By Joan Bolker
Discuss the case studies on James Carthly and Ted Maren
In groups, consider the following questions:
- What did James do or not do that postponed his completion of the dissertation?
- Should his advisor have done anything differently?
- How does a dissertation affect family members?
- How did Ted "build" his dissertation?
- What are the consequences of delay in completion?
- What are the advantages of planning and careful management?
- WHY write a thesis or dissertation...or any research for that matter?
A thesis or dissertation is a large project that doesn't fit into the regular, semester long course requirement. For this reason, there is a high rate of mismanagement and, therefore, noncompletion.
Three propositions to a systematic approach (Davis and Parker):
- Structuring of the dissertation project can improve performance (by means of topic analyses, proposal documents, plans, schedules, and so on).
- The student has primary responsibility for the management of the doctoral dissertation project.
- Faculty (advisor and committee) are a scarce resource.
- Clarifying your research interests
- Getting practical in choosing your topic
- Narrowing your topic
- Being strategic in choosing your advisor
- Creating and maintaining the advisory relationship
- Building a support structure to avoid isolation and to stay on track
Analyzing the writing process:
- What is the writing process? More importantly, what is YOUR writing process? First, open a new document. Take a moment individually to outline your basic writing process in 5 steps or less. Be honest!
- Now that you have an outline, explain your process to each other in small groups. Walk your peers through what it's like for you to write a paper. What parts are difficult for you? Easy? Take the most time?
- As a group, compile your outlines into one document. Expand it, combine it, until you have a collaborative representation of your writing process.
- Compare your process with that outlined in the course text, Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker, page 1-40.
Google Docs: We will be using Google Docs occasionally for collaboration and scheduling conferences. Please open a gmail account (if you don't have one already). Then, follow this link and request access to the document. Once I have granted access, fill out the requested information.
Dropbox: As a student in this course, you want to make your materials easily accessible on multiple computers so that you can always get the most recent version of a document in the classroom, at home, in your office or on your phone. Moreover, you want your instructor to be able to access your papers with the same ease.
Create a folder in your dropbox called ESL 502_[First Last name]--for example: ESL 502_Susan Ahmed. Share that folder with me at sfaivre@illinois.edu. Put a photo (filename should be your name) of yourself in the folder.
Homework:
- Diagnostic Exercise: This exercise fulfills several purposes. The first is to give me a place to start the course. I will assess your organization, logical flow of ideas, clarity of explanations, grammar, vocabulary and style in order to get to know your writing and learn how best to help you this semester. The second, but perhaps primary purpose is to give YOU a starting point for evaluating and improving your own writing performance.
Directions: Write a 1-2 page essay--10-12pt, double spaced--entitled “My Writing Process” in which you explain the writing steps that you generally go through when planning and writing an academic paper. Please organize and write an honest and detailed account of how you have tackled and completed writing assignments in the past. Name the file "my writing process_name" and put it in your dropbox.
You will need to include:
—A description of the type of writing assignments that you have encountered in your program of study.
—Your step-by-step procedure, that is, what you actually do to fulfill the task. You could organize this part like the “methods” section of a research paper if you wish.
—Statements of rationale for the different steps of your procedure (why do you do it that way?)
—A discussion section in which you evaluate your procedure for writing an academic paper. If there are problems with your procedure, please identify them.
— Please time yourself and spend no more than 60 minutes on your essay.
***Please note: Honest writing is the most helpful.
- Put a photo of yourself in your dropbox, filename: "your name".
- Preparing for Contract 1: Go to the Contract 1 post for information on preparing your contract.
