Assignments

1. Introduce yourself. Write a single paragraph, double-spaced, telling where you are from, what your major is, what you are studying, etc. Include what you really want to find in Lubbock. This could be something you in fact will never find (mountains), or something (like good Chinese food) that maybe another student could help you with, if they knew what you wanted. Feel free to include more than one, but only write a paragraph. E-mail it to the teacher by midnight TUE 8/25. This will not be published.

2. Write a Teaching Philosophy. First, read other teaching philosophies, such as those of Fall 2014, Fall 2013, or H Group. Get an idea of the ways you could use to teach subjects successfully. Then, write about a page (double-spaced), as many paragraphs as you like, and show how you would teach successfully. It is important that you make clear early on what you teach, and who (sometimes it is implied that you teach adults - but not always!) In general it is important to show that you are effective, and careful, and use your time wisely; also, that you respect students in their diversity and capabilities. In form itself, Teaching Philosophies are flexible; you can introduce, and conclude, but you don't need to follow a rigid format. Some of the things you might address are a) development of students' critical thinking, b) assessment, c) group work or group projects, d) use of technology. It is by no means necessary that you even mention these, but don't leave them out, if you consider them important! Put your Teaching Philosophy in a Word document and send it to the teacher by midnight TH. night.

3. Model Dissertation. Find a model dissertation in your field. This would be a dissertation, preferably published at TTU, that looks like the one you'd like to write. It's more important that its form be similar to the form you'd like to adapt, rather than its content similar to what you want to write about. We are looking at the form that dissertations take, and using their language as a model to make generalizations about the way you want to write. What has worked in the past? What is today being considered an acceptable dissertation? Send the link to the teacher by TUE. at 12:00.

4. Write a summary and a reference for an article on gay marriage, gay adoption, or freedom not to participate in gay marriage-related events (bakers, clerks, etc.). First, your article should be from Google News (not Google), should be about a page in length, and should be in standard English (should not be the translated version of another article). Your summary should mention the author and title of the article, and should have the main points, but should only be 6-8 sentences. For the reference use APA, and include all information, as the handout suggests. E-mail it to the teacher by TUE. at 12:00

5. Take the first drafts of the Teaching Philosophies, and read them all. Assume you are the director of a school that needs teachers of all subjects and all ages. Hire the three you consider best in terms of their writing and general competency. Then, find some advice to give to each writer. It can be grammatical advice, but more substantive advice would be better. For example: Can you SHOW this a little better? Or, Can you explain a little better what you MEAN?  This is for TH.'s class. You will be paired up with any of your classmates, and you should be prepared to say something useful.

6. Rewrite your Teaching Philosophy. Incorporate whatever advice you were given, or none of it.  What you hand in tonight (TH. at midnight) will go on the weblog in the morning.

7. Summary #2. Start envisioning what you want to ask American TTU students (by the way, you are required to read what your classmates have written; this gives all of us an important general background). Try to find articles that have extensive background about the aspects that interest you.  You can close in on the case of Kim Davis, or gay adoption (in the state of Mississippi, for example). You can find out whether people agree that gay marriages are just as stable as heterosexual ones, or as good for the children. Your article should still be about a page. Your summary and reference will look about the same; it should follow APA regulations. If you use your previous article to talk about this one, cite appropriately.  It will be due next TUE. night at midnight.

8. Summary #3. Same as #2. Remember that you will be studying how people feel about the problem, not the problem itself. Therefore, articles that give you background about how people feel are especially useful. Also, any indication that some groups of people feel differently than others; for example, women feel differently from men, etc. will be very useful to us. Your article does not have to have this, but you will have to have this, before you're done. For this assignment, pick any related article, about a page, and write a summary/reference as you did before. Due TH. at midnight. NO PLAGIARISM OF ANY KIND.

9. Data Commenary #1.  Choose one of the graphs you were given, and write a data commentary. We will define this as having two parts; in the first, just describe exactly what you see (you should also mention the source, as you do in a summary). This should take 4-5 sentences, and should be complete enough so that the reader doesn't actually have to see the graph in order to understand the data. Then, tell what we should get out of it. What generalizations are there? How can we apply them to what we might find out? This should only be 2-3 sentences. Finally, write a reference, as you would for a summary. Due TU night at midnight, Sept. 15.

10. Data Commentary #2. Now choose any graph; it can be one of the ones you didn't due on TU, or another one entirely, but it has to be on our topic. Make another Data Commentary, just as you did above, with a reference, so that the reader can know what it says without looking it up. Tell about how they got the data if you wish. Tell about how this might be same or different for us; will our students show similar responses? Begin to focus on the area you're most interested in, so that you will have enough material to write your paper. This is due TH. night at midnight, Sept. 17.

11. Write the introduction to your Research Paper. Tell about the problem in most general terms. Tell a little about our group and what we decided to do. Tell a little about Texas Tech. Tell that we decided to learn about perceptions of people on the Texas Tech campus.  Due TU Sept. 22 at midnight. This one will NOT go straight on the weblog, but will be returned to you, as we will work on it gradually.

12. Due at 12:00 midnight, Sept. 24, is the first draft of your introduction + literature review + hypotheses, all together, with references. It should be about three pages double-spaced, and should have your name at the top. It should have most of your twelve sources, as you won't really be using them anywhere else, although it is something you can add to or finish on your second draft. The literature review makes it clear that you have done reading on the area that you want to study . It makes it clear that you have read at least all the summaries and data commentaries that your classmates have produced, so that if something is relevant, you have included it (you may include other things you have read or found, but you are not required to). In each topic put more general information first, so that you come toward the exact thing you want to study. In other words, before we have a hypothesis, we should know whatever literature supports that hypothesis, and we should not be surprised about what you have guessed.

Some hypotheses may be framed as a question, if you really have no literature, or, if you don't believe what literature there is, or if you personally believe that Texas Tech may come out differently than statistics do nationally. Hypotheses may occur in their own section, or may be a paragraph within the lit. review, but either way, they should be easily identifiable in the paper. You should have four or five.  You SHOULD specialize in order to make your paper unique.

13. Survey agreement. Each of us, teacher and graduate assistants included, are going to collect at least thirteen surveys according to the following agreement. First, we will fill one out ourselves. Then, we will find six American males, and six American females. All should be either on the TTU campus, or part of the TTU community; we are studying the TTU community, not Lubbock. If someone fills out the survey and turns out to be international, come and get more surveys. Beyond the thirteen, we can get any we wish: internationals, male or female, as long as they are part of the TTU community. We have more survey forms for anyone who needs it. In addition, the other class will fill some out for us, and we will fill one out for them.

In the process of collecting them, we find that sometimes they don't see the back. If this happens, we tell them about the back. But if they are stuck on how to answer some question, we tell them to do whatever they want. Write on it, or refuse, or answer two answers, whatever they want. We don't pressure them or influence them. Keep track of things they say or do; for example, if they protest a certain question. Their comments are valuable and they are feedback. In general, we want to keep track of what happens, because we'll write about it.  Surveys are due TH. Oct. 1.

14. For this one, write a simple story, the story of how you collected the surveys. Where were you?  What people did you ask, mostly? Did everyone simply fill them out silently, or did anyone give you comments? Were people nice to you? Did you get six of each easily? Did people have trouble with any particular question? Did they criticize any particular question?  Your story should be 7-10 sentences, only a paragraph, but should document your experience (you don't have to answer all the questions above, only the ones that will get you started!) It is due TH. Oct. 1 at midnight, along with the final draft of the Intro/Lit Review/Hypotheses.

15. Write a Folk Tale from your country or from anywhere you like. Write it yourself, without borrowing anything from any source. Make it the kind of story you might tell a child. By definition, a tale is a story; it started one day and then it finished. It might have talking animals, or princes, or people with magic powers; everything is acceptable. Often it has a moral at the end; for example, slow and steady wins the race, or, never give up. Your folk tale will go in a large collection of folk tales on the web, unless you refuse; you can sign it as you wish, and if it's ever made into a book, you will of course receive a copy.

16. Write the Methods section. This should be about a page and a half, double-spaced, and does not have to be handed in with the rest of the paper; you can send it by itself, tonight (TH. Oct. 8) by midnight. In the Methods section you tell the story of how you got the data. We wanted x, y & z. We put questions on the survey to find out x, y, and z. In some cases we had to choose what kind of question to make or how to ask it (think forward: in some cases we made the wrong choice, or could have done better, and you may want to talk about it later). We made an agreement about how to collect data. In general we were not careful about making the survey representative. In the end we received (X) surveys, which included (males), (females), (Americans), (internationals), etc. (We had to throw away surveys?) We used an Excel chart to tabulate the results. (We didn't use any other software?)

17. Write an essay in which you write about the struggle of learning a language. What problems have you had? Why is it hard to learn a language well? This essay will have two drafts, and will be graded, but will not be published. It should be a classic essay, as it is designed to make sure you know what standard essay organization is like. Most of my suggestions are about writing, but you may write about any aspect of language learning that you want. In the writing area, you can write about frustrations of working with tools (bilingual dictionary, online dictionary, thesaurus, concordance, Word grammar-check, spell-check), the frustrations of working with teachers, or the frustrations of communicating well. You can make it positive if you wish, showing how you overcame difficulties. You decide what part of the story to tell. It's graded entirely on your ability to write a strong essay. Due TUE Oct. 13 at midnight.

18. The first draft of the RESULTS section is due tonight, TH. Oct. 15, at midnight. Keep in mind that although you hand in the results section by itself, it should be in the same general order as the methods section, and the LR/H section, because eventually it will all fit together. It should be from 1 1/2 pages to 2 1/2 pages eventually, and should cover every major result that we found. This does not count pie charts or block charts, which are good and pretty, but may not print out well every time anyway.  Start with your four or five hypotheses. What do our results show? Make a generalization, then prove it with the numbers. Percents are generally better than pure numbers, since percents will allow the reader to compare groups to each other (in other words, don't make the reader do too much work).

Frustrated in getting the Excel program to make the charts and line up the numbers? Some of us are terrible at Excel. But fortunately, the others have offered to help. Gather up your questions and ask them properly, and we'll share charts. We use our collective skill in this enterprise so that everyone can write his/her paper.

Feel free to write about the things that are unrelated to your hypotheses. We are not so picky about "post-hoc" or "harc-ing" but we want to make it clear that we did this analysis after we collected the numbers. In fact, even things like "people were readily willing to fill out the survey" could be considered one of our findings. If you concluded that it was important to people, and that's why they wanted to talk about it, that's a valid conclusion too. Put it all in there. We don't really judge them here; we don't ask why they answered the way they did; we just get out the facts and then prove them with the numbers.

19. Rewrite of the essay (#17) is due tonight (TUE Oct. 20) at midnight. Final drafts of the Results section, by itself but with graphs if possible, is due midnight TH Oct. 22.

20. The War on Passive has made it so active voice (We found that... / I found that...) is preferred over passive voice (It was found that...) in the social sciences and education; the argument is that active tells who did the research, so it's less deceptive and better science.  On the other hand, traditional hard science scholars prefer the passive, because there is an old injunction against using I or we, and because they feel that passive is more traditional, more removed, colder, and formal. As a result of two different prohibitions (don't use I / we, don't be deceptive) still others have chosen a third option, which we can call "animate the study" (this study has found / this research shows). Study your model dissertation and any other writing in your field. Take what you know about the writing you will need to do for your dissertation and journals in your field. Write a paragraph about what would be your best strategy. This will not be graded or appear on the blog, but we will share each other's paragraphs.

21. The Discussion section is due tonight, Oct. 29, at midnight. It should be 2-3 pages double-spaced. The Discussion section has three main jobs: first, the most important findings of the study; second, any findings that were important to you but not necessarily to the world; and finally, limitations of the study. Limitations can be included in the other parts, or brought up gradually, but keep in mind that this part is what is most important to the social science field itself. Limitations include reflections on the size of the study, the way our sample was representative of TTU or of the nation (it was fairly representative with respect to gender, but not with respect to age, race, religion, or college of the university), the way the questions were written (failure to ask specific things, or asking it in the wrong way), possibility that respondents hid the truth or misrepresented it, etc. Be sure that you have covered all five hypotheses and anything else you may have noticed; it should be in the same rough order as everything else. Remind us what you thought and what you found, then give us the reason people may have answered the way they did, and what future study could find. In a way, putting limitations in positive terms (a study done right would find very interesting things here) is the best way of setting up future funding; that is, it's kind of like getting a job in the social sciences. Good luck!

22. The First Draft of the final paper is due in class this TH Nov. 12. You print 12-15 pages, + Appendices + Bibliography + Title Page + Abstract (these don't count in your 12-15 pages; neither do charts and graphs, although you are welcome to spread them within). The 12 pages is a hard minimum, but the 15 is soft; that means you can break it and not be penalized. Your paper should have introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion all clearly marked (APA style); you do not have to have hypotheses as a separate section but you may. We have agreed upon 12 pt. New Times Roman font, double space, left-justify only, standard indented paragraphs with no extra space between, standard margins, and standard space between letters and words. Follow all APA regulations and remember that you are generally not rewarded for fancy things, i.e. picture on the cover, or gold-laminate paper.

23. There is an essay due TUE Nov. 18 at midnight. It will be printed and shared among classmates (and criticized as an essay) but not graded or published on the blog. You have two choices. The first is to write about Lubbock - anything you want. Of course, you are writing for your classmates and us, the teachers and general audience. Second, write about the process of learning a language. With this one, since it's similar to our earlier essay, I've given a little background to ensure that you are specific enough to make the essay interesting. There is a process of becoming fluent in different skills: pronunciation, writing, grammar, listening, and reading; each process has barriers that are sometimes psychological. Learning a language is also quite different at the beginning and at the end; you are survivors, having become almost fluent, and therefore you have valuable insight which I would like you to give us. Remember, the best essay is fairly specific, arguable, interesting, and applicable to other people who are learning some essay. Thank you and good luck! 

24. Putting your research paper on the weblog. This is a requirement, but you are not graded on how well it looks. In fact, because the rules change every year, we often have trouble with such things as charts, and have to help each other the best we can. However, as a requirement, the original due date was TUE. night at midnight (Dec. 1), and this date has been extended to THURS. (Dec. 3) at midnight because of the final and because of the difficulty of putting up charts. Do your best; you may link to the survey and charts that are already up on the web. If you can put charts successfully up there (this is done by making them jpg files), put them in a separate post so that others can use them. We can always change our text references (see Fig. 1) in order to link to the charts that are up there. But even if we don't, the weblog is a record that at one point, we had them.

To review the process: Go to blogger.com. Type in log-in and password as you were given. If questioned, give them my phone number (which you are welcome to use to text me, by the way). If things look really bad for any reason, try remove formatting on the right, and start over. Don't worry if the bibliography is single space or not hanging indent; online this is less important. It is good, however, to link your references if possible, and I will help with this if necessary. Remove extra spaces. Put your title in the title slot; put your name at the end of the abstract. Put your name in any form you wish.

It is your paper, and you should remember that you have the right to remove it after the grading period is over. Use the same log-in to do that, if that's what you want. We appreciate having your work there as a resource, but it's yours, and you don't even have to tell me. If you have any problems with the process, either putting it there or taking it down, let me know; I will be glad to help. 

Welcome!

This blog contains the work of a high-level ESL writing class. We try to write about things that are interesting to everyone. Feel free to comment but be respectful - thanks!