Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Blog 8: My Formulated Research Plan

Formulate a research plan that includes:

Statement of purpose (what you hope to show/discover):
- Comparing and contrasting the revision techniques of high school seniors, only the eighteen year olds for proper consent purposes, and college students, preferably juniors and seniors and not freshmen, in terms of graded writing assignments.

Detailed statement of your research question:
- Is there a noticeable growth in revision techniques as education advances? Or since it is no longer required to do so, in most cases, do college students even revise at all?

List of the information you need to gather:
- First, I need a clear example of what I mean when I say revision to make it understandable for all participants. Second, I would like an example of a passage that explains the importance of revision. I want to take this from my College Composition textbook from my first semester at Kean called How to Write Anything because that is what helped me the most in my revision. Third, I need articles to review and cite for my literary review. Then, I need actual information directly from high school seniors and college students as to what their revision techniques are. Lastly, I’m thinking of possibly making a survey to hand out in a few classes in both high school and college classrooms. I believe it could give me an overall feel for how the two groups view revision in writing. I do not have to do these steps in this order, but this is the information I need to gather for this project.

A preliminary list of sources:
- This is the one part of my research that I have not worked out. Hopefully, since I finally have a topic, (WOO HOO!) Dr. Chandler can me find articles that could me in my research. I apologize for being unprepared for this section, but I hope to mend this problem very soon.

Plan for gathering your information that includes:

*Who/what you will be studying?:
- The revision techniques of average high school seniors and college students, not freshmen, and analyzing the difference between the two groups.

*Where you will collect your information?:
- The articles will come most likely from the databases on the Kean University Library website. The definition of revision and the importance of it may come from English textbooks. The interviews with the high school seniors will take place in the South Amboy Public Library, my hometown’s library that is connected to my old high school. The interviews with college students would take place in either an empty classroom in Kean University, a study room in the Nancy Thompson Library, or any quiet place I could find at the time of the interview! The details will be set in stone before the interview takes place so there will be no confusion the day of.

*How many subjects you will study?:
- For the interviews, I’m thinking two high school seniors, one boy and one girl and I’m thinking the same criteria for the  college students. I understand four subjects is a lot, but I feel it would be more balanced if I represented both genders in each group. However, if the number creates problems, I would most likely limit it to one student from high school and one from college. As for the possible surveys, I would want two high school classes and two college classes so that is a total of roughly forty subjects, but merely for quantitative, overall data.

*What methods you will use to conduct your study?:
- At the moment, I want to conduct my research using interviews, discourse analysis, and possibly a survey.

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