Final Thoughts
Even though this class was held on-line, I found it to be useful in helping me become a better writer. From this class, I take away the knowledge that I can write something that is good, if I put my mind to it. From the reading assignments, I have become more aware of the way I write and how I structure phrases and sentences. I have learned even if it takes an hour or two proofread, proofread, proofread. (It comes in handy!)
The exercises from class I found to be the most valuable were the grammar exercises, paraphrasing exercise, and the rough draft. I would keep all of these assignments in the course. The grammar exercises are good review of what you learned long ago. The paraphrasing exercise helped me put into perspective what others outside my discipline may not understand. It also made me realize that I do not have to quote everything. Writing a rough draft and getting feedback is always excellent.
The assignment I disliked the must was the annotated bibliography. I understand annotated bibliography help you investigate sources and plan how you will use the source, but I do not like writing them. I think a good assignment instead of an annotated bibliography is to get the students to pick quotes from sources and explain how they will use the quote in their paper. This provides them with a resource for the source and the quote when it comes time to write their paper.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this class. For the first time on-line, I feel the class was spaced out with enough time to do assignments and focus on the readings. A suggest for teaching next time is posting assignments for the week. For example, we had 2 units per week; post both units at the beginning of the week. I make this suggest because I had another class going on at the same time and I was always worried about when you were going to post the next unit. I did not want to miss due date or assignment. In addition, posting the whole week can help with those that work full time jobs. It provides those individuals with an opportunity of how to schedule their week.
Something I think you should continue is how you critique our work. It was easy to understand what you were addressing. It was also easy to remove your comments. Thank you are not using tracks. When professors use tracks it is so confusing to get your paper back to the original. Your way works, so continue to use it.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comment (1)My biggest frustration in the research process is combining words to get the best results. Over the years, speech-language pathologists have changed the names of disorders because they are too similar to the name of another disorder. My topic of research is childhood apraxia of speech; however, it is also known as developmental apraxia of speech, dyspraxia, and developmental verbal dyspraxia in the literature. When I researched a treatment, I had to search all names used to classify the disorder. I know everyone has their own perspective, but a unified term should be used across the board.
An obstacle I am having when locating articles is there is not enough research on my topic. Recently, childhood apraxia of speech diagnoses is on the rise. There is no clear understanding about the cause of childhood apraxia of speech and research is lacking on the efficacy of treatment for childhood apraxia of speech in the literature.
I feel I understand the literature related to my topic. I have previously taken Dr. Stephen Keith’s research class at Longwood. Dr. Keith’s class helped me to understand terminology in journal articles. The one thing I took away from his class was how to understand the results of research paper pertaining to statistical significance and coefficients. Dr. Keith’s class is a great class to take, if you like to do research, but I must forewarn you, it is a tough class.
Finding time to adequately work on this paper has been tough. I have three intense summer classes going on at the same time. I have been trying to figure out all week how I am going to get everything completed. When I think I had it all figured out, life threw me a curve ball and I had to reassess the situation.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comment (1)Scholarly vs Non-scholarly
Non-Scholarly
http://people.umass.edu/velleman/cas.html
Even though this website is a .edu, it is a link off a faculty/staff website. It is a letter to parents explaining childhood apraxia of speech. The website uses very general information with no citations. The website does not provide a date of publication, nor does it state when it was last updated. I was able to view the homepage of the faculty/staff member. The homepage was able to identify the author for me; however, I noticed the author cited a list of selected publication, which her name appeared numerous times.
Scholarly
http://search.asha.org/query.html?col=ebp&col=journals&col=policy&qt=childhood+apraxia+of+speech&charset=iso-8859-1
This website is scholarly because it is from the national accredited organization entitled the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. All speech-language pathologist and audiologist around the United States recognize the information on this website. The above website is the link to the search page. This website was able to give me the author’s names, dates of publications, and online, scholarly journals where articles can be found. All material on the ASHA website has been approved to be published by a committee. The search results published on this website are results from published journals. I feel this website answers all of the wh- questions about how to evaluate a source. When doing research in my discipline, you always start with ASHA.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comment (1)Plagiarism Fears
Plagiarism is not giving credit, when credit is due. It is taking someone else’s words or idea and stating them as your own. The readings and websites were great refreshers reminding me about rules I learned in primary and secondary schools. I do not worry about citing information correctly, but my biggest fear is making sure that I site it. I have, in the past, used quotes in papers and forgot to put in the citation. I also fear that I will not correctly paraphrase the information. The Purdue website gave some helpful tips on how to correctly paraphrase. I liked the suggestion Purdue gave about reading the information, writing it on note card, then referring back to the text to make sure it is not exactly the same.
Something I found interest while reading is how to take notes while reading over information pertaining to your topic. I normally write on the top of the printed article what is inside that I want to use in my paper. I like how Purdue said to make note cards with a keyword at the top to help me know where to use in my paper. They also suggested placing the source on the card. I believe this is going to be very useful during my research.
As I begin research on my topic, I find it is hard to paraphrase the facts. In the SLP world, we study evidence-based practices (EBP). EBPs are studies that have been conducted with results proving or disproving a treatment works. It is easy to summarize the results of a study, but I find it hard to paraphrase how the study was conducted without using quotations.
I have not had any horror stories in the past, nor have I heard of any stories.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comments (2)Researching Spanking
When research the topic of spanking as a discipline, I refined my search for articles is as follows:
Spanking (714)
Spanking as a discipline (156)
Spanking as a form of discipline (18)
Spanking: Child Discipline (103)
Spank or no Spank (159)
Spanking: Corporal Punishment (188)
No spanking (78)
Bad to spank (6)
I had the best results when searching for spanking as a form of discipline and bad to spank.
When research spanking on Google, my results are as follows:
Spanking (19,900,000)
Spanking as a discipline (2,230,000)
Spanking as a form of discipline (622,000)
Spanking: child discipline (111,000)
Spank or not to spank (262, 000)
Bad to spank (3,320,000)
No Spanking (6,480,000)
My best results her came when searching spanking: child discipline.
When doing a more advanced search at google.com, limiting my search to .gov websites only, I found the following results:
Spanking (7,170)
Spanking as a form of discipline (2, 420)
Spank or not to spank (2,350)
Bad to Spank (1, 100)
When I was researching the topic of spanking, I took the approach of comparing the related literature about spanking and why not spank. I decided to first research “what is spanking?” on Google. This search resulted in items about discipline and erotic websites. On Google, it was not until page 3 that I began to get websites that would help in my investigation of spanking a form of discipline. The advanced search limited the websites to pertain specifically to spanking as a form of discipline. The advanced search helped in narrowing the results of my topic and will help in researching my own topic. I also like to use Google scholar. This website provides journal articles. I have found if I cannot get an article from the library database, I may be able to find it on Google scholar. I found the Subject Thesaurus to be helpful in the library database. It showed topics and related topics to what I was researching. I got some of my word combinations out of the thesaurus. I learned from this exercise to achieve results specifically to my topic, I needed to try different word combinations to narrow the search.
In researching my own topic, I am having difficulty with obtaining articles that are specific to my topic. In the SLP world, we have disorders entitled Apraxia of Speech and Childhood Apraxia of Speech. In my research, I have found that some researchers do not identify the difference between the two in their research. I have to read the article to make sure the participants (subjects) are not children, but adults.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comments (2)All about Grammar!
We have been studying grammar this week. Grammar is very important to the major I am studying. In my major, we have to take a course entitled Morphology and Syntax. This course is all about grammar. (Just a side note, the book The Syntax Handbook by Laura Justice is awesome!) Grammar is used in both the written and spoken forms of language. Grammar is something I struggle with in my writing. I feel that I speak one way, but write a different way. The resources helped me understand grammar in a different way. I think that grammar is hard to understand without practice. English is one of the hardest languages to learn and to write. We have many rules about what is allowed and what can be combined. I remember in primary school spending weeks on different units of grammar. I wish I could be Billy Madison. I would love to return to primary school and learn all the grammar rules over again. 
I think this review was helpful. I learned that I struggle most with subject-verb agreement. For years, I have written papers thinking the way I was phrasing sentences was correct. This review helped me realize by dissecting a sentence is the easiest way of making sure the subject and verb agree with each other. I also learned I use punctuation incorrect. A real revelation for me was the use of commas. I use commas frequently and at the wrong time. I believe that grammar is something you must work on for the rest of your life.
Something I found interesting was when to use I and me. I always thought when writing you use I and never me. There are those rules again.
I have learned over the years that proofreading is essential to good writing. Some helpful tips I have learned are as follows:
1. Read the paper out loud
2. Step away from the paper for a couple of minutes and return to reread it
3. Read each sentence one at a time silently and out loud
4. Read each sentence backwards, then forwards. I do not know why, but this works. I think it throws the brain off.
I pose the question, “what is a good way to practice grammar skills that I am struggle with?”
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comments (4)Research Question
I am beginning to figure out how this whole blog thing works. First, I want to address some questions Dr. Bidwell asked me is an email. What church do I attend? I attend Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, located in Colonial Heights, VA. I have been attending now for 6 years and teaching for almost 4 years. I love the high school age group, i think, because they are over that immature stage of life. ( Well, most are! ) I know all about doing things with the class. We have our annual bowling trip and class pool party coming up soon. Fun Quest sounds fun. I have never heard of it. At the present time, my husband and I are preparing to take over the youth group. Our youth pastor and his family are leaving at the end of the summer to go serve as missionaries in southeast Asia for 3 years.
As for my research topic, I get to choose a topic in my discipline. When I think about what interest me from my discipline it is hard to pick one topic. I am passionate about what I am studying. If I had to pick a topic that is the most interesting to me, it would be Apraxia of Speech or phonological awareness. Just an overview, Apraxia if Speech is a motor speech disorder that affects the sequencing of movement of the articulators to produce speech. Phonological awareness is something you can do in the dark to identify the sounds of a language. If I chose Apraxia of Speech to research, I would compare two treatment techniques suggested to mangage Apraxia of Speech. If I chose Phonological awareness to reseach, I would look at two types of classroom instruction at the kindergarten for teaching the sounds of the English language. My heart is not complete set on research either of these topics. I may change my mind by the end of the week.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comments (2)Hello!
Hey everyone! My name is Rachel Mullins, but I go by Tori. It comes from my middle name, Victoria. I am entering into my second year as a graduate student in the discipline of Speech-Language Pathology. I am 24 years old and live in Chesterfield County with my hubby. We have no children or pets. I just became the aunt of the cutest chocolate lab in the whole world, named Bella Rose. I am taking this course to help improve my writing skills. I enjoy to play sports and teaching my 9th grade sunday school class. They are so much fun. From this course, I hope to gain skills that will help me to improve my writing skills in my discipline.
My previous experiences with online classes have good and bad. I have taken online classes were the professors responded to questions quickly and then there have been those professors that take days to get a responds from. I have taken classes where course work was extremely easy and extremely hard. If I had my preference of where a class is held, online or classroom, I would prefer to take a class in the classroom. I am a visual learner and I feel I have a hard time learning from online classes. However, I need to take a writing class and all of them were offered online, so I had to choose one to take.
As far as a research topic, I have no idea what to research because this class is outside of my discipline.
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: SOCL | Comments (4)