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Research into Practice: a model for sustainable development

Research into Practice: a model for sustainable development . Suganthi John & Els Van Geyte The University of Birmingham. Purpose. To share our experience of how we brought research and practice together on a project to redevelop thesis writing materials for international students. Outline.

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Research into Practice: a model for sustainable development

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  1. Research into Practice: a model for sustainable development Suganthi John & Els Van Geyte The University of Birmingham

  2. Purpose • To share our experience of how we brought research and practice together on a project to redevelop thesis writing materials for international students.

  3. Outline • Two sections to our paper: • The background, aims and description of our project • Looking at some examples from our project of how we brought research and practice together

  4. Background • The needs of current students & their research areas • Increased numbers and larger number of research areas • Interdisciplinary nature of research • Empirical vs non-empirical research writing

  5. Our task • To redevelop our materials to cover a wider range of disciplines • To ensure that both empirical and non-empirical research types were covered in our course

  6. What research we did: • Looking at e-theses in a number of fields in the humanities and social sciences • Books on academic writing • Hamp-Lyons & Heasley (2006) • Paltridge and Starfield (2007) • Swales & Feak (2008) • Bitchener (2010) • Research on academic discourse and the teaching of academic writing • Flowerdew (2002) • Hyland (2009) • Journal articles

  7. Research into Practice: a model for sustainable writing.Practical examples

  8. empirical Introduction Literature review  Methodology  Results  Discussion  Conclusion non-empirical sections less distinguishable

  9. Reasoning for adding a task: • signposting for course • awareness of types of research • reflection: • type of thesis / suitable organisation

  10. Research: • http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/ • Abstracts • NER examples on hand-out • Social Sciences/ Centre for Russian and East European Studies • Arts and Law/ Music

  11. New task Recognising empirical and non-empirical research The table below provides you with examples of empirical (ER) and non-empirical research (NER). Can you identify which is which?

  12. See hand-out for example:

  13. Methods Section Before: Auditory comprehension of English by monolingual and bilingual preschool children Method 1 … 2 … Task: Why do you think the author chose to order the elements in this way?

  14. Issues: • Education/ English • Task does not engage students enough • Task is not interactive enough

  15. Research: • Sociology Journal: • http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/1/1.html

  16. Methods Section After: Parenting in Post-Divorce Estonian Families: A Qualitative Study Task 1 The following sections are not in the order that they appeared in the methods section in an article from a sociology journal. Can you order them?

  17. Results Section Before: Explanation: Reporting/Stating results [Move 2] Thirdly, but as an adversative conjunction was also used in the Japanese students’ texts. The frequency of the adversative conjunctions ‘but’ was 33.08%. Commenting on the results/generalising/conclusions [Move 4] As mentioned above, the frequency of additive conjunctions was 27.76%, therefore, the frequency of adversative conjunctions in the texts is almost equivalent to that of the additive conjunction.

  18. Issues: • Education • Another ER example • ‘move’: technical term

  19. Research: • ER example replaced with NER (Arts/English) • http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/568/1/Thesis_EF.pdf • ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ replaced with ‘stages’ and ‘steps’ • Swales, J., and Feak, B., Academic Writing for Graduate Students, University of Michigan Press, 2004

  20. Results Section After: Explanation (NER example) Reporting/Stating results (step b) Stanschil forlong 1334 (NRO, Furtho X/16), Stamhill furlong 1505 (NRO, YZ7809) (stān, hyll, furlang) ‘furlong on or near the stony hill’; Commenting on the results/generalising/conclusions (step e) this name seems to display a corrupt form of the element stān (stam-) and probably refers to land near a quarry, cf. Stanthills, close to an old quarry in Weedon Lois.

  21. Conclusions 1. Our definition of ‘sustainability’: • Ensuring that the current state of knowledge is reflected in our materials • Ensuring that our students are able to use this knowledge to sustain the development of their own writing Independence => Sustainability

  22. 2. Some conflict: ‘old’ theory vs. thesis examples • Need new theory? Based on examples/academic literature/ both? • Need to check more examples? -----  Revision

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