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
