SFG and Me

Basically I have no idea what I'm doing... =)  Kidding.  Kind of.

Kimberly thought Systemic Functional Grammar might be valuable to our work so she started reading up on it and introduced us to it over the summer. Then she asked me to start coming up with a way to use it to analyze student writing to see what we could learn. So I'm attempting to do that!

I don't know what you know about SFG--but the biggest piece is that there are 3 functional building blocks (of word groups) instead of abstract parts of speech. Participants (noun groups). Processes (verb groups) and Circumstances (adjective/adverb groups). Here's a simple example.

(This picture is from this website. Which helped me learn the basic groups.)

I've placed our students in low, medium, and high groups and added a same-age hearing peer group. I'm taking each groups' writing samples and analyzing them to see what kinds of participants, processes, and circumstances the groups are using. It's pretty fascinating. Difficult because I'm really jumping into it without knowing enough about it or having a real plan . (Not always the best approach! ha!) But neat because I'm seeing already how some of the objectives we've set in the past for some students based on what we saw as a need area may not have been the most appropriate objective simply because we didn't have a good way to determine what might be the next logical step. I think in deaf ed. often we don't know how to scaffold their learning appropriately--how do you know what's in their ZPD if you you don't really know what should come next?

It's been a really concrete way of seeing how the writing differs from across the 4 groups. For example I can see that the low group is only using first person pronouns, whereas the high group is using first, second, and third person pronouns. It's helpful to me to see what kinds of language students are using to make meaning instead of being distracted by the micro-level errors that can be easier to see in their writing. I really think it has a lot of potential as a way to look at the expressive language development (written, signed, or spoken) of deaf students, which is what I'm most interested in. I'm a teacher through and through...so I want my research to be helpful in understanding the things I struggled with most in the classroom. When Kimberly first brought up SFG I doubted it's ability to be helpful in a practical way (mostly because I saw the teachers' responses at the summer PD--ha!)  But as soon as I started creating tables of my findings, I realized that I was seeing things that I hadn't been able to see with all the other ways I've looked at and analyzed student writing. SFG is crazy and tedious so I'm still not sure that I see it as a tool for teachers, but I can definitely see the potential is has for research in language development, learning, and education.

Right now I'm just finishing up an initial analysis of our experimental groups' baseline independent writing (recount) samples. But in the next few weeks we'll start using it inform objective setting and progress monitoring. In fact I have a lot to do...because we're doing a PD on it with the teachers on Friday!  And then we'll continue to use it with other genres and see what we learn.  

So that's it...I'm just getting my feet wet. But I definitely see it as having a lot of application to things I'm interested in. I wish there was someone at UT who did some work in SFG/L. Hopefully after this semester, I'll find a little time to explore it more on my own. I need to start learning more about it so that I can determine if and how I might want to approach a dissertation using it. Kimberly and Hannah are presented on it at AAAL in March, but I'll be in Haiti.  But...Kimberly and I are putting a proposal in for the International Systemic Functional Congress in Argentina in April.  I'm hoping I'll be able to go because it'll be a good opportunity to get some feedback on our work and learn more about current research in the field.  And there is a pre-congress institute on SFL and language education this year...which would be perfect.  We shall see...    

Gee and I Go Way Back...

When I stop to think about what I'm doing with my life--literacy, (socio)linguistics, Deafness,  research, I'm always amazed.  I never really imagined any of these things for my life.  When I was 18, I thought I'd never sign again and certainly wasn't interested in education.  But slowly my curiosities lead me in this direction, I found these things I'm passionate about, and now I can't really imagine doing anything else with my life.  Along the journey there have been these moments that have guided me along this path.  And once upon a time, Gee was part of one of those moments.  I was teaching middle school language arts to deaf students in Florida and started taking courses in Literacy at UNF in my desperation to figure out how exactly I was supposed to teach my deaf students to read and write.  I felt like there was more to understand about the connections between language and literacy.  I was searching for something that could help me understand and articulate the ideas I had when I read some article by Delpit that cited Gee's theories on Discourses.  It piqued my interest immediately because it seemed to be describing my thoughts on Deafness, language, and literacy.  So I went hunting and started to check out JPG's work.  And, well...I quickly developed a bit of a research crush on Gee.  His work gave me a new and fitting way to approach my work in the classroom.  As I read more and more of his work, I realized that Gee and I don't see eye to eye on everything and that he annoys me very much when he tries to be a know-it-all in literacy when his work is based on theory and not practice, but his work really helped to point me to sociolinguistics, in general...and for that I have to thank him.

I've read much of his work including his Introduction to Discourse Analysis several years ago, so I had a pretty good idea of what I'd find in this book and figured I'd find it helpful.  It was a pretty easy read.  (Well, intellectually not physically...that print is tiny! But, anyway...)

I liked the way the book is set up because it helps me think about (27!) different ways to look at the same data.  Plus, he throws in the grammar interludes, and I spend my days look at looking at written language with Systemic Functional Grammar Analysis and Structural Analysis of Written Language...so it helps to find a bridge and not feel forced to think of DA and SFGA/SAWL as entirely contradictory.  Of course, in my current analysis the grammar isn't all that helpful since most of it isn't relevant to a signed language that has its own (very different) grammar.  But as I venture farther into SFG/L land it's good to know.  There were a few tools that stood out to me that I think are important for me to think about when using DA to examine deaf education classroom talk.

Disclaimer--As I read about the tools I was wrestling with how they might apply to and be useful for discourse analysis of ASL.  In many cases, the examples Gee uses don't work the same way in a signed language.  Below you will find my meandering thoughts about the intersection of various tools and ASL.  Many of these ramblings may carry little meaning, or be confusing/inaccessible to a person who is not familiar with the linguistics of ASL.  You have been forewarned.  Carry on...

LANGUAGE & CONTEXT

Diexis.  What signs might act as diectics in ASL?  There are no articles.  And pronominalization is done mostly through the use of indexing and pointing.  This makes me think about how classifiers must first be defined.  But I also wonder if the fact that context is typically given up front in ASL or how conceptually accurate signs make what would be implied (in some languages) explicit changes how diectics work or appear.  But then I can think of examples of multiple meaning signs where context could potentially act in the way he describes.  In any case...this is a tool that might be very helpful in examining how a shared understanding is co-constructed through dialogue in the classroom.
Intonation. Intonation clearly doesn't exist in ASL in the typically understood use of the term, BUT nonmanual markers (NMM) could function in the same way(s).  NMMs consist of head nods, raised or furrowed brows, head tilts, non-voiced and voiced mouth morphemes, eye shifts, eye gazes, facial expressions, and body shifts/movements.  I think there is potential for any one of these NMMs to act as intonation.  But I think mouth morphemes and some facial expressions would be of particular interest.   I'm not sure this is something I can do for this project since my video quality (in Atlas especially) doesn't allow for me to examine this closely...but it could be helpful in the future...  Some sign characteristics such speed or duration could also function as "intonation." This is something I could likely note in my video.

SAYING, DOING, & DESIGNING

Doing and Not Just Saying.  I think this is very helpful in classroom talk analysis.  Particularly when looking at what the teacher's language-in-use is doing.  Often a teacher asks a question that is really a command, that will become evident in the students' response.  (Next turn proof.)  This is definitely something I want to pay attention to.
Stanzas.  When ASL is written in English gloss is doesn't include some of the shifts in tone or idea.  It seems really choppy and can be hard to read/analyze, especially for a person unfamiliar with the nuances of signed language.  In analysis of spoken/written language stanzas may be used to help separate ideas...in ASL it would do the same...but it would also help to strengthen the connections between phrases and turns that may seem absent when ASL is written.  It could provide structure to something that might on the surface seem disjointed.

BUILDING THINGS IN THE WORLD

Context is Reflexive.  I like this tool, because it's recognizes my perspective on context.  I think it is important because it shapes dialogue, but I also think dialogue shapes context.  The other authors and methodologies that we have read seem to want to take one stance more than the other, but I think it's important to recognize both.  I think there are specific moves that teachers make when using SIWI that create a classroom context that is different from other classroom contexts...but I'm not sure exactly what those moves are.  This tool could help me recognize those.  

Identities.  When looking at classroom interactions with deaf students, I am particularly interested in noticing how the identities they are constructing are related to their deafness and/or preferred mode(s) of communication.  How do they use language to position themselves as part of Deaf and/or hearing culture?  How do they use language to define or relate to their "hearing impairment."
(Really Long Sidenote:  Do you know how many times since this semester has started I have caught myself identifying as visually impaired?  I really wouldn't have thought that it was a large part of my identity.  In those activities where you make those drawings of yourself or come up with nouns or adjectives to describe yourself...I've never include anything related to my vision...I didn't really think it was an important "part of me."  But now that this class has made me overanalyze language interactions including my own, I keep catching myself identifying as visually impaired.   Starting phrases with "I'm blind..." (e.g. I'm blind, I have no idea what that says.) Or referring to myself as "the blind girl" (e.g. Blind girl hates SPSS.)  I suppose it's possible that I've always (unknowingly) identified as visually impaired.  Or it's possible that surgery #10 and the prognosis that followed a year ago have made me finally accept that it's part of my identity.  But I think that really it's become more relevant now because the tasks I'm faced with in my life as a research associate and student make it suck so much harder to ignore.  It enters into my conversation because the contexts I am in have made it relevant.  So then context not only shapes our language but also our identities by determining what is or isn't relevant.  See this is why I can't ignore context.  It's too important to me.)  

Politics and Sign Systems.  In deaf education I often think about the languages, ideas, practices, and cultures are privileged.  I think this is particularly relevant during when SIWI is used because in this instructional approach both ASL and English are supposed to be privileged modes of communication.  Having the opportunity to not only use, but also explicitly talk about both of these languages, allows for a lot of discussion that constructs the values of the group participants.  This is particularly relevant when a hearing teacher is the one who holds the power to give turns and control the conversation in other ways.  Is English valued over ASL?  Or vice versa?  Who decides?  How do we know?  

THEORETICAL

Social Languages.  There are a lot of things that can be enacted in social languages.  I think the features of the language used in SIWI create a language specific to the context.  How does this language act to allow the participants to communicate in ways that they couldn't without this language? What features make it unique?  

Discourses.  This tool sort of combines all of the tools I've already discussed.  It is useful for me because I am interested in examining the intersection of language, culture, and identity and in examining language (and all the things that come with it) as action that helps to construct both culture and identity.  

J'ai des Questions...

Elizabeth:

1)  Can you describe the process through which you chose your topic and methodology?  When did you think you knew what you wanted to do?  And how long from then was it until you finished your proposal?  Did you know that you wanted to conduct research about IEP meetings and then find that DAM worked well for the research you wanted to do?  Or were you interested in DP/DAM before you chose your topic?

2)  I see that your study is changing based on participant recruitment.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?  Why did you have difficulty recruiting high schoolers but not elementary students?

3)  Can you tell us a little bit about the participants you have been able to recruit?  (how many participants?  how many schools?  how many different disabilities?  etc.)

4)  I see that your timeline says you should be finishing up data collection this month.  Are you on target to do so?  Have you had to make any adjustments along the way?

5)  If you were to start all over again (with comps, prospectus, etc.)  is there anything you would change?


Joshua:

1)  Do you think that there were any changes between your meetings in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012?  Specifically, do you think that your dissertation research influenced these meeting?  In what ways?

2)  What were you most surprised about in your findings?

3)  Did you share your work with the interns?  How did they respond?  Were they surprised in any ways?

4)  Before beginning your dissertation work, what was your experience with using discourse analysis?

5)  Are you doing any work currently with DART?  Do you think you will continue to use DA as your primary methodology?

Transcribing ASL...

The newest Deaf Guy comic.  How very appropriate considering how I'll be spending the next few days.  Ha!

I have never really done much transcribing of ASL.  Whenever I've needed to make ASL videos accessible to parents or professors, I've just added voice over.  It's much easier!  For the grant,we do captioning of teacher videos, but it's not one of my responsibilities.  When I helped out over the summer they were just transcribing in Word and the VLC Player, so I did that.  But it (of course) took forever!  I suggested they start using InqScribe since it's the one I've used and am familiar with for spoken transcription.  But it doesn't work with VLC files.  We tried out Transana and it doesn't take VLC files either.  I e-mailed the person who is doing the transcribing for the grant to ask what she is using at this point, but I haven't heard back from her.

I think most people do use ELAN with ASL, including some of the faculty and past doc students.  They even touch on it in one of the deaf ed classes now, but I am not at all familiar with it.  So for now my plan is to convert the video and do it in ATLAS.ti or InqScribe.  I just downloaded the conversion software...*fingers crossed*.

More CA: Some Meandering Thoughts

Building Collections and Identifying Phenomena.

Okay...so we're starting out with some unmotivated looking and we're building accounts that can be "particularized and generalized".  We're looking for patterns and deviant cases.  So this doesn't seem so different than what we're always doing in qualitative research.  The guiding questions on p. 93 are helpful in understanding what we're looking for in all this unmotivated looking.  And the 3-stage model for building analytic accounts on p. 104.  (Dangit...I can't help it...I really like directions.)  I, of course, liked that they brought up the relevance of culture in this chapter.  I've been saying all along that I really wanted to know if these "rules" were generalizable to all cultures.  One of the things they mention is that Anglo-Americans use as few descriptive terms as possible.  Quite the opposite in Deaf culture.  When you refer to another person in ASL you typically give the most detailed description possible--typically a very blunt and often not at all flattering description of the person.  Saying the same things in English would definitely be considered rude, but it just part of deaf culture.  They're always descriptive, referring to people is definitely not an exception.  

A comic that illustrates the descriptive nature of Deaf conversation.  Saw this a few weeks ago and had to laugh.  It's so true!

Extending Sequences and Single Cases.

As a writing teacher, I liked the discussion of storytelling sequences.  I often get annoyed with the five paragraph essay and the constrictive formulaic writing that we teach in schools.  But I'm also torn because I teach students language delayed students, which means that most of them haven't picked up on these sequences of through the air storytelling.  And the truth is that as much as I loathe the five paragraph essay it is actually rooted in conversation.  (It's just been terrible distorted and deduced, but...)  I often say that my goal is to teach my students how to have a conversation by the end of the year.  How to tell a story and ask and answer what Lucy Calkins' calls "genuine questions."  When I was reading about storytelling sequences and thinking about this, I was thinking about how important it is for me to know how conversation works if I'm going to guiding them in this practice.  I mean clearly I know how to have a conversation.  But I don't have the meta-awareness of why I do what I do.  I just do it because I've figured out the rules along the way.  I think that just like it was important for me to build meta-linguistic awareness of both ASL and English to effectively teach students to read and write English text, it's probably also important for me to know how conversation works.   I was intentional with learning the "rules" so that I could teach them.  Kind of an interesting thought...learning about these moves, resources, and procedures that have been identified through conversation analysis could definitely allow me to be more intentional in my approach to teaching language delayed students.  But that also brings me back to the culture thing.  I think it's important that we know which of those moves and procedures differ or do not apply in Deaf culture.  I commented on Emily's blog one week about how in Haiti the deaf sign "Fine Fine Fine" to ask "How are you?"  That would definitely differ from hearing culture, but it also differs from Deaf culture here in the States.  But in American Deaf culture when someone says "Thank you", instead of replying with "You're welcome" you say "Thank you" back to them.  I've often seen hearing teachers correct Deaf conversations similar to this, because they have not picked up on procedures that differ.  I wonder how many of these there are that I have never noticed.  I think that's one good thing about using Conversation Analysis to look at classroom language.      I could see it being helpful to determine (especially in deaf ed) which resources are used and how procedures are established.  

Talk in Institutional Settings.

So...context finally matters?  Only...oh wait it kinda doesn't?  I feel like they are saying that it only matters if the participants moves diverge from what might be expected in other contexts.  I don't disagree that we influence our context, but I do think that it also influences us...so I'm still not so sure I can jump on the CA train.  As I was reading this chapter, I was thinking about how many of the moves they mentioned are often part of classroom interaction.  Asking "exam" questions instead of "real" questions.  Redistributing authorship to avoid stating views or opinions.  Summarizing or glossing  Witholding.  I think there are similar procedures in classroom interaction that lead to asymmetric interaction...which I sort of just realized is what I'm interested in.  I just wasn't able to articulate it.  Oh asymmetry.  So there ya go.  

It's kind of related.

On a slightly related to class note...

Remember how I mentioned before that I had begun to look into Systemic Functional Linguistics?  Well...I've started looking into it more.  In fact we've been using SFG (Systemic Functional Grammar) to look at student writing samples for the last week.  And...I love it!  As in...I'm pretty sure this is where my dissertation is headed.  I learned more about the development of deaf kids writing by using SFG than any of this other stuff I've been trying to use for years.  Why has no one done this before?  So...in the spring after I survive this crazy semester that I've created for myself...I'm gonna be reading a lot of Halliday and his buds.

So...while this semester has been a bit of a disaster and I have spent the last several weeks trying desperately to hold on to my sanity...there are moments of progress to be celebrated.  

And...on slightly related to qualitative research note...

The organization that I'm working with in Haiti just opened a brand new children's home for the deaf last week.  As of today, 17 children have moved into the home staffed by deaf adults.  They expect to have 25-30 by the weekend.  And in less than a week the brand new school in Leveque will open and they will attend school with the village children in classrooms staffed by deaf teachers and teachers aides that we trained this summer.  For most of the kids (hearing and deaf), this will be their first time in school...for the others, this will be their first time in school since January 2010.   

So. So. So. So. So. Exciting.  

(This is why one day I'm going to learn how to do qualitative research so I can tell the stories of Leveque that could never be captured in numbers.)  

PAH!: (An update on data in lieu of an HU)

In ASL we have this "word"--PAH!  It means finally, at last, eureka!  

PAH!

This is what my iTunes looks like right now:



This may not look this exciting...in fact, it's probably meaningless.  But this picture shows that there is currently a video being downloaded to my computer.

PAH!

I have been working on the technology to get a video in this classroom since August 29th!  :-)  After almost 5 weeks of issues with IP addresses, microphones, camera angles, encrypted files, teacher absences, and other mishaps...today was the day!  A recording of this mornings lesson was captured on camera.  The teacher and students and their signs were all visible.    And after 10 hours of breath-holding, the unencrypted file appeared on the server.  It's a beautiful day.  :-)  That is the first item of good news.

Now...the bad news is that I now have to figure out how to successfully convert this file to a different kind of video that can be imported into ATLAS.ti without losing the picture clarity necessary to see the signs.  (But I have ideas and hopes!)  The other bad news is that this means I have not yet begun to transcribe a 30+ minute video of sign language...which takes much much longer than transcribing spoken language.

But the other really good news is that I found information on the Berkeley Transcription System, which is specifically for transcribing signed languages and is aligned with CHAT/CHILDES.  Super excited about this find!  :-)  The whole goal is to capture ASL at the meaning level and transcribe for understanding and it accounts for all of the nonmanual components of signed languages, as well.   It was exactly what I was looking for...unlike the initial results of my search--Stokoe Notation, Sign Writing, Sign Language IPAs, and all this other crazy stuff that people do to put sign language into writing.

So....clearly my HU is a bit...well...nonexistent at the moment.  But...I have pictures of documents from around the room that I took a few weeks ago, and I now have a video, and tomorrow morning during my observation I'll be able to take pictures of the documents-in-use from today's video.  Then hopefully the teacher will have her log from today filled out by the end of the week.  So it's starting to come together and will be in an HU soon!

(PAH!)

[[Update:  Uhm...so I may have spoken too soon.  It downloaded to iTunes but won't actually play.  Murphy's Law.  Argh.  I've spent the last hour googling ways to fix this.  The only thing I've accomplished is exhausting my eyes and computer battery and learning that lots of people have this problem with the newest version of iTunes.  But it's still good news...it plays on the website...so I have faith that it will happen.  I have a meeting with our IT person tomorrow afternoon.  This will happen.  It will.  And if it doesn't.  ATLAS and I will may just have to part ways...because I have a video and that's the important thing.]]