[EDLING:664] Re: research assistance - educational narratives

[Nat Bartels]

Tamara Warhol wrote:

>Dear Colleagues:
>
>I am researching how TESOL/Bilingual professionals (teachers, researchers &
>administrators) are socialized into the academic discourse of their
>profession.  Currently, I am seeking written narratives about a change in
>speech and/or thought after participation in a class, a graduate program or
>even a professional development meeting.  Using discourse/literary analysis,
>these narratives will then be analyzed for commonalities and differences.
>
>
>
Dear Tamara,

I find this project very interesting and I hope my contribution is not
too late! (I've been rather busy lately.) I'm also not sure if this
story is the kind of thing you are looking for, but I though I'd send it
just in case.

***********************************************************************

The story I wanted to tell was not directly related to teacher education
or development, but rather my experience in writing an article to be
published in a journal. What happened was this:

In the early 1990s I was working for the University of Leipzig and one
of my main responsibilities was teaching essay writing for English
language majors. We did a lot of writing, peer comments, rewriting, more
comments, etc.  and writing comments on  each draft took up A LOT of my
time. So I got to thinking that if the students were getting comments
from each other (during peer feedback activities), perhaps they didn't
need my feedback. So I collected the peer comments on a written feedback
task and compared them with my own comments on the same papers to see if
they made the same points I had made. Unfortunately, although the
students did give really good feedback, they did not seem to be able to
give good feedback on certain structural aspects of writing like
paragraph development and cohesion.

Later I decided to write up these findings and submit it to the Brief
Reports and Summaries section of the TESOL Quarterly. My basic
motivation was that I knew I would be leaving Leipzig soon and I thought
that having published a study might make it easier for me to get a job.

While the TQ (as I later learned those "in the know" call it) did not
accept my study suggested I make certain changes. While willing to make
the changes (after all, I hoped that it would help me get another job),
the requested changes did seem a little strange to me. First, what I
considered the the main point of the study, that (unfortunately) one
could not rely on students to give all the feedback needed, was not
considered at all interesting to the editors of this section, who
suggested cutting this entirely. While I had offered up my findings for
anyone who might find them interesting, the editors felt that I had to
connect my work to some sort of "conceptual framework" and to the work
of others doing similar types of research. This proved to be a little
difficult as I had little access to the professional literature (Leipzig
had been in the eastern part of Germany before the fall of the Berlin
Wall, so the university was still lacking many resources from the West),
and, having no formal education in TESL besides a TESOL Institute summer
course, I had little idea of what kinds of work there was out there or
how to find it. In the end, I found a few articles which seemed to be
about the same thing, summarized a bit what they said and made some kind
of connection to my study. However, for me this had a very artificial
feeling. It was not really what I wanted to say, but rather a hoop I had
to jump through in order to get what I really wanted to say published.

Later I got back my revised manuscript covered with tons of minute
changes which, to me, did not seem to make the manuscript any better.
"For example" became "e.g.", "and" became "&", "English for Academic
Purposes" became "EAP", etc. What seemed really silly is that even
though they wanted all these tiny changes, they wanted me to retype
everything, print it out again and send it to them. There was no
explanation about why they couldn"t just do it themselves if they felt
that they could write it better than I could. Still thinking that this
would get me a better job (I was in an MAT program by that time), I made
all the changes, printed it out and sent it in. It appeared in the TQ a
while later, but it was strage to read it. It no longer sounded like me,
but rather like everything else in the journal. I felt a bit as if my
writing had been homogenized, as if someone had made me into Eliza
Doolittle or Frankenstein. But hey, it was published.

Since then, I have written more things for publication and I have
learned (somewhat) the kinds of homogenized language and organization
that journals want. However, whenever I do write now, I try to slip in
some pieces of my personality into it in sublte ways, seeing if I can
get it by the language censors.

 ********************************************************************************

Anyway, I hope this is of some use. I'd like to be kept abreast of this
project, if possible, as it sounds very interesting and important for
"the field" (cue ominous music...)

Cheers

Nat Bartels

>If you are willing to assist me with this project, I would appreciate it if you
>would send a brief (2-3 paragraphs) narrative about your experience.
>Additionally, if you know someone who also might be willing to participate in
>this project, I would appreciate it if you would forward this email on to
>him/her.
>
>If you have any questions about this project, please contact me at
>warholt at dolphin.upenn.edu.
>
>I thank you in advanace for your assistance.
>
>Sincerely,
>Tamara Warhol
>
>
>