Independent studies week 5

Dear students,

Below again the requirements for your research topic for this Friday.

If you do a good job now, I'll guarantee you that you'll benefit from it later this term.


For this Friday hand in:

1. A narrowed down topic. e.g., Thai students' knowledge of the English holidays: Easter and Christmas. Or, motivation of Thai students of English, why don't they want to learn? or, Present perfect and past simple: problematic grammatical features for Thai students.

2. Explain your topic in detail. Tell me everything YOU know about it and what your sources say about it. What are you going to do? How are you going to do that? What are you going to discuss. Make it a detailed discussion of your topic

3. Describe/ summarize 3 sources: 2 internet sources and 1 library source. Take time to do this as you'll benefit from it later.


Hand it in on Friday the 4th of July before 15:00. Hand in a printed version, 12. times new roman, double line spacing. Approximately 500-700 words +- 10%


How to quickly read an article:

To method I gave you today in class:

1. Read the titles and the subtitles of each paragraph / chapter.
What is the article about? What do you think?

2. Read the first line of each paragraph/ chapter?
What is the article about? What kind of information does it give you?

3. Read the abstract and the conclusion.
Ask yourself: is the article relevant to my topic or not.

4. Read the full article with the guide below.


Reading techniques for reading a full article:

The following information comes from: http://www.johnsesl.com/templates/reading/strategies.php accessed on 16/06/2008

How to read an article:

Reading Strategies
The reading strategies offered on this page will help you become a better reader. These strategies will work both in and out of the classroom, but are particularly useful in the classroom. If you learn and use the reading strategies on this page you will improve both your reading comprehension and test scores.

Strategy 1: Ignore words that are unimportant.
When reading, you may often come upon a word or phrase that you don't understand. Your first impulse may be to look up the word in your dictionary. Before resorting to a dictionary, though, you should first determine whether the word you don't know is important. If it isn't, then ignore it. Consider the following sentence.
The farvenugen truck was parked in front of the house.
What does the word farvennugen mean? You probably don't know. Right? Now ask yourself, Is the word farvennugen important in understanding the sentence? No, not really. We can tell that farvennugen is being used as an adjective, but it isn't important to the meaning of the sentence. The point of the sentence is where the truck was parked, not what kind of truck it is, so, we can ignore that word and still understand the sentence.

Strategy 2: Use the context to guess the meaning.
If you follow Strategy 1, and you determine that the word you don't know IS important, then before using a dictionary, try to guess the meaning of the word from the context. Context refers to the words and phrases surrounding the word that you don't understand. Once you think you have guessed the correct meaning, then look up the word in your dictionary to insure you have made a correct guess. Then practice using the word in different contexts. This will help you increase your understanding of the word, which in turn will help you increase your vocabulary.
Being able to guess the meaning of words from their context is a skill that is particularly helpful when you come across idioms. For example, in the sentence
Jimmy lost track of time and was late for class,
the phrase lost track of time is an idiom that means to forget about the time. If you didn't know the meaning of this idiom and you looked up each word in the
dictionary, you still would not understand the sentence.

Strategy 3: Scan for specific information.
Scanning is a skill that requires that you read quickly while looking for specific information. To scan a reading text, you should start at the top of the page and then move your eyes quickly toward the bottom. Generally, scanning is a technique that is helpful when you are looking for the answer to a known question. This is especially helpful when taking a test.

Strategy 4: Skim for general information.
Like scanning, skimming requires you to read quickly. When you skim a text, though, you are not looking for specific information, but rather, you are trying to get the main idea or point of the text you are reading. When skimming a reading selection, start with the title of the text, then read the topic sentence of each paragraph. Skimming is a skill that is especially suited for doing research. By skimming a few pages of a reference book or novel, you can generally tell if the book or novel will be useful for your research.

Strategy 5: Read in units or chunks of words.
When we see sentences written on paper, we see words that are separated by spaces. What we hear when we speak, though, are not words but sounds. Words are separated by spaces on paper for convenience. Reading is similar to speaking because people who are proficient readers read sentences in units of words rather than one word at a time. This skill takes practice, but if mastered is well worth the effort.

Independent Studies BA 4/1 4/2 and Inter 4

Brainstorm Subjects of Interest

As we already brainstormed on several topics in class it’s time to have a closer look at your topic. Don’t think too long about your topic. Make sure you’re interested in the topic. You have to work on it for 14 weeks.

A couple of things I mentioned in class:

When choosing a topic make sure:

- Your topic is related to English language à learning, teaching

- Your topic is interesting for you and others

- Your topic is testable: That means you have to be able to do a small experiment in class. If you doubt whether your topic is testable or not, please come and see me. I can help you with that.

- Your topic is big enough but not too big. Remember you have only 14 weeks. Quantity is not everything, quality is.

- That there is enough information on the net

- Your topic is not something you don’t know anything about: Don’t reinvent the wheel. There is a lot of information on the web. Try to connect your knowledge and interests with the information available.

- You don’t copy a research that’s already been done in Thai. Don’t translate existing research

Maybe most important to mention: If you get stuck at any moment, post a question on this site or come and see me in my office.


The next thing you’re going to do is think about your topic. Ouch. Yes you have to start thinking about what you want to know.
Ask yourself the following questions:

Why am I interested in this topic?

What do I already know about this topic?

What do I want to know about this topic?

What can I learn from this topic?

What do I want others to learn from this topic?

Write down the answers to all these questions in a small report and hand it in on Friday the 27th of June before 12:00.

Opening post

This blog tries to stimulate to communication between teacher and student.

I will start a topic for each of the courses that I'm teaching this semester and students can ask questions or answer each others questions by commenting on the post.

I will try to post new information for the courses regularly. Before commenting please read the previous posts, maybe someone already answered your question.

Please do keep in mind that this blog serves an educational purpose. If you're not enrolled in one of the courses please don't post comments.

Any reactions, suggestions, or general questions can be posted as comments to this opening post.


Freek Olaf