Findings & Comments

Findings bubble. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.thoughtleader.org.uk/images/findings_bubble.gif.

• Expectations on involvement were too high and response showed only Participant A took the study seriously, but when he found out Participant B was not cooperative, he slowed down, too. This shows levels of interdependence are important in the 8LEM and this kind of mismatches or string personalities can spoil the entire strategy and require a different approach.
• There is a direct relationship between involvement in the 8LEM and the quality of reflection an production.
• Readability formulas should be seen with less prevention, as they might offer further research opportunities in our L2 teaching contexts. 
• Both participants, however, used all the technological tools suggested in the self-access activities and showed very positive attitudes towards them.
• Participant A acknowledged increased awareness on what learning the language entails and the acquisition of better autonomous language learning strategies.
• The implementation of the 8LEM model in itself did not carry significant changes in one of the participants’ involvement and, rather, his negative attitude weakened the active role adopted by the other participant. This was evident in the data shown in the positive 8LEM role match chart where the initial roles, which depend mostly on guidance and exemplification, were carried out entirely, yet as the level of independent demand increased, their degree of autonomous active participation decreased.

In fact, the implementation was really optimistic in its foundations and the initial discussion held with the two participants mainly sought to modulate the negative attitudes previously shown by Participant B, since the 8LEM model requires permanent interaction amongst the members of the educational unit and a close and attentive relationship to monitor self- and peer-progress. In order to grant this desired degree of involvement, the study itself was presented as an innovative perspective to the lessons, and the results show it was working very well at the first stage. In the first lessons, the use of self-access activities which allowed them to browse different sources of information as well as different media (videos, reading texts, avatar-creating software, etc.) promoted highly positive involvement and interaction –though Participant B did not show enough seriousness in his comments and this attitude started to hinder the academic nature of the tasks and by the third module, the self-access guide was the only task they did. This lack of commitment was further worsened by the fact the course was suddenly cancelled two weeks before and the additional strategy of carrying out an exit test, in similar conditions to the ones provided for the entry test, and which aimed to provide internal validity, was impossible.

Limitations and problems

The sky is the limit. [Online Image]. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ1tUvzTItrMhWbsEZedITEBO9n7-DN45lnhzouusuTcSrq6zB8p6lUBnf0iRLUbgl4b74ZhZbnkEJb8Bto-ll9iINdkF8YKkggacvAVVqwRnbZr30c_H2jAxgZFePtuInF1bjg5NCM6k/s320/SkysTheLimit.jpg.

• Though the roles Participant B did not play could not have been replaced by the teacher because the results would have been manipulated, Participant A suffered the consequences of his lack of commitment.
• There were also some time limitations which affected implementation, like the abrupt cancellation of the semester, before closing the final module and doing the planned “exit test”, an impromptu essay writing essay in class, like the entry essay done at the early stage of the implementation.
• They were given a copy of the timeline, but it would have been more useful another strategy to control their participation, e.g. a checklist.
• If all the data expected had been collected, the internal validity of the study through triangulation would have been more reliable. For instance, participants had done some PowerPoint presentations but never handed them in for inclusion.
• For further implementation cycles, other data collection instruments should be used so that the analysis is both reliable and plausible.

One of the conclusions which follow from this is the fact that an implementation strategy which relies so heavily on active participation certainly needs monitoring mechanisms which allow peer-assessment and active demand for fulfilment of expectations; on this occasion, they were given a soft copy of the timeline for the implementation process, but it could have been more effective to provide each of them with a printed checklist showing expected roles and dates so that they could have been much more critical of their own roles and on the other participant’s role. It is also worth noting that the role expected from the peer could possibly have been taken by the teacher, but it was a conscious decision to neglect it since, in the end, it was not his role, and the participant should be aware of the negative effect the lack of commitment from the other learner had on his own process and, consequently, they would individually realise their importance as active participants of the model.


Another aspect to consider for future implementation instances is the need to establish constant collection of the participant’s artifacts since these participants refused to provide all the additional tasks they had done (e.g. they both had done analytically interesting PowerPoint presentations which they promised to hand in later, but never actually did), so the data available was limited in the end.

The expected outcome of further implementation of strategies similar to the one reported here can be increased motivation for teachers to carry out more cognitively challenging and interesting tasks for the learners. Consequently, professional skills will have to be permanently fine-tuned to keep up with the challenges posed by more and more critical students and national and international professional guidelines. An immediate result of individual research efforts in educational settings like the one undertaken here –especially if they bring about positive outcomes, is awareness from the other members of the community of the possibilities available to engage in more reflective and professionally developing teaching practices, and the subsequent creation of research groups. In this specific case, the implementation of strategies aimed at promoting better writing skills will lead to an overall increase in the quality of teaching practices, especially based on the demand from learners and the need to keep up with them: as part of the 8LEM, their level of active participation will make teaching more challenging because learners will demand coherence in the guidelines set, better quality in the materials, engagement with their educational community and with society in general as social roles will become stronger.

Data Analysis

This will be a very colourful entry since I will post all the charts I have devised from the data collected before attempting any interpretation. The legends underneath every chart should suffice for interpretation, but questions/comments/suggestions, etc. are always welcome!

Units of Analysis

Research cycle diagram. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.casenex.com/casenet/images/methodology_200px.gif.

As noted in the previous entry, once the case study research methodoogy had been chosen and the componentsof the research design had been broadly stated, it was necessary to pinpoint the specificities of each one of them. However, before introducing the first one, it is necessary to make a brief outline of Leclercq and Poumay's 8LEM model, as one of the units is closely related to it.


Leclercq & Poumay's 8LEM

Leclercq & Poumay devised a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of any subject –i.e. domain of learning, which allows individuals to develop skills and to apply them to answer any question or solve any situation. In this model, motivational issues, social interaction and individual roles and performance are included in a systematic sequence resulting in the development of academic literacy and citizenship, as content is not seen detached from the social framework, but rather as an essential component for proper understanding. The core element of the model is the concept of learning/teaching event (LE), defined as “the joined description of paradigms […] of a learner’s activity and a tutor (or teacher or coach)’s activity, these actions being complementary and interdependent, in a learning situation.” (Leclercq & Poumay, 2005, p. 1).

These are the eight learning events:


1. Imitation/Modelling

2. Reception/Transmission

3. Exercising/Guidance

4. Exploration/Documenting

5. Experimentation/Reactivity

6. Creation/Confortation

7. Self-reflexion/Co-reflexion and

8. Debate/Animation.

They are represented in Figure 1 below

Figure 1. Graphical representation of the 8LEM from the students’ perspective

The first unit of analysis was the Positive 8LEM role match: The concept of “positive match” was adapted from security procedures and it is related to checking the actual occurrence of a predicted event. Since the 8LEM framework outlined the roles and tasks learners should do in every stage of each module, I decided to design a chart to keep track of their positive realisation of the intended role. The modules led the learners from mostly passive roles in which they answered self-access activity guides on their own with low levels of stress since they were given an entire week to prepare it and send it for correction before moving onto the second stage, done together in which they presented, debated and analysed situations before they were given an additional week to carry out the more actively productive stages of the model, which involved freer research, experimentation, discussion and further creation and the expected process writing task, done together with their peer and the teacher.

The second unit of analysis was the accomplishment of the process writing cycles: The four 8LEM-framed modules, aimed at the production of argumentative essays, had been designed so that the learners carried out certain tasks in each stage of the modules: write a first draft, peer-review their partners’ paper, send it to their teacher for further review and comments –especially in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and write a final draft. These results are put in charts and represented in charts to find patterns with the first unit of analysis.

The third unit of analysis was the score obtained in three different readability formulas. In an attempt to provide a more reliable basis to the analysis of the texts, I decided to use readability formulas, instead of other tools like rubrics or comparison to established outlines, since they still depend on the justification given by every person who applies the rubric or makes the analysis. I then resorted to the concept of readability, a construct defined as: “[a]ccording to Klare (1963) readability is ‘the ease of understanding or comprehension due to style of writing’. This definition focuses on writing style, in contrast to factors like format, features of organisation and content” (as cited by Anagnostou and Weir, 2006, p. 3). The readability formulas are considered “a way to use vocabulary difficulty and sentence length to predict the difficulty level of a text” (DuBay, 2004, p. 2), and in short, is mathematics applied to reading comprehension, an idea which might look outrageous at first. However, a closer analysis of its background proves the underlying importance of the concept of readability: it is related to research in corpus linguistics, the typical cloze exercises so familiar in tests worldwide is based on its principles, and the concept of graded readers derives from the research started in the 1920s. Though there are more than 200 different formulas available and used in various fields, just a few of them have endured criticism and are considered reliable. For the present study, three readability formulas were used and their selection was made on the basis of proven reliability and appropriateness in terms of intended audiences; they were the Flesch-Reading Ease, the New Dale-Chall, and the SMOG Grade. The application of the first one yields a number representing the degree of difficulty in an inverted scale from 1 (difficult) to 100 (easy), while the core obtained from the second and the third readability formulas represents the number of years of education required to understand the text properly. The results were put in a chart to track changes and they were eventually graphed to identify trends, which were again related to the data collected through the previous units of analysis.

 

References

Anagnostou, N.K. & Weir, G.R.S. (2006). From corpus-based collocation frequencies to readability measure. In: ICT in the Analysis, Teaching and Learning of Languages, Preprints of the ICTATLL Workshop 2006, 21-22 Aug 2006, Glasgow, UK. Available from http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/cis/research/publications/papers/strath_cis_publication_1539.pdf

DuBay, W. H. (2004). The principles of readability. Costa Mesa, CA: Impact Information. Available from http://www.impact-information.com/impactinfo/readability02.pdf.

Leclercq, D. & Poumay, M. (2005). The 8 learning events model and its principles. Available from http://www.labset.net/media/prod/8LEM.pdf.

An eventual research design

Confined. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.claudiam.com/images/Confined.jpg.

Here I am three months after the last post in this research blog with mixed feelings. I had not been able to restart my data analysis due to external issues and the pressure this delay and the consequences it would bring were overwhelming. Besides, on one of those occasions in which I tried to retake the study, I went back to the data collected and I noticed the learners had not handed in all the additional tasks assigned (e.g. PowerPoint presentations, additional guides), and a careful analysis of the guides and writing tasks collected showed their performance along the process had not been as positive as I had initially considered. Something even more worrying: the information collected in this blog had been more anecdotic than research-related and it did not help much compensate or provide validity to the information I had. As a result I had decided to give up, abandon the project and give myself a second chance in the action research adventure with lighter perspectives in the future.

However, a friendly conversation helped me realise that a real study, in real contexts, with real people is prone to this kind of mismatches between planning and implementation and the value of the research study could be in making sense of the information I saw insufficient. Then, I decided to go back to the data and, having left the study at rest helped me approach things from a different, more relaxed perspective. The first step then, was to identify which research design would fit the general profile of the implementation, and I found the concept of case study appropriate: “an intensive study of the background, current status and environmental interactions of a given social unit: an individual, a group, an institution, or a community” (Brown and Rodgers, 2002, p. 21).


The lighthouse

Case study research book cover. [Online Image]. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/design-books/47-2.jpg.

Doing some further research in the field of case study, I found the view of Stake (2000) of case study as “an overall strategy rather than a genre of research” (as cited in Rossman and Rallis, 2003, p. 104) very useful for a novice researcher like myself because it allowed the implementation of principles instead of step-by-step procedures which might fail to fit the gaps I had identified in the data collected. I was then lucky to find an expert in case study research and implementation: Robert K. Yin, who had written several books on its principles, components of research design and approaches to data analysis. He had identified the following matrix for the taxonomy of case study, and it helped me identify a more accurate approach to the specific case I wanted to analyse:

I could then label my study as exploratory single-case study because it is “aimed at defining the questions and hypothesis of a subsequent study (not necessarily a case study) or at determining the feasability of the desired research procedures”. (Yin, 2003a, p.5). Then Yin (2003b) outlined the components of the case study research design and it was my duty to turn them into concrete items for analysis; they were:

1. A study’s questions

2. Its propositions (if any)

3. Its unit(s) of analysis

4. The logic linking the data to the proposition

5. The criteria for interpreting the findings. (Yin, 2003b, p.21)

These components were then identified as follows for this specific study:

1. The study’s main question: What are the effects of attempting an 8LEM-framed process-writing strategy on two graduate learners’ quality of argumentative essays and on their level of active participation in their language learning process? Based on the elaboration Creswell (2007) does of the kinds of subquestions devised by Stake (1995), the following subquestions were developed:

Issue subquestions

• What does the 8LEM explicitly involve in terms of language teaching?

• Which of the 8LEM roles appear to be predominant in this context? Why? How can it be proven?

• What happens if any of the roles is not performed entirely?

Procedural subquestions

• How can process-writing exercises be integrated into the 8LEM?

• Which strategy(ies) can be used to measure essay quality?

2. Its propositions:

- The principles of the 8LEM model, which had been originally designed as a framing strategy for online environments, could be transferred to language teaching modules, taking advantage of the roles and interaction proposed.

- The interaction involved in process writing seems an appropriate companion for this 8LEM attempt.

- The creation of argumentative essays involves a great deal of personalisation, which fosters the development of critical thinking skills and engages learners in lifelong learning processes.

3. Its unit(s) of analysis: established on the basis of three observable elements, which constituted the data collection methods in themselves, as will be shown in detail in the following paragraphs. The first two had to do with the degree of active involvement of the learners in every module and in each one of the writing tasks, and the last one attempted to analyse the quality of the essays written through a variety of tools designed to identify the degree of complexity of a written text. The units of analysis were the positive 8LEM role match, the accomplishment of the process writing cycles and an analysis of the changes observed from the application of three different readability formulas to the essays written by the learners along the modules.

The fourth and fifth components of the case study research design, i.e. linking data to propositions and criteria for interpreting the findings are actually hard to pinpoint, according to Yin (2003b): “these components foreshadow the data analysis steps in case study research, and a research design should lay a solid foundation for this analysis” (p. 26). In this specific case, the trends identified in positive role match, and in the accomplishment of the process writing cycles were then contrasted to the propositions and justified in the additional data collected.

References

Brown, J. D. & Rodgers, T. (2002). Doing second language research: Oxford handbooks for language teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Rossman, G. R. & Rallis, S. F. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Yin, R. K. (2003a). Applications of case study research: Design and methods (3rd. ed.) – Applied social research method series, Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Yin, R. K. (2003b). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd. ed.) – Applied social research method series, Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, In

Here we are, trying to catch up!

 

Laurenelizabeth. [Photographer]. (2009, February 28). We don't have time left to regret. [Online Image]. Retrieved on March 25, 2010 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/numbnessforsound/3290620199/.

A (long-awaitedand necessary) update

I had last written here on Friday 13, November last year, and though I had promised to have an update soon, due to heavy workload, I had to postpone lots of duties and even put the entire data analysis process on hold for almost three months, a time which has certainly hindered proper reflection, as some great ideas which were not noted down simply vanished! However, there is no use crying ovr spilt milk, so I have tried to catch up with all the nexts steps of the research study and I am going to outline the most important facts below.

Let there be some...light!

 

Manolis Thr. [Photographer]. (2009, September 5). Thunder thessaloniki!!!!!. [Online Image]. Retrieved on March 25, 2010 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/manolisthr/3637064374/.

After having finished with such great enthusiasm -despite of the fact I could eventually close the cycle, there I was lying on the floor, trying to make head or tails of all those papers written by my learners, not knowing which method to use to measure progress and feeling depressed and guilty for not knowing what to do. The answer came to me in a flash, at around 1.00 a.m.: since I wanted to check how academically literate my learners were by the end of the implementation, I needed to find a tool available to measure these abilities. There it was when I started going down with read...readable...readability. Does it exist? Yes!!!! Not only did it exist, but there were about 20 different tools, called readabiity formulas,  devised to measure it, based on mathematical methods, relying on the principle that understandability of a text is based on the simplicity expressed in the number of syllables and word length. This, though psychologically supported, offered a partial solution since this mathematical calculations only attempt to explain mental processes from logical perspectives, and an analysis based on it would not be fully reliable. I decided to implement a half-way solution: since there were no already devised tools to measure what I had taught and tried to reinforce, and the ones available were not enough; I devised one myself: I called it ouline fitness index (OFI) and though it might sound pompous, it is nothing but a checklist in which the inclusion of the different elements an essay should have are verified in the learners' tetxs, and this will yield a number, from 0 to 5, observed in the different papers written by them.

In the end, I used these two approaches: quantitative, using the numbers from three different readability formulas, to obtain an average, and the OFI, and qualitative from two surveys done at the beginning and at the end of the implementation process and the analysis of involvement in terms of the patterns observed in the relationship content/stage/production. I am still in the middle of this analytical process, but having identified this  mixed-methods approach has been a relief. let us hope things get a bit easier now that I have managed to identify concrete elements of analysis and an approach.

I promise I will get back to you soon - as soon as the analysis look brighter.

Víctor Lugo

Almost there!

Wiebe, I. [Designer]. (n.d.). No profit: Start finishing. Retrieved on November 13, 2009 from http://wallblank.com/products/start-finishing.

This is something we all have come to understand, as the project has taken its own pace, and sometimes we feel we cannot keep up with it! However, optimism should always be with us and we might find the accomplishment of goals as rewarding adventures!

Just a quick note to jot down a few points:

• Due to the abrupt cancellation of the course at the university, I assigned the remaining tasks for students to work alone. Fortunately, the face-to-face sessions had already finished and the activities we had left were to be done over e-mail exchange. This, by no means, implies a happy, relaxing implementation; in fact, my students have just started a course which takes most of their available time, so only one of them has sent me the assignments.
• The absence of peer-review has affected this last stage, but I expect to be able to obtain the final documents and have them work collaboratively in these two final weeks of November, because as soon as December starts, they are going on vacation.

 What is next?
We have our final presentations of the semester tomorrow to share experiences with our tutors, peers and upcoming researchers, I will let you know how it goes soon! We hope everything goes fine!

Akmezero4. [Designer]. Optimismo. [Online Image]. Retrieved on november 13, 2009 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/akmesevende/3512945319/

 

Coming back to (academic research) life!

Stickman saying "long time no see". [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved on November 6, 2009 from http://rlv.zcache.com/long_time_no_see_postcard-p239738589187726208qibm_400.jpg.

Honestly, neither the title nor the picture are shows of cynicism! I apologise to anyone who has visited the blog, looking for updates, but due to a series of (fairly) unfortunate events, I had not been able to publish anything related to the activities performed in my research project. However, I will try to describe the most important events in our classroom these days in this post and I make a firm promise not to let these events occur again!

What has happened in this (already gone!) month? 
After the visit from my tutors, we had to design a data collection instruments report and , while I was preparing it, something fantastic happened: I discovered the main construct framing my research project implementation: the 8LEM. It is a recently devised and comprehensive learning model which considers eight different events involving four different aspects in each one of them: roles, domain, learning places and theories. The advantage of this construct is the high demand it poses for a far more rigourous approach, which I find fitting my own research style. If you are interested in obtaining further information about the 8LEM, see Leclercq & Pounay (2005) below.

However fantastic this finding might have been, as I mentioned above, some events have hindered my degree of commitment to the writing side of the project, and there are lots of ideas going round my head which I need to put down soon; I hope these two coming weeks grant me some more chances to do it. I am meeting my research project director next week and I am looking forward to that meeting to fine-tune some of these ideas.

Some additional concerns about my students 
Due to the nature of the programme my students are taking, there were some changes last  week: the biggest change somewhat affects the last stage of the project: their English course was shortened and the last session was last Wednesday. It was an abrupt change and I had no time to prepare an alternative strategy. On the bright side, there are just a  few activities left to complete the implementation cycle and they willingly offered to work on their own -which is just right for this stage, to complete it. It was rewarding to see how, not being obliged to continue doing anything else to continue this course, they offered to keep on for a few weeks.

The main effect will be that I will not be able to do the impromptu essay writing I had designed for the last session, nor the interview to collect data on motivational issues.

What's next?: Hand ticking a box. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved on November 6, 2009 from http://destinationmali.org/images/What's-the-next-step2.png

What is next? 
These new conditions call for immediate and appropriate decisions. I have already sent an update chart to my students letting them know which activities they have performed and which stage they are in the writing process, so that we can confirm that where we are and what we need to carry out to finish the cycle. I hope to receive their reply by Tuesday 10 November the latest and design a very strict calendar to finish the activities left.

Then, I will need to design an online survey to replace the interview  I had initially planned and find  an alternative for the exit essay and the exit learner profile. 

I will update this blog next week and I will report decisions regarding the issues mentioned above. Until then, thanks a lot for reading and I hope you have enjoyed reading as much as I did writing this.

Sincerely,

Víctor Lugo 
 References 
Leclercq, D. & Poumay, M. (2005) The 8 Learning Events Model and its principles. Retrieved on October http://www.labset.net/media/prod/8LEM.pdf.

Stickman saying "long time no see". [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved on November 6, 2009 from http://rlv.zcache.com/long_time_no_see_postcard-p239738589187726208qibm_400.jpg.

What's next?: Hand ticking a box. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved on November 6, 2009 from http://destinationmali.org/images/What's-the-next-step2.png 

An even better 4th week!

The week started with some concerns over the upcoming lesson observation on Wednesday, Sept, 30, in which my Professors would analyse the research project from their perspective. I cannot deny it was particularly scary to feel under the spotlight on this occasion since every aspect of this course is my responsibility.

So, I designed my lesson plan, to match and complement what my students had done with the self-access reading and grammar activity and the cause-effect essay work. I was satisfied with the result, but when I checked against the rubric supplied by my tutors, I had second thoughts about not having made appropriate decisions about the beginning of the lesson and I began to feel a bit more nervous. However, I had already sent the lesson plan and, reflecting on it and on my students' profile and previous work, I realised it had been appropriate. The next day arrived, we met and delivered the lesson...

I felt really satisfied, especially at my students' commitment, involvement and the high quality and interest of their presentations. They were informative, clear, insightful and argumented, what else could I have asked for? Another good aspect was that, though small classes can be seen as fantastic opportunities to carry out these projects, having a third-party in the lesson could easily affect the learners' performance, but these students were simply fantastic! I do thank them for their commitment, interest and I do hope all this process actually helps them realise the progress I have perceived!

An interesting point
The outcomes of the self-access activities this week yielded an interesting point to consider: they need to do specific-item grammar work. For instance, the indirect speech exercises I assigned them showed weak use of the "backward" movement of the reported tense and the same happened with pronouns and time expressions. Next lesson, I will spend some time doing exercises related to this issue because, as I pointed out in the notes included in the corrections, this might seem a sign of being "too picky", but it might lead to confusion and misunderstanding. This is especially important if we consider that one of the main issues in the project is to increase effective written communication in academic settings.

What is next?
We are working according to the schedule set and the self-access activities for the two subsequent sessions have been designed. Right now I have started to group the information I have collected in the previous three weeks to start the analysis process. This is a demanding -but necessary!, process and I am optimistic about having enough time for everything there is ahead in these two upcoming months.

A final note
My research project seminar professors have suggested making some changes to the initial question an I will strive to make the best use of the six-hour-long lessons coming as from tomorrow to make all the changes to lead a better-thought and designed research process.

Thanks for reading,

Víctor Lugo

References
The Situationist. (2009). Happiness. [Online Image]. Retrieved on October 2, 2009 from http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/happiness.jpg.

Toastmaster International. (2008). Fear factor teaser. [Online Image]. Retrieved on October 2, 2009 from http://www.toastmasters.org/MainMenuCategories/FreeResources/NeedHelpGivingaSpeech/FearFactor.aspx.

Third week: The (pleasant) outcomes of the 1st Self-access activity

On the day I wrote the previous post, I had already attended the lesson in which the learners had done their  self-access activity, but since I had had no time for analysis, the post had to be postponed.

The activities observed during this first self-access activity were highly rewarding:

• The learners sent the corresponding exercises on the self-access activity on time, a very significant indication of motivation and commitment.

• Though it had not even been suggested, they prepared a PowerPoint presentation for the 5-minute presentation they had been assigned as the extension task of the activity, and they were really interesting!

• Their engagement in the debate was lively and they acted their role in a very credible way, which indicates they took the activity seriously.

There were, however, some things to improve and reflect upon:

• The extension activities had been initially considered part of the self-access task, which was a mistake my tutors made me realise. The fact the writing task amounted to 50% of the task might have led to misunderstanding the seriousness of this stage.

• The results I had initially expected for the reading comprehension tasks, based on the learners' profiles, were much more optimistic. These were their scores: 7/9 and 11/18 for one student and 6/9 and 7/18 for the other. In ou next lesson, I will analyse each one of the tasks to identify reasons for misunderstanding which might have led to these results.

Next steps
On the other hand, they were asssigned the second self-access activity and we discussed the structure and purpose of the next kind of academic essay: cause-effect. On this occasion, they had to choose an environmental issue to present it in class, justifying its importance.

Some additional (mathematical!) issues

 

Apart from having made me realised the mistaken inclusion of the writig task as a core component of the self-access activity, my tutors also helped me realise the importance of including mathematical rigour to our project. We read two chapters of the book by Norton (2009) to find a sensible connection between the data we are collecting and a statistical way to approach it as the basis for the forecoming conclusions. This is a prticularly sensitive item since I have not been involved in this level of mathematical reflection in years, so I need to catch up as soon as possible with it.

There is no more to say for now. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Víctor Lugo

References

Jadranka. (Photographer). (2008). Sometimes I think that I don't know that much - But math sucks!. [Online Image]. Retrieved on September 28, 2009 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/stonkinja/2914788579/sizes/o/.

Norton, L. S., (2009). Action research in teaching and learning: A practical guide to conducting pedagogical research in universities. Oxon, England: Routledge.

Optick. (Photographer). (2006). Interference with a rainbow. [Online Image]. Retrieved on September 28, 2009 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/optick/116793142/sizes/l/.

Second week

Second week and still lots of work ahead...

Now we have already jumped in the water!

I post this late because some health problems made me prioritise other tasks and I could not come back before. On September 16, 2009 we held a session in which learners were presented with the details of the research project: they showed interest and motivation and asked lots of questions related to schedules, objectives, kind of tasks and ways of delivering the entire process. They submitted the basic information of both learner profiles, though the initial survey has not been filled out by them. I will send a reminder later this week, and hope to be able to include the information collected there in the core analysis of the paper.

In the same session they were allowed thirty minutes to write the argumentative essay which will be used as a data collection instrument: it will be compared to the essay they will write on the last session of the research project to identify possible changes.

The first self-access activity was assigned in the same lesson, I described its outline and answered their questions. They were a bit puzzled about the topic -political correctness, since they had never heard of it. The results of the controlled practice activities will be described in our next record here. I received both completed guides on Monday and Tuesday, the learner who sent it the latest complained of having to do too much! I will analyse the amount and the complexity of the tasks assigned so that they do not feel it as a burden.

Finally, there are lots of information I have collected during these days and I need to find the most appropriate way to start the analysis as soon as possible because I am eager to see results. By the way, I did some theoretical work on kinds of data -quantitative and qualitative, and I need to fine-tune my selection of data collection tools to avoid mismatches between the information collected and the ways to measure them, so that no effort is wasted and the most appropriate choices are made and the information collected is effectively used and reliably analysed.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Víctor Lugo

Reeferences
Moonjazz. (2008). (Photographer) Wall of water. [Online Image]. Retrieved on September 23, 2009 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonjazz/2221423093/.