paper is done!

Well, my paper is just about done. Just need to do some finishing touches. Even with the unhelpful survey, I was able to gather a lot of other resources to investigate international student's rhetorical awareness. So that was good. It's hard to write a paper in 5 weeks when there is no time to let ideas percolate and do a lot of good thinking. But I am pretty happy with it.

more research news

Well, my survey wasn't very helpful. I will probably use some of them, but most of the students didn't answer very well-- maybe they didn't understand the questions? I am still trying to narrow down my research question. I hope to get it figured out soon!

More research

I've been doing a lot of research--reading a lot! Still more to do, however.... still trying to pin down a research question to answer but I hope reading some of these articles will help me.

Frustration and research

I am very frustrated! It took a long time to log in to blogger.com. It refused to accept my user and pw until I had gone out and back in like a million times on 3 computers and I went thru the whole process of reverifying my account, ect. I wasted a ton of time--not worth it.
Well, I have gathered a few resources. As I mentioned in my previous post, I already had 4 articles I was going to use. Now I found a few more and some books:
1. I found an article entitled "Computer-mediated copperative development: nonjudgemental discourse in online environments." I think this might turn out to be about how users interact in online discourse environments, such as email, IM, and maybe I can take this info and further extrapolate some of the same ideas for blogging, discussion boards, etc. We'll see.
2. I found a bk chapter about using technology for ESL composition. From what I scanned, it didn't have anything to do with blogging, etc, but part of it is about the effects of technology on L2 writing--so it might be helpful.
3. I found another article entitled "What Unskilled ESL Writers do as they write: A classroom study of composing." I think this article might help me explain the writing process of ESL stduents should I choose to do so as part of the background of my paper. I am still not entirely sure what my paper is going to be focused on so I might not need this but I am not sure.
4. Jackpot! I knew Essential Teacher had at one time published an article about blogs and I found it: "Blogs for Language Learning." ET is not the most schoolarly pub by any means, but I knew it much more so than TESOL Quarterly would have info on this subject b/c it always addressed tech in lang learning in some way.
5. ET had another article: "BLogs, the Virtual Soapbox" which I will look into.
I need to go and photocopy/checkout some of this stuff I found.

Progress on my paper

I've made some progress on my paper. I created the survey I want to give to the IEP students and have sent it out to be given.Hopefully it will yield some good results but I worry that the students haven't been immersed in English long enough yet to be blogging in English--we'll see. I've also read 4 articles I think might help me, but I need to do more research.

My 6030 research paper topic

I'm still thinking about the topic of my research and haven't pinned it down yet, but I'm thinking about doing something about how writing technologies (blogs and email, particularly, I guess) have changed ESL student writing. I mean, in the past, ESL students learned to write according to the standards accepted in academia. That might have meant shedding cultural rhetoric traditions (see Kaplan and contrastive rhetoric). But now so many students are blogging in their native language and in English and using a diff. rhetorical style. These writing technologies are independent from cultural rhetorical traditions--they are their own culture in some way. How has ESL students' writing changed due to these technologies? positively? negatively? Are ESL students now bypassing learning standard English forms and gone straight to online writing forms? What kind of English are the students' using with the intro of this technology? These are some of the questions I think I will explore.

My first blog!

This is my first blog ever! I haven't really cared to be a blogger up until now, but since it is now a class requirement for ENGL 6030, I'm giving it a try. I also think I might use blogs next year with my ESL students so that they can get more practice writing.
Perhaps I'll also use it to post updates and pictures of Baby Rita...