snueenglish

(With this data, I could not find out any knowledge. So I unwillingly focused on the creative language use of the students, grammatical errors and the mean length of the utterance.)   Juhi--Sorry. I've been busy doing your midterms, so I haven't been keeping up with your writing on the final.   If you look at my response to your first two paragraphs, I think you'll see that there IS knowledge emerging here, but it's not necessarily (and not necessarily not) knowledge of English. It's knowledge of the ACTIVITY, the ROLE PLAY, the SCENARIO that is being presented.   It's not necessarily English (because of course we get these things in Korean when we actually go to E-mart) but it's not necessarily NOT English either--because it is pragmatic meaning.   We know from our beloved Russians (Vygotsky, Volosinov, and Bakhtin) that pragmatic meaning (smysl, as opposed to znachenie, theme as opposed to meaning) is the origin of semantic meaning. The meanings that we find in the dictionary (and in the elementary school syllabus) are there becaue people go around using them to mean things--not the other way around.   So one way to look at this is that the teacher is establishing the PRECONDITION for knowledge to emerge, by creating an (imaginary) situation.  This is a perfectly valid way to tackle the exam question; I think if I were using this data that would be the road I would take.   However, the road Juhi suggests is also valid. The only thing I think is really NOT valid is the implied suggestion that the creative use of knowledge is one thing, and knowledge is something entirely different,   At first, I intended to segment this data by the unit, utterances. But when I encountered third assignment, I found out that this data is too small amount to find anything meaningful with a quantitative view.   If you look at my comments on your previous work, Juhi, you'll see that the real unit you want is the EXCHANGE. This is actually NOT my opinion; it's your own opinion, because it is implicit in your segmentation of the data into three sequences, each of which is defined by a particular type of exchange (T-T, T-S, and S-S).   T-T is not an utterance, and neither is T-S or S-S.  T-T is a kind of exchange, T-S is another kind of exchange, and S-S is a third type of exchange. You are absolutely right to divide the data into three segments and to GENERALIZE about the exchanges found in the sequences in this way (although you may find that in your T-T segment and your S-S segment there are a LOT of T-S exchanges).   So I changed my mind to look into this data with a qualitative view. I'm going to segment this data into sequences. Though I'm not sure if I can call the whole of this data episode and three different dimensions of interactions three sequences. If I consider that is right, one sequence will include two exchanges. (For purifying this data, I will not include meta-talks in this analysis which are for leading the dialogs. EX : Now I need a volunteer.) With this qualitative view, I want to look into this data according to three points of view : 1. Grammatical error, 2. Mean length of the utterance, 3. Creative language use.   I think that the distinction between qualitative research and quantitative research is a lot like the distinction between "form" and "meaning". It's much more useful for professors who are teaching ABOUT teaching than for teachers who are actually teaching.   Qualitative decisions are part of every quantitative account. When you count something, you make a judgement about whether or not it is worth counting, and that judgement is always at bottom a judgement about its quality. For example, when you decide what an utterance is, you make a decision about whether or not a change of speaker is possible. That judgement is based on the quality of the utterance.   Quantitative decisions are also part of very qualitative account. When Juhi discusses her data, she will look at the NUMBER of grammatical errors, and the PROPORTION of errors to error free turns, she will use the NUMBER of  words to determine the mean length of the utterance, and she will look at the PROPORTION of creative utterances to fixed phrases. All of these decisions are quantitative in nature, even if she doesn't actually give us the numbers.    I think what IS an important distinction in research is whether your research is concerned with the PROCESS of teaching (the actual 주거니받거니 of classroom dialogue) or with the PRODUCTS (the watermelons we turn out in the form of test scores). THAT'S an important distinction. On airplanes they are always asking you if you want "beef or chicken". We are Koreans! We know that the really key distinction is not between beef and chicken; it's between rice and noodles.   <sequence1-exchange1> T : Umm... (Pointing one group)      Wow~ There are many watermelons.      How much is this big watermelon? Ss :  (smiling) 수박이래... NT : It's 3 thousand \. T : Wow, it's so cheap and big!      Good. I will take it. Ss :  (smiling)   Great! now, is this T-T or T-S? Perhaps we should say it is both. But is it:   a)  T-T>T-S b) T-S>T-T   How can you COUNT and make sure?        <sequence1-exchange2> T : How much is this pencil? NT : Umm... This is a little bit expensive.       Because (Pointing the yellow part of the pencil) this is gold. Ss :  (smiling) T : So how much is it? NT : It's one million \. T : Oh~ that's too expensive.      I think I should buy something else.   What do you think? Is it T-T or T-S? Perhaps once again we should say it is both. But is it:   a)  T-T>T-S b) T-S>T-T   How can you COUNT and make sure?      This T-T interaction is a modeling between teachers for the students. Therefore there is no grammatical error. Of course there is no newly learned or newly used thing, creative language use, because this teachers' dialog will be the standard for pointing out the students newly learned or used thing. I disagree with this. We talked about the word "product". It seems to me this is a key part of the data, and it is probably new for a LOT of people in the room. The evidence is that the FT is not very well prepared for the idea, actually; he doesn't manage to carry it off very well. The mean length of the two teachers' utterance is 3.5 words per each utterance. (There were 18 utterances and the total number of words were 63.) That doesn't seem related to your research question, Juhi! On the other hand, the number of SILENT turns that children take in this data seems very important in your characterization of the sequence as a whole. There was an utterance 7 words long (Show me!) but there were many one-word utterances : expressions like "Umm", "Wow", "Oh", "Good". (Teachers or students?)   We don't want to count things just for the sake of counting. We want to count things that matter, things that count! If we are interested in the ability of teachers to use complex sentences, we might want to calculate their MLU (Mean Length of Utterance). But we're not interested in that at all, except insofar as the teachers use complex WORDS and are actually UNDERSTOOD by the children.   So what DO we want to count? Well, I think it is MIGHT be useful to count the number of T-T turns and compare it with the number of T-S turns (careful!  A lot of the S turns are SILENT turns). <sequence2-exchange1> T : May I help you? Min-kyu : How much are these bananas? T :  They are 5000 \. Min-kyu : Oh~ That's too expensive. <sequence2-exchange2>                Where are the glasses? T : Oh~ Follow me. (Pointing a student's glasses)        This one is cheap.        This is made in China. Min-kyu : Oh~ made in China?                 I will not buy it. Ss :  (smiling) T : This one is Gucci. (Pointing another student's glasses) Min-kyu : Oh~ How much is it? T : It's 100.000 \. Min-kyu  : Oh~ That's too expensive.                  I don't want to buy it.   In this T-S interaction, there are a lot of grammatical errors form the teacher and the student, too.   Good! What does this suggest about the efficacy of the model?   The errors are about the noun that should be used as a plural noun, for example glasses. When I decided to compare the grammar between the teacher and the students, I supposed there will be no teacher's grammatical error but it was not true. The teacher is even worse in that she starts the grammatical errors at first. (I feel ashamed of it.)   Our aim is NEITHER to blush NOR to boast, but to UNDERSTAND.   Right here Juhi has understood something very important: there are some quite basic conceptual structures (like plurals and articles) that we are NOT getting right, in our rush to get more advanced structures (e.g. abstract nouns) right. But we CANNOT really understand the way that abstract nouns work in English unless we understand the way concrete objects work first.   Why do we say "Marriage is a market"? Why does "marriage" have no article while "market" has one? The reason is that one noun acts like a RELATIONSHIP (almost like a pair of glasses or a pair of trousers) and the other acts like an object.    Actually the student got it right at first as we can see form the sentence "Where are the glasses?". After the teacher used it wrong, the student keeps considering the word glasses as a singular noun. Grammatical errors from both the teacher and the student are 4 times. Therefore, the total of the grammatical errors is 8 times.   Good! But if you want to COMPARE the errors between sequences (T-T errors with T-S errors with S-S errors) then we cannot simply count. We have to look at the PROPORTION of errors.   Error-free turns/Total turns in the sequence = percentage of correct turns in the sequence   OR   Error-containing turns/Total turns in the sequence = percentage of incorrect turns in the sequence    The mean length of the utterance between Teacher and Student showed a slight difference. The teacher's mean was 3.75 and the student's mean was 3.08. (The teacher said 30 words during 8 utterances and the students said 37 words during 12 utterances).   Notice that this means that the teachers took slightly LONGER turns in T-S than in T-T. Can you look at the transcripts and tell me why? THAT might make the work of calculating the MLU of the teacher worthwhile, since it might tell you SOMETHING about how knowledge is emerging. For example, if the T is using longer utterances in response to S utterances, then this is something to do with emergent knowledge. Right?    In this second sequence, we can see that the student uses his own expressions that were not used from the first sequence. There are two newly used expressions : "Where are the glasses?" and "I don't want to buy it". <sequence3-exchange1> Dong-hwan : May I help you? Joon-hyung : How much is this goldfish? (touching one student) Ss :  (smiling) Dong-hwan : Umm... It's 500 ￦. Ss :  (smiling) 너 500원이야. Joon-hyung : Oh~ it's cheap. I'll buy it. <sequence3-exchange2> Ss : Nintendo~ Joon-hyung : How much is the Nintendo? Dong-hwan : Umm... It's 200,000 ￦. Joon-hyung : Oh, that's too expensive. Dong-hwan : I'll discount it for you. 150,000 ￦. Ss :  (smiling) Joon-hyung : Wow~ I'll take it.   In this third sequence, there is one grammatical error form Joon-hyung. It is "How much is the Nintendo?". Nintendo is not a common noun but a proper noun so we cannot put the article 'the' in front of Nintendo.   Remember we saw that preposition use depends NOT on semantic meaning but on pragmatic meaning. For Jisu, Daegu is a hometown. For Minkyeong, it is a point on a map. Jisu lives IN Daegu, but Minkyeong just stops AT Daegu on her way to Busan.   The same thing is true here. For Mario, Nintendo is a name. But for Joonhyung, it's an object, a product that he wants to buy. Remember, "hot dog" and "hamburger" and "Coke" and "Kleenex" were all names too.   I said earlier that SEMANTIC meaning has its origin in pragmatic meanings. Here we see a concrete example!      That is the only error in this third sequence. The mean length of two students' utterance was 3. (The total utterances were 16 and the total words were 48.) There are three newly used expressions in this sequence. "너 500원이야", "I'll buy it." and "I'll discount it for you.". However the first one is not English but Korean which is the response of this hilarious situation but which we do not want ultimately. The second one is said for the first time by Joon-hyung but it is a kind of an uptaking from Min-kyu's utterance "I don't want to buy it." The third one is purely newly used expression‎ and this could be the evidence of the  creative language use.   But the test question asks for evidence that new knowledge EMERGES from old knowledge. Isn't this a PERFECT example?