Dissertation Diary

I've done everything on the list and I've started writing the introduction. Just loads of references to add and the bibliography to write and I am sure a few more bits will come up that need changing. Almost there though. Looks like I am going to have Tuesday free to get ready for Cyprus!

Only two days left to work on the Literature Review before I send it so a military kind of discipline is now needed.

Tasks for today

1. Finish reading about Theme. Synthesize info and add to Lit Rev.

2. Add Lewin, Fine and Young study (No, I still haven't done it)

3. Add info re WAC etc.

4. Improve psychology section.

5. Start thinking about an introduction (probably tomorrow).

Not a bad day. I filled in a lot of gaps in my Literature review and started to organise it and fit it all together. Next, I will have to carry on adding references and detail. Areas that need particular attention are the description of Theme and its importance. I still haven't done an introduction either. I have started to put the Bibliography together but I haven't used EndNote. Maybe I should try - but it seems like more hassle than its worth. I am definitely getting closer!

I am considering writing to Ken Hyland who is an extremely well-respected, influential figure in the field of academic writing and second language writing. Taka has already written to the hero in his field of SLA, Robert DeKeyser. DeKeyser wrote back and they have exchanged several e-mails discussing their research. I would like to e-mail Ken Hyland but I have no idea how to go about it or what to say. Has anybody got any ideas?

Here is a link to Hyland's profile at the Institute of Education in London click
and here is a link to an interview with him
click

Try not to confuse him with the lesser known indie rock artist click
who really gets in the way when doing google searches.

Got quite a lot done, but still loads to go. Will I have a finished product before I go to Cyprus? Yes, I hope so. Let's be positive - Yes I will. Missed Tennis in an attempt to get more done. I managed to make a lot of changes and found some information that I had been looking for for a long time about the differences between student and professional writing. Tomorrow I am going to finish reading about RAs and add this to my draft. Try to rearrange and improve sections on the causes of changes in writing instruction and perhaps the last part that looks at the research done so far. Then I will just have to go back throught he whole thing and add the detaila dn references needed. I also have to read Lewin, Fine and Young properly, something that has been on my to do list several times but never actually been done. Maybe I can just use the summary in the Gardner article he he. I also need to add more detail about SFL. Wow! So much to get done. I have just under 4,000 words at the moment so I think that should be alright, once I add an introduction and summary sections and all of that.

I actually had a reasonable amount of sleep last night not the reduced hours I had been getting for a while due to staying up late. So I am not so bleary-eyed this morning and should in theory get a lot done. Here are my next steps:

1. Research the causes of the changes to writing instruction and add them to my review. I already have some ideas for this just need to do a bit of reading.

2. Write up the results of the changes. I have most of the info I need on this.

3. Carry on making changes to my plan.

I have finished the first item on my to-do list which was to finish the rough draft of my literature review. I have also started going through it and adding details as necessary. I read some really interesting articles about academic writing in general. I realised that I need to change the whole of the first part of my plan. What I read made it clear that the changes that took place in EAP teaching were part of wider changes within attitudes to writing at university as a whole. I have started to change my draft accordingly but there is still a lot of reading and writing to be done.

I have finally started writing! I have written 2197 words so far which makes up for not writing anything yesterday. They are very rough though and will need a lot of revision. So glad I just started! It is only 4.30 but I am already feeling tired and hungry - probably because I have written so much. Think I am going to carry on until 5 then maybe go home. Don't want to sit in the smelly computer room after the library has closed again. So, next steps are:

1. Finish rough version that I have already started.

2. Add an introduction and summary sections as necessary.

3. Add details and references. (this will be the most tedious bit).

I am a bit confused this morning. Should I do some analyses to get an idea of the results I might get so that I know where to concentrate my literature review? Probably not. To get a real idea of the results I would have to do a lot of analysis and study the results which would take too long. Should I do some more reading before I start writing? The thought of looking at a whole new pile of books is not that appealing so should I just start writing? I don't think I have enough detail in all areas yet to start writing. Maybe I should just start and then read when I get to a gap? The thought of rewriting if the results are different or if I understand the subject differently is what puts me off that idea. How confusing. I think I am going to start writing and see what happens.......

I have achieved all of my goals for the day except starting writing. Hmmm that sounds rather familiar; I think this has happened before. I have done a lot of reading though and incorporated a lot of it into my plan. I just need to finish reading about psychology and EAP, and then start writing. In fact, I think I will have to start writing whatever happens. I can always add to it later. Then at least I will have something to send my supervisor. On the other hand, I don't really want to send my supervisor something that is unfinished from my point of view. Let's see how much I can get done.

I have come up with a plan of a kind. It is quite vague at the moment and possibly too diverse but it is a start. here it is...

Literature Review Outline
1. Importance of writing in academia
2. The common core approach to EAP writing
3. Problems with the common core approach
4. The ESAP approach and disciplinary differences

Relate to Becher and Hyland and different ways of constructing knowledge

5. Problems with ESAP approach

Lack of knowledge of disciplinary writing
Research implications not impacting coursdesign/materials writing

6. Gaps in knowledge of disciplinary differences

Majority of research into professional writing
Range of disciplines not yet explored

7. Theme and disciplinary differences

Started with grammatical subject
Later incorporated into Theme (SFL)

8. Studies of professional writing

MacDonald/Gosden

9. Studies of student writing

North, Hewings

10. Writing in psychology
??

Now I need to

1. Flesh out plan with more detail

2. Reread Gosden, Hewings and Hewings and fit into plan

3. Start writing

I have had a day off but I didn't relax fully because at the back of my mind I felt guilty because I knew I had so much work to do. Completing my dissertation is starting to remind me of climbing a volcano in Nicaragua with only an amateur guide to help. In case that is misinterperted, I am in no way saying that my teachers are inexperienced or unhelpful, it's just that I have no experience of carrying out a project like this and so I cannot guide myself sufficiently. My motivation is waning so it is starting to get rather painful.

Anyway, I have given up on carrying out much analysis before writing the literature review. I will just have to adapt my literature review to my results if need be. I have started planning the lit rev but there is still a lot of work to be done on it and I want to start writing tomorrow, so I will get on with it.

It seems like the more I know the less I know. Here are 5 more questions I need to answer:

1. Is there a difference between the epistemic work of orienting and topical themes?

2. What should I do about the orienting themes that are not doing epistemic work?

3. Are all topical themes that are not phenomenal epistemic?

4. Do I want to find out about the nature of phenomena? (degreeof abstraction)

5. Is there any information in the taxonomy which is not needed to answer my research questions?

Data – 7 1st Year Psychology essays (Introduction to Psychology). 7 2nd Year Psychology essays (Developmental Psychology).

A. What do I want to find out?
How is knowledge constructed? In 1st and 2nd year psychology essays?
1. To what extent are authorial interventions used to warrant knowledge claims?
All children love chocolate vs According to Taka all children love chocolate.
2. What form to these interventions take?
Reference to research (as above) or Author assertion I believe that children love chocolate.
3. How visible is the author?
I believe that… This paper argues that…. It is clear that….
4. How does the author refer to previous research?
Smith(1993)….Various studies…

B. Why?
• Varies from discipline to discipline-many students have to write in a number of disciplines or master one
• Problematic for EAP and NS students
• Presented in writing courses as “common core” academic writing. (eg academic writing requires references to literature/academic writing requires objectivity)
• Use of some forms may be related to cognitive development (eg indirect personal forms)

C. How?
Classification system

D. Problems
Phenomena in student writing
Data analysis – too much?/Excel problems

E. Possible solutions
Narrow focus even more?

I presented a brief outline of where I have got to with my research so far to the MA study group. Writing it was really helpful as it made me summarise my ideas so far. Presenting it was helpful as well as it made me realise that I have actually made a lot of progress since I presented last time. We talked about the problems I am having and ways that I could make my categories more concise such as by choosing to look at only orienting Theme. We also talked about the difference between cognitive and intellectual development. It was interesting and really helpful, but I am still not sure what I am going to do next.

When I have finished all this I will relish the opportunity to write about something other than studying!

I have done a lot today but I feel like I have only done a tiny fraction of all the work I need to get done. Where did the day go? I have realised that text analysis takes ages and my plans may have been ambitious. I have sorted out lots of the problems with the classification system mainly by beeing ruthless and making decisions I am not sure about because I haven't got time to think anymore.

I have used the taxonomy to analyse two texts and I have the data in a raw form. I feel daunted by the numbers and I am not sure how to go about making sense of the data and looking for patterns in it. I am trying to create an Excel chart that will help me with this.

I am also not convinced that the data will help me find out one of the things I want to find out - that is differentiating between phenomena and comment on phenomena in student essays. I think I will concentrate on making sense of the data tomorrow morning. I also need to present to the study group tomorrow, so I might present the taxonomy and the problems I have with analysis and sorting out the data.

I am pretty sure that one of the researchers we read in the Written Language class said that good writers tend to be able to shift between long-term and short term planning. Is that right? Was it Bereiter and Scardamalia? Anyway, yesterday I was a bit startled when I realised that I only have two weeks until I go to Cyprus, so I need to really focus. Here are my long term plans:

1. Finalise the taxonomy to be used for the analysis (hopefully almost done).

2. Complete the analysis (or a large part of it)

3. Look for trends

4. Write the literature review taking the results of the above into account.

That's a lot to do in not much time. I plan to

1. Analyse 4 texts a day

2. Complete the analysis by this weekend

3. Start writing on Monday

4. Write about 1,000 words a day.

If I follow this plan I should have a day before I go to Cyprus to sort everything out so I don;t feel too rushed. I know I can write 1000 words a day if I have a clear idea of what I am writing. The problem might be that my ideas are not that clear and I will have to keep referring back to the reading. Let's see. For now, on with the text analysis.

It happens to me time and time again. I am in the depths of a problem. It seems like there is no way to solve it and that I will never feel happy. Then something happens and the problem is solved but still the next time I am struggling with a problem, I feel like I will never solve it.

When it comes to studying and writing (which is one long problem solving process. We were given a reference for this in the Written English class but I can't remember it. Anyone?), the problem is usually solved by me continually asking myself questions, writing them down, reading and looking at data, writing possible answers, evaluating what I still don't know etc. I am much better at doing this than I was at the beginning of this degree and I am much better at trusting myself to find the answers, although I still have moments of despair. I used to think that if I couldn't solve a problem quickly, I would never solve it and I gave up. I have a bit more patience now when it comes to studying. I wonder if I could apply this to other areas of my life?

Today I have done all the things I said I would! Hooray. I have also had a flash of inspiration re my long-standing analysis problem mentioned in many other posts. I am thinking of differentiating between (1.) the phenomena being studied, (2.)previous researchers who have written about that phenomena and their theories and (3.)the theories and evaluations written by the author of the text. Of course all these elements exist in professional as well as student writing, but I think the balance might be different in student essays. Perhaps there will be more of (2.) in the essay writing as questions often ask about theories and in a way, the theories become the phenomena. Also, the undergraduate students in this case, aren't doing their own research so may not come to their own conclusions as much. The higher level/better student might have more of (3.) as they realise what is valused at undergraduate level.

Another possible category might be researchers who write about (2.), although it may be hard to distinguish between the two groups. A pattern that seems to be emerging is that researchers and theories in group (2.) are not followed by a date in brackets when they are being treated as phenomena.

It is getting complicated but I feel like I am making progress albeit slowly.

Today I will:

1. Analyse another text.

2. Try to resolve as many problems with the analysis as possible.

3. Think more about the problem analysed in the last post.

4. Read Boas article.

If I do all that I will celebrate with chocolate

I'm starting to get hungry now, so I'm going to go home and have something to eat. The Lewin, Fine and Young reference doesn't seem to be very helpful, but I have started to think about the issue in a bit more depth. The title of the last essay that I analysed asks about the advantages and disadvantages of XXX theories. these theories describe the cognitve development of children. So, if this was a research article the phenomena would be the cognitive development of children. the aim of the researcher's writing and academic activity would be to find out more about the cognitive development of children.

In a student essay on the other hand,with a title such as the one described above, the purpose is to find out more about XXXX theories, through this he or she may add to his or her knowledge of the cognitive development of children. Since they are not carrying out research of their own, they are less likely to add to the wider disciplinary knowledge. Having said that, a successful essay would presumably contain evaluative material which allows the student to come to their own conclusions about the value of the theories and possibly the cognitive development of children. The essay I am examining comes to conclusions about the theories and only indirectly cognitive development of children. So, I think it is right to conclude that the phenomena of this essay is the XXX theories. So what about subjects that refer to the cognitive devlopment of children? How can I classify them? And What about the theorists who proposed the models? Are they part of the phenomena? or are they epistemic subjects?? It is all very confusing? It is times like this that I ask myself Why did I choose this subject?

Maybe I could have separate categories for subjects that refer to children's development (the phenomena) and XXXX theories (theories of phenomena). I think the biggest problem is deciding if the theorists are phenomena or not. I am going to look at another essay and see if there are any similar patterns. that might help me decide how to classify the problematic sentence subjects.

Having been chucked out of the library at 5, I am now sitting in the 24 hour computer room with my books and notes piled up around me and tangled up with the computer keyboard and mouse. I have analysed a 1st year psychology text using my new system and I have noticed a few flaws in it. Nothing major but I have come up against the same problem I encountered with the last analysis. As pointed out by Gardner in her online article , MacDonald's classification system may not be suitable. She suggests some ideas used by Lewin, Fine and Young. I don;t have my article here, but actually Duh! I could look at the online article. Once again writing about my problems has allowed me to find a solution to them(in this case a rather obvious one). I have run into this problem this problems so many times that I am going to have to face it head on - wish me luck.

So far I have done two of the things on my to-do list for the day but they are the two easiest things. I haven't written anything yet. I have been thinking a lot about the classification system I am going to use and I have come up with a model I would like to try. I am thinking that maybe I should do an analysis, or maybe some of the analysis, before I carry on with my literature review. I am thinking that the results will affect what I put in the literature review so it might be best to do it that way round. Or it could just be me subconsciously plotting against myself to avoid writing any more of the literature review at this stage. It's not easy!!

Ok, I had a good weekend. I bought some pork and apples sausages from an independent farmer and I watched the Wimbledon final. Now it's time to get back to the dissertation. I am even broing myself writing that so I can't imagine what it must be like for anyone who is reading. Anyway, here are my plans for the day:

1. Continue writing along the lines I mentioned in last week's post.

2. Read Samraj article

3. Think about how my classification system will fit in with the aims of my analysis.

I really wanted Roddick to win. He had been almost written off not so long ago but he came back really strong and determined to win. He got himself a new coach and improved his fitness greatly. And he came so close at times to beating Federer. Great match though. I really got into Wimbledon even more that usual this year.

I entered my blog into a few blog directories and then immediately afterwards thought NO I shouldn't have done that! I wanted a few more people to read and comment, but at the same time the blog is mainly for me and for organising my thoughts. Apart from not being particularly interesting for others, if I want other people to read then I might have to change what I write about and how. This is a dilemma probably faced my most bloggers. It's a kind of blog identity crisis. At the moment, I see myself as just stretching my blogging muscles. In the future I might like to try and attract more attention to my blog, once I've got going. What does anyone think? Maybe the answer is to have multiple blogs? But that would require a lot of effort.

There is a tramp who hangs around a park near when I live. When it is hot and light in the evenings, I walk home from work through this park. I first noticed the tramp sitting on a bench right next to the path I walk along. After I had walked past him a number of times I noticed that when I walked past he turned around and looked at me. My first instict was to look away as I was afraid that he might ask me for money or start shouting at me in that wild maniacal way that tramps sometimes do (Reading dwellers, remember the women who used to scream at people outside the bus stop on Friar Street?). Anyway, something told me that this guy was not crazy and I started looking at him as I walked past. One day, I said "Hi" to him as I walked past. Now if you are thinking that this is going to turn into a twist on Romeo and Juliet with a university student falling in love with a tramp despite their differences, you are wrong. The thing is that the guy does look a bit rough and I was kind of expecting his voice to match his ragged appearance. I think I thought he would reply to my "Hi" with some kind of gruff grunt, not really resembling a word; an expression of his tough life on the streets. In fact, he just said "Hi" back in a cheerful northern accent, as if he was completely carefree. This probably means that my expectations of his voice based on his appearance were completely wrong. In any case, I was surprised and I wonder what will happen on my way home on Monday.

As an aside, I saw a notice in the Town Centre the other day. It was written by the council urging people not to give money to "those without shelter". I think that was the phrase used, either that or "the shelterless". So in order to meet the standards of political correctness, this post should actually be called "Shelterless Man".

In terms of writing I need to:

1. fill in the details of the urban/rural, convergent/divergent hard/soft pure/applied distinctions.

2. Add the limitations to this description of the disciplines

3. gather info re manifestation of disciplinary differences in writing.

i also need to think more about what exactly I am going to look for in my analysis and how I can achieve this.

I am going home now to watch the two Andys Murray and Roddick battling out at Wimbledon. Roddick won the first set but Murray had broken in the second last I heard.

I've had a reply about my data from my supervisor and I am probably going to be analysing 7 1st year Psychology essays from an introduction to Psychology module with 7 2nd year essays from a Developmental Psycholgy module. The comparison between 1st and 2nd year writing is not ideal; I would have preferred to analyse 1st and 3rd year writing. The 1st year essays are not all related to Developmental Psychology either which given the possible variation between sub-disciplines is not ideal.

On the plus side though, it will allow me to look for signs of development related to developing cognitive skills such as increased use of grammatical metaphor and increased criticality. It will also allow me to look for signs of development towards professional disciplinary norms through comparisons with published analyses of professional writing.

This could be problematic though as the disciplines may not be exactly the same and the majority of previous analyses have focused on research articles rather than essays. Despite these pros and cons, the fact that I know more or less what kind of analysis I am going to do makes me feel like I am making progress towards the goal of carrying out the analyses.

To give you an idea of some of the abstract ideas I am struggling with, I'll tell you a bit about one of the ideas I was trying to write about today. It is taken mainly from the two books I mentioned in the last post.I thought it was quite clear in my head until I started trying to write it down. Let's see if I can do a better job this time.

The basic idea is that people used to think that science was a way to ascertain objective truths about the way the universe works. It was thought that ratonal thinking, along with scientific methodology and objective reporting of results led to universal rules about nature. More recently, philosophers and other academics have started to think that there is no such thing as objective knowledge and that all knowledge is a product of the social surroundings of the people that construct it. Knowledge is constructed and what we choose to foreground and make important will be a consequence of the environment in which we work. In academia, the community decides what counts as valid knowledge and what doesn't.

Well, it wasn't as difficult this time, but I wasn't worrying about all those other things you have to think about when you are writing a piece of academic work such as how long the text is, what kind of language you are using and how what you are writing fits into the rest of the text. This theory, although extremely interesting, is the kind of things that can lead you round in circles thinking about its implications. It might also be the kind of thing to make you think "if there is no objective truth, what exactly is there? and why bother learning anything if it is only true in this context?". It can make your head spin.

Good progress again today. I have done three of the things on my to do list, including the most difficult ones - continue writing. I am progressing quite slowly in terms of writing. I have only written about 450 words and it will need a lot of editing, reading and rethinking. I am rereading books to help me rewrite each section. The two books tht I have been looking at today are Ken Hyland's Disciplinary Discourses and http://books.google.com/books?id=N76dAAAAMAAJ&q=trowler+tribes&dq=trowler+tribesTony Becher and Paul Trowler's Academic Tribes and territories. They are both very interesting and informative books. However, I find the layout and style of the second quite hard to follow. It is difficult to access the information you need quicky. This, along with perhaps the nature of the topic I am writing about means that I am not able to get my ideas down on paper very quickly. I am going to have to increase the number of words I am producing if I am going to get the literature review and classifcation system done before I go to Cyprus. I have two and a half weeks, so I will aim to do 500-1000 words per day to allow for revision time- could be difficult.

I went to watch the Chessmaster play at a chess club yesterday. It was really encouraging to see such a well organised friendly club in action. There were about 15 players (all male except the chessmaster) sitting in a church playing quietly (it was a new modern kind of church, probably closer to your image of a church hall than a church, just in case you were imagining chess players squeezed in between the pews). They had clocks to time the length of their moves and both noted each move down as they played. The organiser explained to me that they have a lot more people at other times of year. The Chessmaster played and I tried to watch but in the end my lack of knowledge of chess meant I couldn't really follow the game that well and I ended up reading. I really enjoyed it though and am glad that I experienced something new.

As I was sitting outside the library at 8.20 this morning waiting for it to open eating a croissant from Greggs, I was joined by a tiny robin. It did not hesitate to hop up to me and enjoy a bit of my croissant with me. Birds are so delicate and light, its amazing. Anyway, my early arrival should mean that I get more work done, so here are my plans.

1. Read Fachinatti article

2. Continue planning my literature review

3. Start writing my literature review

4. Read Nesi and Gardner article

I had a good day yesterday. I wrote a rough draft of my rationale and did quite a bit of reading. I emailed my supervisor two days ago about the data I am going to analyse and he emailed back straight away! I have sent him another e mail but I haven;t heard yet. I have realised that the data for psychology students in the corpus I am using is written for lots of different modules. this means that it might be hard to compare it across year groups as writing styles may vary across sub-disciplines. You are probably thinking "Why didn't you look at the data in detail earlier?" and believe me I am thinking the same thing. The thing is (or my excuse is) that I did look at the data and I was aware of the problem but I had so many other things to think about it wasn't at the top of my things to sort out list. Perhaps, if I ever do research again, I will learn from this experience and prioritize sorting out the data.

I have actually started writing it. I have only done 267 words out of 15,000 but still I have started and it feels a bit strange to be honest. Like stepping into an unknown world and not really being sure of how to behave in it. I have done very little planning for this so it is definitely going to be a case of learning and organising whilst I write, which hasn;t really been my usual style with most my essays until now but I don;t really have much choice in this case because of time constraints. I've written a rough draft of the rationale but I am not really sure how to link the two ideas of disciplinary differences in writing and students development as they progress from school to university. Ah! I think I've got an idea, it came to me when I was writing the last sentence, wow it really works you can actually get ideas get ideas whilst you write!

Well I have had a good day at the library. Unfortunately it closes at 5 at the moment so I am going to try and find somewhere else quiet to study. I have done a lot of reading, including an interesting article about "metaphenomena" (written by Moore 2003 I think. Metaphenomena iidea is taken from Halliday). This is language which represents language rather than phenomena. Confusing? This example might help:

1. Reading is an interesting place to live.

2. Burgess(2008) claims that Reading is an interesting place to live.

Number one is phenomena - language used to represent external reality. 2. is metaphenomena - language used to represent language, in this case the claim(which I am sure would be disputed by many), that Reading is an interesting place to live.

Simple as that, this is exactly what I have been trying to get at, just approached from a slightly different angle. As usual though, the article threw up more questions than it answered. For example, this article classified statements like " Burgess conceives of Reading as interesting place" as metaphenomena. This could not be included in an analysis of Theme though could it? Where do I draw the line? It is all very puzzling? I have realsied though that I am going to have to draw another line an stop Reading soon and just start writing even if I don't have enough information. This is going to be ine of those pieces of writing that you hand in even if they are not complete.

I am back, I am feeling good about my dissertation, I am ready to work hard!!!!!!!!