Grad School

Success

4
10 months ago
by JR in

Without going into too many details, I have been working with a student who has finally realized that he can actually do the work that is required of him. He recently did very well on a couple of his tests and papers. I had a feeling that he had done really well on a test, and it was hard to contain my enthusiasm while he was checking his grades.   A few seconds after he realized that he did well, I could almost see his whole personality change.   He is a new man, and I hope this attitude sticks.  We are not yet finished with the summer semester so we still have a ways to go.  I look forward to seeing his progress over the next couple of semesters.

Tequila helps the conversation flow

Bribes

2
11 months ago
by JR in

I have to do a bit of conversation analysis for one of my classes this semester. Since I wanted to analyze second language speakers, I invited a few of our friends over for Mexican food.  I figured a meal and drinks would be an appropriate bribe for agreeing to be recorded.

Tequila helps the conversation flow

My Participants.

 

I have almost 7 hours of recorded conversation to wade through this week.  I am not entirely sure about my final topic for the paper, but I am leaning towards analyzing the use of reactive tokens, such as ‘aha,’ hmm,’ and ‘yeah’ by nonnative speakers of English. My friend Zach came over as well, and I was very pleased to have a non-Korean speaker present.  In the first couple of hours, the Korean speakers used Korean tokens when I was telling stories.  Thankfully, they did not use these with Zach.  Their use of Korean tokens would be interesting to analyze, but I am just not sure  I want to go that route for this paper.

 

I am also enjoying the reading that is required for this class, and I have been lucky enough to find some really interesting articles that have been written about Korean students and their use of English. I regret that the class is extremely fast paced, and I feel like I really do not have the time to explore the topic further. It is still hard to believe that this class is over in a little over two weeks.

Shortened

0
11 months ago
by JR in

I thought that this summer was going to be filled with lots of personal research and preparing for the fall semester while slowly working on the one class that I am taking. I recently found out that my summer class is only 4 weeks long. It wasn’t listed as a short session class, and it looks like the next four weeks will be spent working non-stop. It really does not make that big a deal , but if I would have known, I would have started on the textbook before now. The upside to all of this is that I will be able to spend July working on what I want, and I will have no trouble in getting ready for our Korean vacation planned for the first two weeks in August.

SAMSUNG

Semester #2 at a Glance

0
11 months ago
by JR in

I haven’t posted much since I began my final projects for my classes.  The end of the semester was jam packed to the very last second.  I ended up having to complete two of my projects a couple of days earlier than expected because my best friend’s mother passed away suddenly.  I finished everything on time and was pleased with my final grades.

 

Thankfully, my desk doesn't look like this anymore

 

 

I spent the better part of the semester writing a case study on JJ. I monitored her use of English for a few weeks and applied what I had learned about second language acquisition to JJ’s acquisition of English.  This project opened my eyes to the many different factors that affect language acquisition.  I especially enjoyed learning more about communication strategies.  I had never given thought to the ways in which learners use these types of strategies to facilitate communication.  I had noticed that my students used some of the strategies that I learned, but I had always considered them to be examples of foreigner talk.  I choose to include communication strategies in my case study and could have easily written the entire paper on the ways in which JJ used these types of strategies.  It was interesting to observe JJ’s use of circumlocution, restructuring, retrieval, and self-rephrasing.  I am looking forward to learning more about communication strategies since I have only really scraped the surface of the research that has been done on the topic.

 

The second project that I finished was another case study on African American Vernacular English (AAVE).  I interviewed a few students and used the interviews along with observations to monitor their codeswitching between AAVE and Standard English.  This was another fun project that really enlightened my thoughts on English vernaculars.  I have known for many years that AAVE is not ‘bad’ English, but it was fascinating to observe the rules of AAVE in play.

 

The final project was for my grammar class, and I had to write a paper stating my position on teaching grammar and create 8 enhancements for a grammar topic of my choosing.  Although I learned that many of the ways that I taught grammar were not inline with current research, I felt that there were many aspects of my grammar classes that were very helpful for my students. Looking back, I now realize that I over-taught many grammatical forms and should have used more realistic materials in my classes.

 

I really felt that the end of the semester was much more chaotic than it should have been. I don’t think that I could have started my projects that much earlier because I started well before the due dates, but I could have done a better job of sticking to my personal deadlines.  I also need to be able to make more realistic deadlines for myself.

 

This summer I am only taking one class, Discourse Analysis, and will be back working with my student athletes as a mentor/tutor. I am looking forward to working on a couple of personal projects as well as restarting my Korean studies.

 

 

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