Rough Draft- Discourse Analysis- Adult Learners Transcript...

Discourse analysis by definition relates to language as a whole.  Discourse is the overall performance of language.   It relates to communication of thought by words, talk and conversation.  Its communication connected to culture and identity.  Discourse analysis is also the way that language is used to create meaning.  When language is broken into parts patterns can then be identified.  After this occurs relationships between the parts can also begin to be examined.  Discourse is something that one doesn’t realize occurs around them constantly.  The simple act of talking to family, friends, and even going to class involves conversation.  In the adult learners transcript the dynamics of the language used changed immensely over the course of the transcript.  The main focus of my paper will relate to the subjects feelings toward technology specifically computers and how it was never considered that they could be used for education purposes.  The researcher in this transcript is able to change the entire conversation by having the subject become more comfortable with researcher.

            The lens that I found to be most evident was language.  The word choices between the researcher and the subject were crucial.  The researcher started with a straight forward question and I could tell that the subject was not quite comfortable.  The subject responds to the question with a lot of hesitation.  The level of uncertainty was evident from this point and there seemed to be a slight awkwardness.  The subject has now said that they never thought that computers could be used in the education setting.  It wasn’t that she didn’t know that computers could be used but never considered them for anything other than typing.  In relation to the math program that the subject had used, she admitted that she didn’t trust computers.  She was perfectly content with solving equations on her own and using a computer wasn’t necessary.  She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the computer could analyze and represent what she wanted it to represent. 

            At this point of the transcript was when the researcher wanted the subject to begin to recall personal memories in regards to the computer.  This was when the subject admitted that she didn’t consider that computers could relate to education.  She didn’t think that it was necessary.  This was when the dynamics of the language between the researcher and the subject began to change.  The questions and the responses went back and forth a lot more and the subject became more comfortable with the researcher.  The subject relayed to the researcher that the math program wasn’t essential to her because it was on the computer and she saw it as difficult.  The end of excerpt one concluded with the researcher confirming and reinforcing all of the subjects’ feelings towards computers.

            Excerpt two began with the researcher giving positive reinforcement to the subject by saying what she had previously said was interesting and taking a genuine interest in what the subject has to say.  The conversation began to change.  As the subject became more comfortable with the researcher the answers that she gave became longer.  The subject now became more expressive and in detail with memories and personal accounts.  There was less hesitation but the subject was still clinging to her fears of computers.  She began to talk about her fears when she was typing.  What really freaked her put was if she typed something and then it disappeared.  She didn’t know what to do and then discovered the undo button.  These little things that she started to discover allowed her to become less fearful.  The researcher realized that the subject had now found a new sense of assurance.  This is when you could tell that the fear that the subject had was diminishing.  She began to recall the things that she learned in word.  These were things that she taught herself.  She realized that if she needed help all she had to do was ask for it.  The end of the transcript yielded results that I didn’t expect.  The subject began to realize that her fear was irrational.  Computers had been around for awhile and with the creation of the Internet any questions that one had about anything really could be looked up with a click of a button. 

            The language use between the researcher and the subject went back and forth a lot.  The researcher was the one that was in the most control in the beginning and in middle of the transcript.  The subject seemed unsure and had several hesitations.  As the interview progressed the subject was able to open up.  I think that this was because the subject became more comfortable with the researcher.  It can also be in part because the subject may have realized that her fear of the computers was something that wasn’t as scary as it needed to be.  There was a lot that she taught herself partly because she needed to and didn’t even realize it. 

            Another lens that comes in to play is micro perspective. The transcript was done in the style of an interview so there was known face to face interaction.  The interaction between the researcher and the subject grew and developed throughout the course of the interview. 

            In reading through the Discourse Analysis in Classrooms book I found that the essay from chapter three that related the most to the adult learner’s transcript was An Interactional Sociolinguistic Perspective on an Instructional Conversation: Talking Opportunities for literacy into being by Mandy Smith.  The entire transcript was based on the interaction between the researcher and the subject building throughout the transcript.  In her essay Smith defines three principals.  There were two out of the three that I found could be applied to the adult learners’ transcript.  The first principal was that based around reactions between two or more people.  She stated that how people act and react to each other tells how their specific interactions construct what they are doing, what it means, and who they are.  From the beginning you could tell that the researcher was the one who held the power.  The researcher was the one who asked the questions and the subject answered them almost painfully in the beginning.  It took awhile for the connection to form between the two.  With time throughout the transcript I could see that the language use had changed and the comfort level became a lot higher.  The responses went from pure hesitation and uncertainty to more complex and concrete responses.  The subject was able to address her fear of computers and come across the notion that computers could be used for literacy purposes and that her fear was somewhat irrational.  I think that she came to his realization in part due to the questions that the researcher asked.  This provoked her to think and to search her mind.

            The second principal from Smiths essay that I applied to the adult learners’ transcript was the idea that relationships are formed through connections that are made.  The relationship between the researcher and the subject changed throughout the transcript.  The researcher was the one who was most dominant and the subject was more passive.  As the questions became more in depth the researcher was able to ease the subject into addressing her fears of the computer.  They are able to relate to each other and make connections at certain points that form the grounds of familiarity.  When the subject begins to feel comfortable with the researcher is when she really opens up.  The researcher even says at some points that some of the things she said are interesting and provides numerous points of positive reinforcement which allows the subject to open up even more.

            Overall I found the transcript to be quite interesting.  Now knowing what discourse analysis was helpful in examining the piece.  Paying attention to the linguistics was powerful because I now could piece together what was going on in terms of the interaction between the researcher and the subject.  The interaction and the relationship between the two gradually built itself up.  The language was essential to pay attention to.  The fact that in the beginning there was so much hesitation was a complete turnaround from what happened in the end.  The connections were made throughout the transcript and these connections kept building up on each other which allowed a relationship to form!

Discourse Analysis Project....

The transcript that I picked was sample transcript was the transcript number one about adult learners.  A possible research question that I would address is how does advanced technology affect adults learning process who have may not been exposed to new technology.

My analysis will show how opportunities for higher learning to take place.  The lens that I choose to apply to the transcript is language.  There a lot of points that I noticed where language had an influence on the transcript.  To start the interview off it was very casual. Ch who was the interviewer asked opinion based questions that M who was the subject could answer easily.  The answer that M gave were feelings about this or that and recalling memories.  What I thought was interesting was when they began discussing the use of the computer.  M began to describe her fears in relation to the computer.  She didn't think she could ever use the computer for math.  She didn't trust the technology and didn't believe that it could analyze the information the way  that she could.  Why use the computer program to do math if she could do it on her own just fine.  M also continued to say she didn't relate the computer to education, and that she didn't think that it was necesary.  As the transcript progressed the dynamics of the language changed immensely.  M now became the one who was developing longer answers as opposed to before when she just gave short phrases.  Her answers were more in detail and I think it was because she has become more comfortable.  When M begins to talk about how her life changed when she first bought a computer is when the emotion of the piece really came in.  She was able to discuss how she got exposed to useage of the computer and how slowly she became more advanced and more comfortable with it.  The conclusion of the article was based on M's realization that now if she did have questions about computers she would ask someone or she would read about it.  She has now realized that her fear of computers doesnt have to occur anymore because she knows a lot more then she thought and she now knows how computers can be applied to education.

The transcript realtes to Mandy Smith's research essay because the interviewer asked the subject to recall personal accounts and memories which promotes new opportunites for both parties to learn.

Video for Discourse Analysis..

ENG 1620: Video

Revised Research Question.....

The focus of my research paper is as follows:

What value is placed on literacy education in the home setting?

I am going to base my research using interviews and oral history.  I will be interviewing parents of the children that I babysit for and see what value they place on education in the home setting .  For the interview portion I have formulated some questions that I would like to ask them in order to get more information and relate it to my central focus.

Questions I would like to ask: 

#1-  How was education percieved for them when they were growing up?
        - I want to know what a typical day for them was when they came home from school.  Did they start their homework right away?  What would they do if they had trouble with something?  Who would they go to for help?

#2-  Did their parents show interest in their education? Were they encouraged?
        - I want to know what role and what influence their parents had on how they percived and learned literacy.

#3-  What practices have they used in regards to literacy and homework with their own children?
        - Based on the experiences they had growing up, do they use the same practices or are they different?

#4-   Is their anything that they would do different from how they were brought up in regards to learning literacy?  Or would they teach their children the same way?
       -  What is worth keeping to teach your children? What is worth changing?

Jessica Stern's Methodology......

In the excerpt of introduction and chapter one of Jessica Stern's Denial, I learned a great deal about her. Her job was to visit dangerous places and get into the minds of terrorists.  This is something that most people would fear but it was something that Jessica Stern took great pride and enjoyment in.
When she was 15 she and her sister were raped by who she assumed was a stranger.  This event in her life always left her with a sense of being incomplete.  When she got older she got diagnosed as having post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the rape.  At that point she realized that she didn't want to live in the past anymore.  She didn't want to allow that fear control how she lived her life now.  She made it her mission to understand the deeper motivations of those who hurt others- including the man that had hurt her and her younger sister that October day in 1973. The case that had been filed involving Jessica and her sister had been closed since 1974 as a result of her father telling police that a mere 4 months later "that he believes that the girls forgot the event". In 2006 she went to the police in Concord to view the file.  The Lieutenant that opened the case said that he would need the help of Jessica to recall the details of that night. This presents the methodology that was used by Jessica Stern.  She decided to go through her mind and ask herself logical questions that she would ask a terrorist and apply them to her own terrorist- the man that raped her and her sister. By opening and viewing the police report Jessica was hoping to connect fact with feeling- something that she seemed to be lacking.  She looked through the file and found a handwritten list that she wrote back in 1973.  The police wanted her to write down all that had happened that night event by event.  She had only written a few words down for each thing that took place.  When she was sitting down in 2006 looking at the file she beagn to piece together these smaller things from paper and recall them vividly in her mind.  This was at sometimes painful for her to recall but as she went down the list everything became a little less hazy. 

All of the points that I mentioned above directly relate to oral history.  They aply to oral hisory because Jessica had to engage her mind by asking herself questions to provoke her memory of what had happened in the past.  What she really wanted to realize was what the reason why she was the way that she was to this day.  It was a result of her being raped and having to deal with the stress from that. It was something that damaged her.  She went on afterwards to live a successful life but it was something that she never forgot. It also illustrates the methodology of oral history because she wanted to understand the events and the experiences of her past within her living memory.  If she is able to understand what happened to her in the past (being that she was so young) she could apply it to how she is as an adult and why certain things phase her and others dont.  She mentioned in the beginning that she was scared of being in crowded places with a lot of people but that going to foreign countries and seeing dangerous terrorists didnt make her fearful.  By reopening that day that forever changed her life Jessica was able to asses why she is the way she is today.  Another methodology that Stern used in a sense is autobiography because she was retelling in her mind the events that happened when she was younger.

The limitations of Evans's chapter on autobiography apply to Jessica Sterns book because Evans stated that the object of an autobiography is that it needs to make you feel emphatic towards the subject that you are reading about instead of focusing soley on the facts. An autobiography needs to make you feel the emotion while you are reading it.  When I was reading it there were so many parts that were hard to read.  It was so detailed and in some parts I felt absolutely discusted.  As a women it was even harder to take because it made me realize that this was an everyday event that could happen to any women. It made me really feel for her even though she was an adult recalling this story.  It made me want to read the rest of the book.

Research questions (expanded version)

 The following questions are those that I would like to address in my research to apply to my final paper 

• What value is placed on literacy education? What factors are going to be assessed when asking this question?
• I really would like to know how important education is perceived in the home setting.  What factors contribute to it? Are parents that have a higher level of education more prone to making sure that their children do well and succeed in school? Does ethnicity and culture play a part as well? 

• If a high value is placed on education, what roles do outsiders (parents, siblings, and other family members) play on how a child learns?

• In my experiences I have seen that when a child sees learning as important and something that is truly influential then that carries through to how they conduct themselves in the school setting.  When a child sees that, then the world is theres for the taking.  Their is no challenge that is out of reach. If education is seen as essential is opens the doors to numerous opportunities.  I have also seen first hand that sibling interaction impacts the literacy process. If ones older brother or sister sees learning, reading and writing as "uncool" then the child is more likely to develop the same mindset. I would like to research the specifics of the roles that parents play in their children's educational lives.   

• When a parent gets involved in their child's education, how much involvement is to much?
• Is there a boundary that parents shouldn't cross? When do they become to controlling? I have seen first hand parents that will physically do a project for their child so that it looks perfect. I would rather see a child try their hardest and do their best then have them hand in a project or a paper that clearly wasn't done by themselves.  What are the extremes that parents will go to?

• What are the positives and negatives of these influences?
• What kind of impact does this have on the children? Are they being taught that they can never do anything for themselves and everything have to be perfect? Or on the other hand are they being taught to be themselves, make mistakes here and there and learn from their experiences?

All of these questions are what I would like to touch on in my research and I can't wait to begin!


                  

Research Topic and chosen research methods....

 Being that I am an early childhood education major I wanted to research something that was relevant to education.The topic that I am interested in researching is how literacy education is perceived in the home setting. I will focus primarily on the elementary education level.  Some questions that would ask include:

1. What value in the home is placed on literary education?
2. If high value is placed on education, what roles do outsiders (parents, siblings, other family members) play on how a child learns?
3. How much involvement is to much?
4. What are the positives and the negatives of the involvement?

I also want to include personal accounts into my research.  My mom was a kindergarten teacher and education was always emphasized highly in my home.  The rule was school, school, school no matter what and to always try your best!  From an early age even before I started formal school my mom would work with me to practice reading and writing.  She always read me a book before bed and would help me practice small writing tasks like writing my name.  I had a shelf in my room that I called my"library". It was filled from floor to ceiling with books. Some were books that were exactly right for my age ( I was 3 or 4) and then some were chapter books which were way above me but it gave me excitement that one day I would be reading those books!  Since my mom was a teacher I always knew that education was a huge deal and always placed high value on it.  When school let out for the summer my learning didn't end. I remember my mom giving me and my sister extra work to "keep our minds sharp", and then I would also have summer reading to do.  The teacher that we would have in the fall would send home a list of authors.  We had to pick a book from the list, read it and then write a report or do a project of some sort in September. I would read the entire list just because I had a love of reading. That was something that my mom instilled in  me- that learning was great and something that I always will value.

However what happens to a child when education isn't seen as important? What happens to them? How does it impact their learning skills and how will that effect their future?

The methods that I am interested in using for this research are oral history, ethnographic research, and interviews.

With oral history I would examine social and cultural aspects and how they influence literacy education. Do certain cultures place a higher value on literacy then others? What does the society of that culture say about literacy skills? How does society impact it directly?

Ethnographic research also ties into cultural and social practices as well. I can also tie personal accounts, narritives and experiences into this method.

Interviews is something that I can easily apply to this topic. I would interview the parents of the children that I babysit for and get their opinions on literacy education.  I could also do observations and see how they handle their children with learning.  Some parents are more hands on then others.  I know that there are several reasons for this and I would like to examine them in my research.