“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” -Zora Neale Hurston
This week we have wrapped up our book and written our last reaction paper. We have spent a lot of time reading and discussing assessments, their effectiveness and good assessment practice. Now what is left is our literature review, final self-reflection and our Live Text portfolios. For me, the literature review is causing me the most trouble. I have written a literature review before in my research courses, but this one has been really challenging. I think that is because I have had a hard time pinning down a good topic. So far I feel like I am as the quote says "poking and prying" without "purpose". I wanted to research the Versant/ Phonepass because I was interested in the book's mention of its accuracy despite being a computer-scored speaking test. Unfortunately, I was only able to find a few articles that even mentioned it and most simply used the test as their assessment of choice for very different research. Now I have expanded my research to include other speaking assessments, but I am having difficulty determining what I am looking for. I am having a hard time finding resources that refer to the effectiveness of assessments without discussing general standardized tests used or that do not just reference the test as a tool used in other research. I am making some progress, but I am not as far along as I would like to be and I am starting to get worried. I know I will finish it, but so far it has me stressed. I am considering changing my topic once again to the effectiveness of language placement tests. That may yield more reliable results. No matter what, I know that I have to make this happen. And I will.
Hi Heidi, I am on the same boat as you. I am still trying to find enough resources to help me determine which topic I would like to choose. I really like the quote you chose. Don't worry, you will do an excellent job on your paper. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI am also in sort of the same boat. I found some resources that talk about my topic but none of them are really connected to each other. I guess I am just going to do a general overview of my topic and how these articles relate to that. Some other resources looked promising but they were not recent enough.
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