Final Exam (Q1~4)

[이민경]

Dear Professor,

Thank you for your critical but helpful comments. It takes a long time for me to sit and read your comments and finally understand what can be improved, but I got around to doing it. (I hope. *^^*)

Now I've my other final (for 연구방법) to worry about. I haven't started writing my pilot study at all so should spend the whole coming weekned on it.

We told you that our 연구방법 class next Monday will start at 5:30 and we won't be able to come to talk to you. It's a shame that I won't be able to come to our last 언어기능 class next Thursday either because of our school field trip (수련회) from the 10th to 12th. Bummer! Maybe I will go see you in the office (to pick your brain) next Tuesday (9th) or the following Monday (15th). Is it okay?

I will try my best (again) to keep awake during your lesson on Thursday because it will be the last for me. :)

Minkyung

(이민경)final exam.hwp

Final Exam                                      - M20081412 이민경

1. Introduction: Present the research question and the context of the data. Outline your approach. What units will you use? What theoretical constructs will you use? How will you operationalize your construct?

★ My data: 4th Grade English Class Transcript            

 ① Date: Friday, April 10th, 2009

 ② Situation: Discretionary English Class - What we can see in different seasons

 ③ Characters: 29 4th grade students (12 boys, 17 girls)

④ Duration: about 28 minutes

T: Now, let's talk about spring.

   What do you see in spring?

   지원? Please.

S1: Flower.

T: Flowers. Flowers. You see flowers.

   And what else? 희정?

S2: Butterfly.

T: Butterflies. Butterflies.

   One more? 현미?

S3: 너.

T: 현미?

S4: Bee.

T: Yeah. You see bees.

   OK. So let's say "I see flowers."

Some Ss: I see...

T: Okay, everybody, "I see flowers."

Ss: I see flowers.

T: Butterflies.

Ss: I see butterflies.

T: And... bees.

Ss: I see bees.

T: I see bees.

S5: Bird.

T: Birds. Some birds.

  In this thesis, I will find evidence of intra-mental knowledge (abstraction and concreteness) emerging from the use of inter-mental skills (listening, uptaking, speaking) by examining the utterances and the exchange in the data. The data itself is from a discretionary English class taught by a regular subject teacher to fourth graders, and the excerpt is mainly about things we can see in spring. Each utterance will be examined in relation to its previous utterances to find S-T uptake, T-S uptake, or S-S uptake. Words that are taken from English to English, from English to Korean, from Korean to English, and from Korean to Korean will be all considered uptake because all of these show the interaction between the speakers. Then I will argue that the ability to uptake previous utterances helps the shift from inter-mental skills (listening, uptaking, speaking) to the emergence of intra-mental knowledge (abstraction and concreteness).

2. Theoretical Background: Present the theoretical constructs of your study. Give a definition of each construct. Cite at least one of the articles in our book. Then give an example from your data.

  (1) Uptake

  Uptake is S-T, T-S, S-S repetition. Uptake is a kind of speech activity and the tendency of one speaker to take up an idea (Nystrand, 1997) or even a word or grammatical pattern (Slimani, 1992) from another speaker. Uptake transforms what was a comment into a topic (Marjanovic-Shane, A., &Beljanski-Ristic, 2008). When we select words in the process of constructing an utterance, we by no means always take them from the system of language in their neutral, dictionary form. We usually take them from other utterances and mainly from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre, that is, in theme, composition, or style. (Bakhtin, 1986:87)

  Uptake takes place not only immediately from the previous utterance or turn (e.g. when S2 says "Butterfly." and the teacher uptakes it with "Butterflies. Butterflies. One more? 현미?") but also after a latent period (e.g. the teacher's utterance "Flowers. Flowers. You see flowers." is uptaken a few exchanges later by the teacher with "So let's say 'I see flowers.'") The latter might show the invisible but significant, inner thinking process of the speaker.

  If we look closely at the nouns that the students utter, we can find two types of uptake, which are sound uptake and meaning uptake. Sound uptake is where the sound of a word becomes a reminder of another word. Meaning uptake, on the other hand, is where the meaning of a word becomes a reminder of another word. For example, the movement from 'flowers' to 'butterflies' is more likely meaning uptake whereas the movement from 'bees' to 'birds' is more likely sound uptake. With the movement from 'butterflies' to 'bees', it may be sound or meaning uptake or a little bit of both.

  (2) Concreteness

  Concreteness is a kind of specificity. It is the movement from a general concept to a concrete object, and it is the process of a whole class topic being applied to a particular speaker or a particular speaker becoming more detailed. Because it is a process, changes in concreteness can often be seen better at the exchange level rather than at the utterance level. For example, the topic of spring in the data is uptaken by students and made more concrete to objects such as flowers, butterflies and bees. Concreteness at the utterance-level can be shown by the use of articles, pronouns, verbs, etc. For example, let's look at the pronouns in the data. The pronouns below are becoming more concrete (us → everybody → someone → I).

T: Let's talk about spring. (us)

T: What do you (everybody) see in spring?

T: 지원? (someone) Please.

S1: (I see a) Flower.

3. Hypothesis and Results: Is there any evidence of intra-mental knowledge emerging from inter-mental skills in the data? In particular, is there any evidence of concreteness and abstraction?

  There is some evidence of intra-mental knowledge (concreteness) emerging from inter-mental skills (listening, uptaking, speaking) in the data. If we look at the beginning of the data, we can see that the teacher brings up the topic of spring. 'Spring' is a rather abstract concept, so the teacher herself uptakes the topic with a question ("What do you see in spring?") to make it more concrete. It appears that with this move she intends to get the students brainstorm images that are connected to the concept of 'spring'. S1 understands the teacher's question and gives an answer ("Flower"). S2 and S4 listen to what the teacher and S1 say and mention more concrete objects ("Butterfly", "Bees"). This might be the evidence that S2 and S4 are integrating words and meanings and even contexts because they understand what the teacher intends and what was said previously.

  If we look at the students' utterances, they seem to uptake what the teacher said at the beginning (the abstract concept of spring) into more concrete objects (spring → flowers → butterflies → bees → birds). In this process, two types of uptake are observed: One of them is meaning uptake (flowers → butterflies → bees), and the other is sound uptake (bees → birds). The latter can be interpreted as 'sound+meaning uptake' because the two words both start with 'b' sound and are also associated with each other semantically. At any rate, meaning uptake here makes the teacher's abstract concept more and more object-related, and sound uptake centers around a 'b' sound and makes the sequence more concrete. Overall, the movement in the data tends to be from abstract to concrete.

  However, there is no evidence of learner knowledge emerging in terms of the plural morpheme. At the exchange level, the teacher initiates by calling a student's name, the student gives a simple noun answer, and the teacher uptakes it and adds the plural morpheme (T: 지원? Please. S1: Flower. T: Flowers. Flowers. You see flowers.). This shows that the teacher clearly has the knowledge of the plural morpheme, however, the students do not seem to understand the plural morpheme. If we look at the three occasions where the students use the plural morpheme correctly, they are all part of 'Listen and Repeat' and not voluntarily constructed by the students (e.g. T: Okay, everybody, "I see flowers." Ss: I see flowers.).

		plurals
		빈도	빈도	빈도
		yes	no	not applicable
WHO	T	9	0	6
	S	3	4	2

4. Discussion and Conclusion: Discuss your results and explain why you obtained this result. Discuss your research question and answer it. Comment briefly on why your result matters (internal and external validity). Avoid a prescriptive conclusion; teaching solutions are all different.

  The results of this study can be discussed in two aspects, namely uptake and plurals. Firstly, this study has shown that S-T, S-S, and T-S uptake in a discussion of a concept makes the discourse more object-related and concrete. It is probably because the teacher tries to make connections between the abstract concept and concrete objects for the students and the students themselves also create images associated with the concept. It suggests that intra-mental knowledge (concreteness and abstraction) emerges from inter-mental skills (sound and meaning uptake). Since talking of associated images is a very common method when teaching abstract concepts (in English and other subjects alike), the external validity as well as the internal validity of this study seems quite high.

  Secondly and also on the contrary, this study has shown that there is no emergence of learner knowledge in terms of the plural morpheme. The students continue to not use the plural morpheme even though the teacher modeled it several times. It appears that the students have not grasped the abstract, grammatical rule that unlike Korean, English concepts accompany the plural morpheme in certain circumstances - when they are countable and general (e.g. butterflies, bees, etc.). The internal validity of this conclusion appears valid for the data under consideration, but this cannot be generalized because student factors vary greatly class to class and even lesson to lesson.