Seminar in Teaching Reading and Writing

Seminar in Teaching Reading and Writing

Today I'll look at two articles: Phatiki, and Carrell, Gajdusek, and Wise.

It's nice to see meta cognitive stuff back on the menu. While earlier authors like Sasaki, and Rinnert and Kobayashi poked at the issue, I do not believe that they pinned it down and cut directly into it. Phakiti employs quantitative and qualitative analysis to evidence a couple claims which come right to the point:

(1) the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies had a positive relationship to the reading test performance; and (2) highly successful test-takers reported significantly higher metacognitive strategy use than the moderately successful ones who in turn reported higher use of these strategies than the unsuccessful test-
takers.

Now, we have pivoted over from the world of writing with the previous authors into the realm of reading with Phakiti, and I am not sure how this effects comparisons between them. Are the same meta cognative skills applied to reading as writing? One previous lesson I would like to apply comes from Professer Mueller's class on literacy. Though I'm momentarily unable to establish the claim, I was left with the a strong belief that multiple choice questions are a poor way to determine reading comprehension levels. What alternatives are there to Phatiki's questions that are also suitable for her research? Would alternative assessments establish her conclusions? 

Phakiti does not speak about acquiring meta cognative strategies. She only seeks to measure them. Can meta cognitative strategies, like other strategies, be internalized in a straightforward way? If so, why are they not simply cognitive strategies? I suppose it's not the way you learn them but the application which the distiction will rest. Still, I wounder about the real meanings of our terms here.

On to Carrell and friends, who claim that lots of different areas of research are pointing toward meta cognition as playing a critical roll in reading comprehension. First they will try to clearly identify these areas, and the terms, and then explain the design of a study they are currently conducting to evaluate whether metacognative stuff can be taught.

I'm impressed by their taxidermy: it's a convincing distinction between skills and strategies. They do much to ease my mind, and the answer questions left over from Phatiki. A clear enough picture seems to emerge of metacognition when it is devied up by question words and three types of knowledge.

 ...but I'm not won over yet.

Teaching Reading and Writing Week 4

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This week I look briefly at Rinnert and Kobayashi's (R and K) article: “Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings” from the beloved New Directions in Writing Research book. I've thoroughly enjoyed everything found within its covers.

R and K ask: What is the situated nature of writing? Unfortunately, before I can engage with their answer I must overcome a bit of disorientation and suspicion about the phrase “situated nature.” There seems to be a suggestion here, against what I understood Sasaki to have argued, that teaching meta knowledge improves writing ability. Hmm. More on this later. No surprise, R and K are aware of and influenced by Sasaki, so it's likely that I am simply misunderstanding something early on here.

As R and K present a study of studies, I am reminded of a recent editorial about medical journals http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre .While it's easier to worry less about such things in TESOL, I wonder if the R and K had serious criticism about the methodology employed in each of the 12 studies they generalize from today. It takes a fair bit of imagination to dream up some TESOL conflicts of interest, but who knows? I wish I knew more about the process that legitimized and published the preceding findings.

As for our findings today, I learn here that preferences for style are dynamic. There is good reason to believe that when you write more in L2, the features of L2 composition will likely be reflected in L1. Is this claim overstated? I think a much larger study, contrasting writers with various L1s writing in various L2s would be needed to establish it. Perhaps it applies only to Japanese learners of English.

Next topic: we've heard in class that Korean's typically don't write much in school. How do Japanese students fair? R and K again seem to mischaracterize their findings. They begin by noting a big emphasis on reading, and conclude, somehow, that Japanese students do study writing to a high degree. The progression seems a bit tenuous, and the middle bit doesn't improve matters: the authors suggest that a 1-4 month period of intensive study for a single specific college entrance essay is all you need to close the gap. Really? Who else places actual emphasis on composition besides American educators?

I next read about R and K's qualitative ground game. It's nice to see, and in line with Sasaki. Write and then review the video of the session. They have no problem establishing that instruction benefited the students. As a teacher, that's always nice to read. Specifically, it looks like specialized training in L1 really pays off in L2: students generate better structures and better examples. R and K can't quantify this, but that's no problem. Is this what they meant at the onset by meta cognitive skills? Advanced students with training overseas are more likely to have definitions and counter claims. This jives with findings by Sasaki that “overseas experience can lead students to re conceptualize the task of writing through imagination of a possible audience that motivates them to refine their writing.”

Fun read.

Qualitative Analysis Week Two

Today I'll look at Creswell's chapter on five different approaches to qualitative research.

His description of the narrative approach starts off unsurprisingly: the researcher tells a story. No kidding. After skipping over a few paragraphs near “postmodern,” I have a few questions. Does it make sense to call biographies and autobiographies research? While I'm happy to question assumptions underpinning quantitative research in line with what Professor Reynolds mentioned last week, this seems extreme. Stories play a large roll in our lives, and have great value. But how can telling them be research?

I encourage anyone interested in Phenomenology to read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology . Can you even study the structure of consciousness as experienced from a first person point of view? It's a question for experts, philosophers, and while not an expert myself, I am knowledgeable enough to have strong opinions. I am also knowledgeable enough to know that Creswell is no expert, and will not address my concerns. I'm skipping this section as too dubious to bother with. I'm not on board with his premises, and he has no interest in arguing with me. Apparently, “Phenomenology can feature a streamlined form of data collection.” What exactly is the data? What is “epoche” or “bracketing”? ...Cui bono?

Next: Grounded Theory Research. I'm hopeful here. The title includes several words I like. However, I read that theory is “an abstract analytical schema of a process...”. Why does Creswell use “schema” and not “scheme” or "construct" or "system" ? If he's going to use technical terms, he needs, at some point, to tell me what he means by them. How can I understand the overview without them? Anyway, since I'm supposed to generate a theory of a process or action or interaction, I would like to have had some examples of each. Better still, to see some results. Kids in middle school biology offer results for different research methods. Graduate level educational theory? Sorry, no luck. Again, I skip any page with “constructivist.” “Positivist” is good, though. “Foucault” Next.

The methodology section for Grounded Theory Research is the highlight of Creswell's article. I typically think of knowledge as legitimized by the process which generates it, and I want to know more about what justifies a researcher's use of a particular method. Creswell lists a series of terms which if explained would likely go a long way to doing that: categories, theoretical sampling, constant comparative, causal conditions, strategies, intervening conditions, axial coding, and conditional matrix. These all sound good. Do these terms allow practitioners of Grounded Theory Research to falsify and eliminate competing hypotheses? Can you use Grounded Theory Research, and other qualitative good bits (questioning the clarity of data) to evaluate existing theories? Perhaps I should evaluate existing studies of writing.

How does Ethnography differ from narrative? I again wonder about the kind of value this research generates. Are these people really OK with simply telling stories which differ in no important way from a podcast? I would loathe to pay twenty thousand dollars to learn how to blog.

That's all I have for now. Creswell mentions in his conclusion that interviews take precedence in Grounded Theory Research, as opposed to other methods. I don't understand why that is so, and would like to learn more. Aside from such questions, I take very little away from Creswell's overview.

Teaching Reading and Writing Week One

In this post, we briefly set out the main points from, and respond to two articles: How to Research Second Language Writing, by Charlene Polio, and chapter six from The Globalization of Scholarship, by John Flowerdew and Yongyang Li. Polio's article is practical. Flowerdew and Li's is almost pointless.

Polio's paper is her attempt to classify the world of second language writing instruction. She divides up research performed in the field into several categories. She analyzes concepts connected to these methods, and finally provides a general template for how to conduct research, with (her running commentary also contributing to this end.

We learn at the paper's onset that there are eight ways to research: surveys, interviews, meta-analysis, classroom observation, ethnography, content analysis, text analysis, and process search. A couple highlights: content analysis hopes to describe the texts L2 writers will have to produce. People rarely employ meta-analysis due to the sheer volume of material required. Research issues include the reactivity problem, and the veridicality problem. Basically, how students react to their own think aloud processes, and how accurately they can portray these processes are problems for several research methods.

Reading research on research has nice benefits. Novices gain a bird's eye view of the design space they hope to master by one who is well traveled. Green experimenters might not realize all the different ways to conduct research, or the problems they will encounter. It would be devastating to lose a month of data and effort due to some subtle structural hiccup. More over, the particular case studies she has highlighted and set aside contain exemplary research questions.

What changes could be identified in the students’ general L2 proficiency?

What changes could be identified in their L2 composition quality?

What changes could be identified in their L2 writing fluency?

What changes could be identified in their L2 writing strategy use?

What changes could be identified in their L2 writing style?
What characteristics of L2 writing experts did they acquire?

These are focused and definite, and we fully expect to ask them in the future. Yet we have learned that even in strongly formulated questions, key terms and metrics in writing analysis are devious to pin down. How devious are they? Are we just not clever enough? Or can we pin them to a range of acceptable values? How important is it that we clearly define the data? How does this affect the legitimacy of teaching English writing? What exactly are you teaching? While beyond the scope of Polio's paper, these questions are a nice product of our engagement with it.
(Flowerdew and Li will have to wait until class. Whoops.)

We will now consider a few points of Malcolm Gladwell's essay, Something Borrowed. Through his title, Gladwell suggests that plagiarism has a considerable cultural component, much like marriage ceremonies have. What aspects about plagiarism are cultural, in that they could be changed for the better? Is it that we punish perpetrators so harshly, or that we focus so intently upon the wrong kinds of things, or something else?

Gladwell seems to believe that in the case of Frozen, a play wherein he was plagiarized, we have had much fuss and punishment about nothing. People hammered the author unjustly. Gladwell writes about a few a well known musical examples that we can use to explain why.

In the “Choir” case, the Beastie Boys’ copying didn’t amount to theft because it was too trivial. In the “Phantom” case, what Lloyd Webber was alleged to have copied didn’t amount to theft because the material in question wasn’t original to his accuser. Under copyright law, what matters is not that you copied someone else’s work. What matters is what you copied, and how much you copied.

Whatever black letter law, we should not be sure that what really matters is what you copied, and how much. After all, maybe copyright law can be changed for the better. While the Choir Case precludes attributing any value to the thing copied due to difficulty (too trivial), we should not worry about length either. Although the phrase in question is just three notes, much longer ideas have been borrowed in music. Beethoven lifts themes almost whole cloth from Mozart for example. No one complains. Even a long luxuriously lyric Mozart Andante theme still isn't worth much because music is what you make of it: themes need to be developed. That is the composer's signature, and what matters. If the development section of a piece in the golden era of Viennese classicism were duplicated, then that would have been scandalous. The Beastie boys took that tiny little choir mordant, developed it, and in doing so made it theirs.

Writers are often ruined if they borrow sentences. Should we focus on sentences? If we equate them with a musical theme or idea, then apparently no. An idea or sentence doesn't matter very much in music or art: it's what we do with it that counts in that context. However, if we use an idea in academia, we use it in a context where even a sentence can have significance. Consider the following two:

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable, and independent of their will, relations of the production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

Who wrote that? While we may zoom in too tight on the wrong kind of thing in art, we do so for the right reasons. We're concerned about value, and that's not cultural.

Πολιτεία

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finishedour prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.

I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.

Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon's brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.

Socrates - POLEMARCHUS - GLAUCON - ADEIMANTUS

Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and our companion are already on your way to the city.

You are not far wrong, I said.
But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?
Of course.
And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are.

May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go?

But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.
Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?

With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one to another during the race?

Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will he celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.

Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
Very good, I replied.

Glaucon - CEPHALUS - SOCRATES

Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said: --

You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.

I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that timewhich the poets call the 'threshold of old age' --Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is --I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, --are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on --Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he was an Athenian: 'If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.' And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have peace with himself.

May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part inherited or acquired by you?

Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art of making money I have been midway between my father and grandfather: for my grandfather, whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I possess now; but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at present: and I shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less but a little more than I received.

That was why I asked you the question, I replied, because I see that you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth. That is true, he said.

Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question? What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth?

One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented withthe thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age:

Hope, he says, cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey; --hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.

How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this peaceof mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.

Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is it? --to speak the truth and to pay your debts --no more than this? And even to this are there not exceptions? Suppose that a friend when in his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them when he is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one would say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more than they would say that I ought always to speak the truth to one who is in his condition.

You are quite right, he replied.
But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a correct definition of justice.