Part III. Understanding Theory and Issues in the Field
Substantive Research Paper: “Making mention of mentionables: How topic change occurs in natural dialogues”
Substantive Research Paper: “Making mention of mentionables: How topic change occurs in natural dialogues”
This paper was written in my first semester as an HPU MATESOL candidate in the fall of 2011 for AL 6600 Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. My most important source was the classroom textbook, Conversation Analysis and Second Language: A Guide for ESL/EFL Teachers written by Wong and Waring (2010). The authors of this book explain that a mentionable “is a ‘last topic’ that a participant raises at or near the end of a conversation” (p. 182). These authors defined many of the terms I used throughout my paper and their description of turn-taking and the different elements of dialog helped me comprehend the topic of my writing with more clarity. Since this semester was my first at HPU and I did not know many of my peers, I did not have many opportunities to gather the different conversations I needed to use as data for my paper. I was thankful for the willingness of my professor and a peer to help me by providing some of their own data for me to analyze and write about.
This paper was a good starting point to my time as a graduate student in the MA TESOL program as I was able to learn a lot about myself as a writer, a researcher, a student, and a future teacher. The paper allowed me to make an important connection between just speaking and learning to speak a language. Until writing this paper, I had never really understood the different elements of language, such as how to realize when it is appropriate or not to take a turn to talk in a conversation, and yet these elements are important to describe and teach to students. The knowledge of how a person can take turns and manage topics in a conversation helps me understand how communication works and enables me to teach my students how to better communicate in English.
While I admit that the final draft of this paper may still need some work, I have chosen it as the first paper to incorporate into my portfolio for many reasons. This paper allowed me to mature in many areas of my writing, including the new experience of using APA format and style. Second, I was also able to write a paper using more than just sources and my own ideas. I was able to work with data that I had to analyze and transcribe myself. Finally, this was my first research paper requirement of the MATESOL program. I was able to extract some of the research used in this paper along with my understanding of APA style to create something I am even more proud to discuss: a paper that was published for the TESOL Writing Paper Series (Gonzales, 2012).
This paper also includes some examples of the challenges I still face when writing a paper, and that is my unfamiliarity with of APA format. After writing many papers throughout the semesters, I am still faced with the “Check APA format” comment from some of my professors. This paper, when returned to me, was full of comments that alluded to the fact that I was writing in a completely new territory since the only experience with formal writing I had before this point was with MLA format. Another challenge I faced were the two comments made by my professor that I was unable to address when editing this paper for my portfolio. The first was that while I listed some of the different interactional devices that the participants in the data used, I was not able to bring them together as cohesively as Conversation Analysis requires. While revising this paper, I believe that I had let too many semesters slip between me and my knowledge of CA, so this point was hard for me to grasp when trying to identify some of the errors I needed to correct in my writing. Another example of a weakness I have with this paper is that I was occasionally unable to correctly identify particular interactional devices and therefore had different ideas scattered throughout the paper that should have been placed together for a more cohesive paper.
Though this paper may not be the one I am most proud of from my time in the MATESOL program at Hawai‘i Pacific University, I was able to turn it into something I am extremely proud of. This paper, with the remaining errors and inconsistency of ideas is found at this link. This paper fostered ideas to help me write a related paper, which was published in the TESOL Working Paper Series, “Turn-taking in a naturally occurring conversation and a textbook dialog.” It can be found at this link.
References
Gonzales, C. (2012). Turn-taking in a naturally occurring conversation and a textbook dialog.
Hawai‘i Pacific University TESOL Working Paper Series 10, 78-82.
Wong, J. & Waring, H.Z. (2010). Conversation Analysis and Second Language: A Guide for ESL/EFL Teachers. New York, NY & London,
England: Routledge.
This paper was a good starting point to my time as a graduate student in the MA TESOL program as I was able to learn a lot about myself as a writer, a researcher, a student, and a future teacher. The paper allowed me to make an important connection between just speaking and learning to speak a language. Until writing this paper, I had never really understood the different elements of language, such as how to realize when it is appropriate or not to take a turn to talk in a conversation, and yet these elements are important to describe and teach to students. The knowledge of how a person can take turns and manage topics in a conversation helps me understand how communication works and enables me to teach my students how to better communicate in English.
While I admit that the final draft of this paper may still need some work, I have chosen it as the first paper to incorporate into my portfolio for many reasons. This paper allowed me to mature in many areas of my writing, including the new experience of using APA format and style. Second, I was also able to write a paper using more than just sources and my own ideas. I was able to work with data that I had to analyze and transcribe myself. Finally, this was my first research paper requirement of the MATESOL program. I was able to extract some of the research used in this paper along with my understanding of APA style to create something I am even more proud to discuss: a paper that was published for the TESOL Writing Paper Series (Gonzales, 2012).
This paper also includes some examples of the challenges I still face when writing a paper, and that is my unfamiliarity with of APA format. After writing many papers throughout the semesters, I am still faced with the “Check APA format” comment from some of my professors. This paper, when returned to me, was full of comments that alluded to the fact that I was writing in a completely new territory since the only experience with formal writing I had before this point was with MLA format. Another challenge I faced were the two comments made by my professor that I was unable to address when editing this paper for my portfolio. The first was that while I listed some of the different interactional devices that the participants in the data used, I was not able to bring them together as cohesively as Conversation Analysis requires. While revising this paper, I believe that I had let too many semesters slip between me and my knowledge of CA, so this point was hard for me to grasp when trying to identify some of the errors I needed to correct in my writing. Another example of a weakness I have with this paper is that I was occasionally unable to correctly identify particular interactional devices and therefore had different ideas scattered throughout the paper that should have been placed together for a more cohesive paper.
Though this paper may not be the one I am most proud of from my time in the MATESOL program at Hawai‘i Pacific University, I was able to turn it into something I am extremely proud of. This paper, with the remaining errors and inconsistency of ideas is found at this link. This paper fostered ideas to help me write a related paper, which was published in the TESOL Working Paper Series, “Turn-taking in a naturally occurring conversation and a textbook dialog.” It can be found at this link.
References
Gonzales, C. (2012). Turn-taking in a naturally occurring conversation and a textbook dialog.
Hawai‘i Pacific University TESOL Working Paper Series 10, 78-82.
Wong, J. & Waring, H.Z. (2010). Conversation Analysis and Second Language: A Guide for ESL/EFL Teachers. New York, NY & London,
England: Routledge.