jackson.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we will:

1. test-take 5 surveys in class, filling in the Survey Grading Sheet, and emailing both with some comments in text format to the author of the surveys, and to me in copy (if you get done before class is over, you can take more for extra credit, or proceed with the "Letter of Introduction." This letter is mainly the same thing you wrote into the header of your survey (the part with the blood samples...), only a bit more elaborate, in a nice tone to address our audience, and if possible with an attention catcher in the first line, such as: "Do you believe that twin children have a disadvantage learning language??? At least, this is what some current research purports. I have created a survey to find out whether there is any truth in such previous observations. I'm a student of........ I would like you to take the survey you can find at this LINK, to help me find out more about this topic from experts and people who are directly concerned...... The deadline for taking this survey is..... bla bla bla." This letter will be typed into the email that contains our URL, which we will email out after I've approved of both. Don't send anything out before approval, because last year I got some complaints from the survey takers about buttons not working, mistakes, etc. We'll give our audience "simply the best" ;-)


2. repair our surveys according to our peer/teacher feedback that we got, and email me your final URL. Deadline for submitting the repaired URL to me by email is today, Friday, Oct. 17th, midnight. I'll give you the OK on Monday, Oct. 20th. Some of you might still need to make changes then, if I found a mistake. I will TAKE ALL SURVEY URL's off the blog when they are good to go, so that no strange people from the Internet are looking on our blog and taking your surveys, messing up the validity of your data!!! Or, I'll block all other Internet users from seeing our blog. You alone will keep your real URL, and email it out as soon as I give permission.).

3. Search the Internet for potential email addresses for our audience (such as from self-help groups of children with disabilities, or other SIU students, or public school teachers, etc.), and add them to our list of at least 20 (!) interviewees.

If you received 5 or more feedback emails already, you may proceed with "emptying your results" which I will model. See below. MAKE SURE your "results account" is completely empty from our fake test-taking before you email your survey out to your audience!!!


On Monday, Oct. 20th, we will

2. empty our "results" in http://www.surveymonkey.com/, because your peers' feedback is not from your intended audience; thus, we will delete it after having repaired/improved our surveys, to make the results account empty for the new answers of our real audience. (I will model it.)

If I have approved your letter and survey already, you can email them out on the 27th.

Then, we'll learn about the components of a Research Essay, and see / evaluate some examples from last year's 300 course.


On Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded and approved letters of introduction and URL's!!!

Then, we will relax from the survey, and hear the next two mini lessons:

1) Katrina Kosma: That/Which
2) Charah Gates: Subject-Verb Agreement

3) and, if Charah can't come, Jamie Wolf on "Style"! Be prepared, please.)

Since on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded introductory letters with the URL to our audiences, you need to bring the 20 required emails of your study subjects!!! You can get them from focus groups or self-help groups/parents' groups on the Internet (about twins, autistic children, DS children, children with Tourette, etc.), from the autism center at SIU if you ask them politely, from high school/middle school/elementary school teachers anywhere in the U.S., from people you know, from fellow students, etc. You're not allowed to ask SIU faculty!!!

Then, we'll wait for 1-2 weeks for our results to come in (depending on the deadline we agreed upon).
In the meantime, we'll do mini lessons, learn about how to do the statistics for the research essay (xls graphs), learn about the components of the research essay and its required format, and evaluate some sample research essays we created in grammar300 last year. If you're willing to let me use YOUR RESEARCH ESSAY for next year's grammar300 students, please let me know in an email!!! (You can do it after you've received your research essay back in December, and know your grade, or you can do it in general. If you want, I'll take out your name (indicate that!). Your collaboration would be greatly appreciated - you are allowed to see last year's examples throughout this course, too! ;-))

Links to our PRELIMINARY SURVEYS for testing:

Thanks to those who published their URL's; for those who couldn't do it, I've created the URL myself after the deadline for submission on Thursday, 10 a.m. It won't result in a point loss as long as your survey was finished, since it's not your fault I didn't model how to create the URL in our last meeting.

Grammar without Grammar: Just Playing Around, Writing

RESPONSES to this blog entry are due on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, 2008.
___________________________________________________________


This article was basically about teaching grammar without your students knowing you are teaching them grammar.

Dean began teaching in a district that specifically addressed the teaching of grammar and sentence structure. When she tried to break down sentences and help her class identify words defined as adverbs, direct objects, adjectives and pronouns she met with blank looks and knew she was quickly losing the interest of her students. In vain she tried to find ways to incorporate grammar into everyday lessons only to be met with a scathing letter from a parent concerning her approach.

Changing methods she zeroed in on the writing of her students. She began to find ways of presenting sentences to the class that peaked their interest and met the grammar criteria. She never specifically told her class this is an adverb, that is the subject of the sentence. When she tried she lost them. She pushed on without mentioning grammar. The students became interested more because they felt it was a fun sentence game and not basic grammar.

Dean found a way to engage and teach her students without putting what she was teacing into specific context. She never said that by writing these sentences you are learning about fragments, subidornate clauses or parallel structure; but they were. The could make up a sentence and then break it down to specific subjects. They were learning and incorporating what they were learning into writing assignments. The idea of not knowing what Dean was specifically teaching them took the fear and boredom out of the lesson and made it easier to teach and therefore to learn.

This approach to grammar might not work for all teachers but clearly worked in Deans case. I found this approach refreshing and would utilize it in a classroom should I decide to teach.

Monday, October 13, 2008

In-Class, Monday, Oct. 13th: Survey Template

MEMO: Don't forget to bring your remaining questions of the 20 on Wednesday, Oct. 15th, for the workshop!!!

There are some surveys that weren't saved correctly (lastname_topic). I'm going to delete those on Wednesday, so make sure you save them in the correct way to prove who did them!!!

P.S. Make sure your first four questions deal ONLY with DEMOGRAPHICS!!! No such things as "how do you feel about Tourette"! You need 4 background questions, and 16 content-related questions.
___________________________________________________________________


Today after the two mini lessons, we are going to create our survey templates.

Log into http://www.surveymonkey.com/ with the secret login and password I give you in class. Note these down so you will be able to log in for your homework. Don't share them with anybody else.

I will model how to create the templates, and once you've created them, I will LABEL them, so you can find your survey easily. My other classes also took/take surveys, so there are lots of names out there. If you are searching for your survey, look under "My Surveys," "Current Folder," then click on the black arrow and select the LABEL "grammarians300-2,Fall2008." This folder contains the surveys from our class only.

When you've chosen the background color for your template, we will do the first four questions together. They should be roughly the same for everybody, and deal with DEMOGRAPHICS (what you want to know about your subjects' background) only:
1. gender
2. age
3. how long they've taught/studied, etc. (professional experience)
4. some detail about experience (which majors; how many children with disabilities, etc.)

Then, we are going to create an Intro for our survey which goes directly under its title (use the EDIT button). It contains the following (look at last year's sample surveys again):


INTRO

1. identify your teacher, course, and university
2. mention whom you are going to interview (your audience)
3. state your research purpose (what you want to find out)
4. mention that you don't need consent of IRB and HSC, because...
5. mention that your survey is anonymous, for in-class use only, and not for publication
6. mention deadline for data submission (how long they can answer before you need the results. ATTENTION: we didn't agree on a date yet, so you can leave the date blank for now!)
7. mention that interviewees can receive the survey results by emailing you at your @grammar300.com email
8. mention that taking this survey does not take longer than 10 min.
9. thank the interviewees for their time/cooperation.



EXAMPLE:

I, first name last name, am a student from Dr. Christina Voss' English 300-1 Language Analysis class at SIUC. For my Fall 2008 project I am exploring the opinions of foreign language instructors to ascertain whether African American English (AAE) is worthy of foreign language status. This survey does not need the consent of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Human Subject Committee (HSC), because I am using this information as an in-class activity only; it is anonymous, and not for publication; I am not taking any blood samples; and I am not surveying minors. The deadline for taking this survey is November 10th, 2008. If you would like to receive the results of this survey, please feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@grammar300.com. This survey will take you about 10 minutes to complete. Thank you very much for your time.


HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 15th:

On Wednesday, we are finishing up our online surveys in a workshop. You need to bring all your 20 questions on paper.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we are watching a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden. This will take the whole class session. You don't need to prepare anything.

PROMPT: Write the 16 other survey questions (we did the 4 for demographics together in class) on a piece of paper, or into an email to yourself, so all you have to do in class on Friday, Oct. 17th, is to type them into the online builder. MAKE SURE you have 20 questions altogether; some one-choice-only items; some multiple-choice-possible items, some matrices, some single-word textboxes, and some open-ended essay text boxes.................. If you only have yes/no questions, your survey will appear boring. Vary it!!! Check last year's sample surveys for ideas.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Rondal Down's Syndrome

There is little information presented on the study of language function in Down's Syndrome sufferers in their late adolescence or adulthood. Down's syndrome, however, is an important reference for the study of language acquisition. While looking at Down's Syndrome from this point of view, it could be possible to generalize the findings to all forms of mental retardation, although it may be necessary to categorize Down's Syndrome sufferers in their own classifiable group.
The reason for this grouping comes from the shared characteristics found in all DS people. All share around the same IQ of 45, as well as ability in non-verbal cognitive functioning, and basic communicative and linguistic development. From a language standpoint, very few DS people are so handicapped by the syndrome that they fail to develop speech, or are so little handicapped that their speech function appears normal. Such cases, should they exist, should be documented and examined. With evidence in these cases, it will be possible to know for sure if language development is different between mentally retarded and non-retarded individuals with regard to linguistic development.
Life span for DS people has gone up considerably in the last thirty years, rising from 10 to over 50. DS people make up one third of the mentally retarded population. This large number makes the desire for remediation much stronger than that of simple maintenance. Some physicians have taken to screening embryos and pregnancy termination when a genetic anomaly of this kind becomes present, but this practice can be deemed unethical as well as wasteful as it removes another individual that can be learned from.
Down's Syndrome mental development is considerably slower than standard mental development, as evinced by Gibson's mental age plateau scheme. DS people reach Plateau 1 at 4 to 6 years, while a standard learner reaches it at 18 months. Plateau 2 is reached in DS at 8-11 years, as opposed to 30 months for standard. Plateau 3 is not reached until 12 to 17 in DS, while it is reached at 40 months in standard. This shows the decline mentally from adulthood on in DS people.
Language development problems in DS can be found from an early point on. DS infants vocalize with little room for their mothers to respond, leading to vocal clashes. This shows that basic turn taking ability is slow to develop in DS infants. DS infants also experience delays in maintained eye-contact with their mothers, further slowing the language development in DS people.
Consistent words are also delayed in DS patients, with strings of consistent words not coming until 3 1/2 to 4 years of age. This is indicative of the lower linguistic function of DS people, but the answer of Down's Syndrome alone as the cause is too general. There is always the possibility of several other environmental factors that inhibit language development. It is possible that normal language input to the child given by the parent is not an optimal strategy for producing language development in children with DS.
Early language development in DS people should not be viewed as slow-motion development of language in standard learners. There are key differences in the language acquisition process. DS children use far more symbolic tokens, as well as a dedication to a routine for language that standard learners do not exhibit. Communication, however, seems to be the same for both groups at the early level.
While much is known about early development language acquisition in DS people, there has been little research to show how language is developed in late adolescent and adult DS people. One study conducted with young DS adults found that DS females are able to utilize language with more accuracy than DS males, but the rule of language simplicity was found true throughout the study. Grammatical morphology and function words provided difficulty, and were therefore avoided throughout most of the study.
The thought of a life-span intervention study is prudent, as studies have shown that language development all but stops after the age of 14 in DS people. There is a theory though that familial intervention can promote language development, as a study of an individual with familial support showed the promise of language development up until the age of 30.
In order to combat the language development problems inherent in DS people, it is clear that the only way to create a continued developmental learning strategy in DS people is to intervene with the developmental retardation throughout the DS patient's entire life, rather than during the developmental years of childhood.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Friday, Oct. 10th: Intro to Research Project

HOMEWORK for Monday, Oct. 13th:

Read this introduction to our research project, and also look at the links I provided!

Make up your mind about your topic, and sign up for it on my list on Monday, Oct. 13th. Multiple entries for the same topic are possible.

_______________________________________________________________________

Today after the movie, we're going to start our big semester project: the research essay. This will take about a month altogether to complete.

At first, we will discuss the difference between

REVIEW ESSAY (a collage of different research articles that are compared, contrasted, and evaluated. No self-collected data.)

and

RESEARCH ESSAY (self-collected data that verifies or contradicts existing research which is previously discussed in the literature review of this paper).

The project of your RESEARCH essay consists of three parts:

  1. an online survey you will create with SurveyMonkey.com using an account for which I will provide you a with password (don’t sign up for the free trial; its functions are limited. I’ll give you the paid for version with more features).

  1. a report sheet this online survey builder will build for you. It will contain all the data you need taken out of the answers from your survey.

  1. a research article of about 8-10 pages you will write about your results in a given format. You will attach your report sheet to it as an annex, and you will create three xls graphs for your data statistics. You will cite 3 published and peer-reviewed research articles from a scientific journal in your Literature Review, and add an Annotated Bibliography in APA for these three articles.

NOTE: if you take this course at a 400-level, you will write 12-15 pages, and you will cite 5 published and peer-reviewed research articles from a scientific journal.



Today, we'll only deal with step 1, how to create online surveys with SurveyMonkey.com

First, we are going to look at a few sample surveys we’ve created in ENGL 300-1 last semester:

A. Understanding Autism Through Supervision

B. What Second Language Teachers Think About AAE/Ebonics as Second Language

C. a) Language Acquisition Among Twins
b) It's Cause We Is Twins?

D. Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL)

E. Learning a Foreign Language


I am going to model how to create the template. You all have to name your surveys the following way:

Lastname_topic

For example:

Voss_grammar

If your topic name is really long, abbreviate it. For example, don’t write “apraxia in children with Down’s syndrome,” but call it “DS apraxia.”

You have to save your online survey under the correct label for your class I’ve created (either 300-1Fall 08, or 300-2 Fall 08).

Your further TASKS will be:

1) to pick a topic that in some way deals with "language acquisition" (not confined to pure grammar). You can take any topic we’ve talked about before, such as ESL, AAVE, Asian ESL learners, slang, dialect, accent, autism, twins, Tourette, Down’s syndrome, grammar teaching, grammar learning, dyslexia, apraxia, or invent your own topic. You can also make up a survey consisting entirely of grammar quizzes, to find out how much your interviewees know about grammar, and what types of grammar they know least about.


2) to figure out who your audience is going to be (will your questionnaire be for students, parents, teachers, education majors, or guardians; or relatives/parents of autistic or disabled children? We have an autism center in WHAM downstairs, in case you want to find contact persons there.) NOTE: You are NOT allowed to do the survey with any faculty members of SIU!!!

3) to assemble questions on paper about your topic that you might ask in the survey

4) to note down emails of 20 (no more and no less!) persons you are going to interview. Take into consideration that many people don't answer email surveys. So, if you address 20 people, count on it that 50% won't respond, anyway. If you have less than 10 interviewees, that won't give you a valuable research basis, and your survey will be void.

We will do these preliminary tasks on Monday 13th, Wednesday 15th, and Friday 17th next week in class. If you miss a class session, you have to do them at home; otherwise, you’ll get left behind and won’t be able to use the software simultaneously with the others.

We will create a URL for our online survey and email it out to our interviewees (AFTER I have given my consent in written form that your letter and survey are ready for publication!). Accompanying this URL will be a friendly letter of introduction no longer than one page. Here’s the prompt (we will do this on Wednesday, Oct. 15th, together in class):


1) Write a letter of introduction to the persons you will interview. State

- your name;

- class;

- instructor;

- why you do this survey;

- that you don't need consent by the Human Subjects Committee (HSC)/ Institutional Review Board (IRB) of SIU to conduct this survey, because it doesn't involve minors, or take blood samples, and is not for publication but for in-class practice only;

- that the survey is anonymous

- what the aim of your survey is

- how long it will take (not longer than 10 minutes)

- what the deadline is for taking the surveys, before you close them for data analysis

- that your subjects can have the results of your survey from you, when it is finished

- how you will compensate them for taking the survey, if you do that

- say THANK YOU for taking the survey.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Next Blog Summary Text: Down's Syndrome

Under this link, you can find our new blog summary text about Down's Syndrome by J.A. Rondal.

The summary is due on Friday, Oct. 10th, by David Tabler.
The responses are due next Monday, Oct. 13th.

I will distribute the movie guide for the Down's syndrome movie we are going to watch in class today (and probably finish up this Friday).

The movie guide won't be collected for a grade, but you should take notes under the corresponding headings while watching it, because five of these might be on the final exam.

If you miss class today or Friday, it is your responsibility to copy a peer's movie guide so you have something to learn from for your final exam in December.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Speeded processing of grammar and tool knowledge in Tourette’s syndrome

"Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a developmental disorder characterized by motor and verbal tics. These tics are typically fast and involuntary and result from abnormality in the brain. They can be vocalizations or motor movements and may be very simple to very complex. It has been linked to abnormal levels of dopamine, which serves as a crucial neurotransmitter in the regions of the brain associated with TS. Most studies to date have examined vocal tics from a neuropsychological standpoint rather than looking at actual language.

The authors of this article propose that knowledge of grammatical morphology is stored in two places, depending on its nature. One, the lexicon, stores forms that break the rules, such as the past tense of spring. Because it breaks the general "add -ed" rule, it is memorized in a rote form and stored in the student's lexicon. However, words that do follow the rule are not stored individually, but the rule is stored in the grammar. These are stored in completely separate regions of the brain. The lexicon, being primarily declarative in nature, is dependant on the hippocampus. The procedural memory (grammar) relies strongly on the frontal/basal-ganglia circuits. This is the same area of the brain affected by TS. Dopamine is highly important to this entire system. These differing localizations for memory lead to relatively normal delcarative memory in those with TS, while procedural memory can be abnormal in many ways.

One such way procedural memory can be affected is in the actual learning of something procedural. Severe difficulty in a weather-prediction task indicates that this difficulty may root back to the caudate nucleus. Other tasks involving other procedural memory structures are not as consistantly affected. Other procedural tasks (goal-directed movement) seem to be enhanced in TS males. Also, mental rotation seems to be impaired in TS males, but improved in TS females. Research and biology both support that the acetylcholine-based declarative memory system remains largely ufaffected by TS.

Given this background information, the authors conducted a study of TS patients (7 male, 1 female) and their abilities with language. The participants were diagnosed by the criteria in the Tourette's Syndrome Study Group (1993) and were not excluded for expressing comorbidity of ADHD or OCD, as these commonly occur with TS. Five of the seven children were taking medication for TS. 7 male and 1 female, normally-developing children were used as controls. Subjects were asked to produce past tense verbs presented in sentence contexts using four types of verbs (consistent regulars, irregulars, inconsistent regulars, and novel (made up) verbs).

Subjects were then presented with 96 items (32 items commonly manipulated or interacted with, 32 items rarely manipulated or interacted with, and 32 filler items) and timed on how long it took them to name the depicted item.

The researchers results reflected no significant difference in production of irregular verb forms, inconsistant regulars, over-regularization errors, regularized, or irregularized errors. The only noteworthy difference was in production of consistant regular past tenses, for which TS subjects showed a nearly-significant deficit. With respect to time, the TS subjects were significantly faster than the controls on consistent regulars, over-regularization errors, and regularized responses to novel verbs, but not significantly faster on irregulars, inconsistent regulars, and irregularized responses.

In the naming task, TS subjects did not differ from the control group for naming of either type of object and there was no within-group difference between the types of items, either. TS subjects responded significantly faster on manipulated objects, but not on non-manipulated objects.

The fact that a difference of time, but not of accuracy was found set the researchers to figuring out why. Typical confounds were quickly eliminated by research design. One could quickly argue that this supports a single-mechanism model of language (only uses declarative memory). However, the word traits that generally support a single-mechanism model were also controlled for. These models also generally explain accuracy, which did not significantly vary. The results support a conclusion that language production depends in part on procedural memory and that the abnormalities in procedural memory cause faster-than-normal responses in TS subjects. The researchers then discuss language processes and trends that could result in significantly faster response times. They then assert that these findings support that the rapid tics and vocalizations are merely a visible indicator of the fact that many things are sped up, including cognitive processes.