Post your data and analysis to your blog: When you turn in your final essay on the last day of class, you will post it on your blog, and send it to me as an attachment to an email sent to the course email. In the body of the email with your essay, you will list blogs where you have posted data & analysis, and where you have posts that present evidence of your planning/writing process for this project. Number your blogs. If you have more posts for data than I have allowed for numbers, post them as 22 a, b, c etc. Try to stay within the general number system for the prompts listed on this blog.
What you did in class: Today you worked on your research project. Most of you were working on analyzing data (marking up your transcripts in terms of categories and features, noticing re language moves associated with different features in your categories, thinking about points you might make as you develop your essay); some of you were working on transcribing, and some of you were working on writing sections of your essay. Great! That is exactly where you are supposed to be.
What to do for next week.
1. Keep working on transcribing and analyzing data and post it to your blog.
2. Work on doing some analytic writing. This is an important part of writing research essays. In general, before you begin to write the analysis section of your essay, you should develop some analytic writing to explore the points you might make about your data. In each piece of analytic writing you might list the following:
- A category you want to explore
- The features of that category
- Some examples (quotes) from your data which deal with/show features of this category
- What you notice in the transcript about where this category seems to appear (in relation to what topics? in response to which questions? many times or just once? etc)
- The kinds of language moves associated with this category and its different features
- What you might say about this category with respect to your research question.
You might develop sections of writing for several or all of your categories. The reason you would do this is to figure out what you have to say about your data in some detail BEFORE you try to write what you have in the form of a coherent essay. This allows you to think through/develop your ideas without getting strangled by the pressure to put those ideas into coherent sentences.
This process of developing sections of analytic writing also allows you to identify the points you will make with respect to your research question BEFORE you try to put them in the best order. It lets you focus on content without getting stuck in where it fits in your argument/discussion.
Another analytic approach to writing about your data (rather than by category) is to identify conflicts, and write into them. You might write about:
- Conflicts within the data (where your participant does something and says something that don't fit, or where s/he says two different things)
- Conflicts between your data and what the research predicts
- Parts of your data which confuse you (which don't seem to make sense)
- Pieces of your data which contradict the points you "want" to make
You would write about these conflicts/confusions in a way similar to the ways you wrote about the categories: notice where they occur (what were you talking about); the language moves they are associated with; how they connect to other parts of the data, and so on.
We will talk about this some more as you begin your presentations.
Marc has volunteered for Tuesday, so be sure to read his blog before you come to class
3. Post Blog 23: more data, marked up data, or any section of your essay you want to work on in class
Have a great Thanksgiving - and see you next week.
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