questioner analysis

The first standard encourages students to produce essays through drafts, and states the kinds of revisions it wants students to focus on: those of substitution, addition, deletion, and rearranging. I noticed that 4 of the questions pertaining to this standard use the word “revise”. In fact, these questions are all very similar. They ask whether or not the student focuses on certain qualities in their revisions. Assumably, the department wants to see that students rate their preferred qualities (rearrangement, addition, etc) over other qualities in revision. However, I think that having four very similar questions is confusing. Two of them start with “When I revise my first draft” where the other two refer to revising in general. I don’t think the student doing the survey will pay close enough attention to the difference between those. Also, I think that because 3 of the sentences use a nearly identical pattern, the student will wonder if it is a repeat question, and/or feel confused. In addition, students will probably figure out that you want a “strongly agree” answer to these questions and so they’re swayed to do that. Who doesn’t want to say that they revise their work a lot? We all know it’s important.

 Questions 8, 9, and 10 could stand to be more specific, if they are to accomplish their purpose. Question 9, for example, asks if “I know how to make connections between topics discussed in classes..and concepts studied in other courses”. Knowing how to make a connection is a vague thing. Does it mean, if I have to, can I make a connection?  (Anyone can do that) or does it mean, can I name a particular method for drawing a connection? (I don’t think I was taught any, and I doubt that’s the point) or does it mean I often make connections (that’s if frequency represents our ability to do it)? I think most people know how to, but they don’t often do it. Also, peoples’ confidence in their ability to “make a connection” will vary. This question, then, asks your subject if they feel confident claiming they can do it, not if they can do it, how often they do it, or how correctly they do it. 

 A few of these questions could come off as “yeah, duh!” questions, or questions that will be answered with a “strongly agree” by anyone who has graduated high school and/or feels the need to assert their intelligence. (Questions 1, 5, 11, 12, and 14 potentially).

  I’m a little confused by what “textual analysis” is, in question 4. I’m guessing it’s just general literary analysis, but I’ve never used that term specifically, so I don’t know what you mean by it.

Student learning outcome #1 :  On the questioner sheet, I feel that questions numbers 1,5,12,14,15 fit together relating to drafts of a paper. People revise multiple times or work on organization and structure. Some people work on grammar and others do an add and deleting process. Everyone has to get to all of these steps somehow in the end but this questioner tells us what students think is most important.

Student learning outcome #2: The questions that were important for this one seemed to be 3,8,9,11. These are all about connecting topics between discussions and getting an understanding from them. Being able to interpret a text can be difficult so it is important to find main ideas.

Student learning outcome #3: After understanding the text it is time for applying what is learned with research. I think that questions 2,4,6 go along with that. coming up with research questions needs textual and discourse analysis.

Student learning outcome #4: Speaking orally about a topic is important because it tells listeners that you know what you are talking about. Questions 7,10, 13, 18 talk about the comfort of public speaking.

Student learning outcome #5:  For this last one I feel that every question applies because every question connects to one another in some way.

The fourth standard states that students will demonstrate the ability to give a compelling oral presentation.  In other words, a student must be able to not only verbally present an argument or topic in front of the class, but must also do so in a way that appears confident, authoritative, and is able to catch the attention of the listener while also persuading them.  In the survey, I noticed that at least five of the questions directly involved either giving a form of presentation or using language.  At least one of the questions involved discourse, which is defined as language in use, while the other questions focused more on the aspects of speaking and presenting.  Since the main and most important method of communication and conveying messages is through the use of speech and language, it would make sense that a student should focus such a large portion of his or her English curriculum fine tuning and perfecting this crucial art of communication.  The questions on speech and verbal communication are careful not to appear similar in sentence structure or in topic, as not to confuse the student or make them second guess their answers.  In fact, only once is a word ever reused among the language-centered questions: "presentation".  This could imply that teachers wish to add an additional emphasis on giving presentations in class, as the student may be thrust into numerous situations during future occupations in which a form of presentation must me given.  One of the other questions uses the word "talking" instead of "presenting".  This implies that the survey taker wishes to understand not only more about the student's professional speaking, but their interpersonal formal communication as well.  Because speaking in front of others is considered one of the world's greatest fears, it is possible that students would be less likely to check the "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" boxes.  On the other hand, since the idea of oral communication is also such an important trait for a student, the student may feel embarrassed by their true lack of communication skill, and may mark one of the "Agree" boxes so that they do not feel bad about themselves.  This, however, can lead to incorrect or altered information, which is the last thing a survey taker wants.

Revised Research planning

Blog 7

Research ideas:
researching different uses of daily acronyms 

·       

Purpose of language = communication

Communication = understanding

(Do all these say the same thing?)

Texting-  OMG  I hate what you just did!!! LOL

Professional –   I’m sorry, but I really don’t appreciate what you did today.

Local neighborhood talk –  Oh my god what did you just do?

Literally they do, but the context is different and will be read differently. Because of the medium, there are restrictions.

Texting – limit of 160 characters

Professional email – Proper to the point, clear, not too long

Local neighborhood talk – Short sweet to the point

LOL (Intertextuality?)   - We say it all the time but has different meaning

The term LOL changes the meaning of things. It used to just mean laugh out loud when something was actually funny but now people use it to avoid awkward conversation and to avoid sounding too mean.

For my participant observation I think it is best to observe friends and other groups of students to see how they communicate.  Watch how people respond to texts and emails and just local talking. I will be doing surveys through facebook and possibly asking a few simple questions to people such as:

What type of Abbriviations do you use and how often?
What do you use texting for?
What is your opinion of texting?


some sources I will be checking out are:

http://iacis.org/iis/2008/S2008_1058.pdf

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=d-uDwAnbouUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA223&dq=acronyms+in+texting+meanings&ots=_cqGDKP6dq&sig=ffi411N2PCt5aPyEBmghKhegZsU#v=onepage&q&f=false

www.textsfromlastnight.com 

Is our class a discourse community?

Blog 6

    

    After the activity we did in our last class I realized how observant i have to be while taking notes. what I usually do Is listen to whoever is talking. I need to start focusing more on body language and things that are going on around me. I tend to focus on one thing and then block the rest out but I should open my mind to more than that. 

I feel like our class a bunch of other classes are discourse communities because we all have the same goals and learn the same things together which makes it easy to have discussions with one another and communicate. All writing majors have the common goal to create something with words. that is what brings us together as a discourse community. 

brainstorming ideas for research project

Blog 5

                 For my introduction of my research i feel like I would need to introduce the subject matter I thought a lot about my subject choice and I feel like changing it to something different. I want to write about the growth of communication  and how it affects people now with the media and texting. I would discuss how different people talk. I would start off by introducing the topic of communication in writing and then i can spiral into how the internet affects writing abilities and how texting is part of it also.

Jotting blog 5.5

Blog 5.5

The big question is... Is our Class a Big Discourse community? our professor started off by saying. 

The First student that talked was mike and he discussed how he wanted to observe comedians and he would look up videos on Youtube or have some ethnography and go to a comedy club to interact as an audience member. He will be able to survey other audience members on what they think makes the comedian funny or not. He will be able to be and observant participant.

Chris spoke about his research topic of the battle between movie versions vs books. How are they different?   What he could do is survey people who prefer movies and then he could survey the book readers to get both opinions.  

I feel like I was mostly paying attention to the students that were talking. 

Shaggy Dog Analysis 2

Blog 4

                     This time around I choose to analyze the shaggy dog story about the florist friar. 

 In order to understand the joke people need to know the intertextuality about Smokey The Bear. The social language is how  the characters build up to the punchline.

What makes this joke funny is that the punchline "Only Hugh can prevent Florist Friars" is it is a play on words for the real quote " Only you can prevent forest fires".

The pattern I have found within this story is the different situations leading up to the punchlines. A lot of stories have this pattern with multiple stories that get summed up at the end.

In conclusion, All of these shaggy dog stories need to be analyzed  and understanding the discourse will make the joke stand out to people. without this understanding, the joke is pointless.