Goal for today, June 10

I've been working since before 7:00 this morning on tabulating new and consolidated words and expressions in my chronicle about the worst day in my life. My chart is getting longer and I made the font smaller so it wouldn't take up so much space in the article. I'd like to finish tabulations for my chronicle today and then as my reward go back and re-read the other sections from the beginning to unify and edit them. 

 Progress Report for June 7, 8, and 9

My article is now well over 7000 words long and I haven't even finished analyzing the writing-to-learn data. I spent lots of words on the Intro, Review of Lit, Methods, and answering the first two research questions, which I didn't even motivate enough in my Intro and Review of the Lit. 

Today, I made charts of new words and expressions I learned through writing and how I learned them and whether they were new to me or consolidation of previous or partial learning. I completed only 2 of the 6 major genres though and still have to analyze the shorter informal timed writing too.  When I was tabulating the 2 genres, I took a break to read through the first part of the document to try to unify it a bit, but wound up adding even more words. 

Tomorrow I'd like to do the same: tabulations for the chronicle which was my longest document which had the most changed and new features. If I finish that, which will be arduous, I can reward myself by going back to the second half of the prose document and unifying and editing it. 

 Assessment of Goals for June 4

I finished a tentative outline and got into an Intro/Review of the Lit--about 700 words.  But over the weekend, I finished very rough drafts of the both the Intro/Review of the Lit and part of the Methodology-more than 2800 words. My word count will slow down now as I refine the methodology and actually do the data analyses. I'm glad I got some momentum! 

My goals for Monday, June 7 are to analyze my data and get a draft of part of an answer to the first of four research questions. I might also go back to complete the Methodology.

 Assessment of Goals for June 3 

I decided to tune into my fatigue caused by taking notes on theory and stop after taking notes one more heavy article. I was on the fourth page of theory notes for only a 20-page manuscript for a journal audience mainly of foreign language teacher-researchers.  I don't want to overwhelm them or myself.  I decided my remaining theory notes would be related to the narrative and data of my Spanish journalistic writing. 

Instead I started making an outline of the content of my article and tentatively articulated 4 research questions. Switching to that task energized me and gave me some momentum.  My goals for tomorrow are to finish the outline and maybe start the Introduction/Review of the Literature. 

 

Assessment of Goals for June 2 and Goals for June 3: 

I did hear from my research partner who accepted some of my changes and questioned others. I made a few more changes and sent the ms. back to her to read over and send to the editors. 

I took notes on theories of writing to learn language from a new book on the subject. I covered the first two chapters of a 17 chapter book, which are among the most important chapters because they are overviews, and noted how I might use the theory or aspect of it in my article. 

Goals for Thursday, June 3: To do the same on at least 2 more chapters from the book. 

Assessment of June 1 and Goals for June 2.  

I read through the article again, made minor changes to cut unnecessary words, and posted queries for my co-author and sent them to her last night.  I discovered a possible logical problem at a higher level and noted it. 

Unless I hear from her this morning, I will work on my Writing to Learn Spanish project, but taking notes on the theoretical and empirical readings I need to frame the article. 

                     

                                                       Summer 2021 Dissertation Camp Blog

Welcome to 2021 Dissertation Camp.  I'm looking forward to meeting you.  I'm Carol Severino, a Rhetoric professor and Director of the Writing Center for many years.  I love this Camp not only because I get a chance to learn about scholars and writers like yourselves, but because I also can get some work done on my research projects!  This year I first need to do a formatting check on an article I co-wrote with my dissertation advisee based on some of her dissertation data. The article was just accepted for publication (Hooray!), and this is one of the last steps.  

But on Wednesday I should be ready to launch into another project.  Last semester when I was on research leave, I took an undergraduate course called Journalistic Writing in Spanish and kept a 15,000- words learning journal. We wrote a lot inside and outside of class; we learned and wrote in all the genres: news stories, interviews, profiles, chronicles, reportage, editorials, columns, and blogs. Inside class we did a practice chronicle and a column, but we also wrote about the assigned readings, all of which were about narccotrafficking, crime, and violence in Latin America.  I want to analyse the generation and formulation stages (translating ideas into Spanish words, often through English) to see how what linguists call "comprehensive output" contributes to learning Spanish language.  I'm making charts and tables for the data and will use my journal for context. My tentative audience is the midwest regional journal of an organization for foreign language teachers.  I had queried the editor who said she would welcome first-person narratives that have pedagogical implications for language teachers.