How I Wrote the Last Chapter of My Thesis

DRAFT ONLY

By Janpha Thadphoothon, Ed D Candidate in Education (TESOL)

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I’m standing in front of you this morning to share with you, as the title of this workshop says, my experience of writing up my thesis, especially the last chapter. I’m a learner like you. When I read an email, I hesitated to accept Dr Francesco Sofo’s invitation. I’m afraid that I don’t know enough of academic writing and may not have much to offer.

I, nevertheless, decided to accept this challenge as it was promised not to be more than 10 minutes.

I would like to use this opportunity to create a conversation with you. As far as learning is concerned, I strongly believe in one thing: collaboration. Together we learn better. I’m not using this occasion to lecture you. Rather, I would like to create or set up a kind of information gap in which I need to listen to your view to understand and then reply to you, and you need to listen to my view in order to understand and then reply to me.

I’m a doctoral student at the University of Canberra. I’ve been working on my qualitative study. It entails three cases studies and the title of which is 'Enhancing Critical Thinking in Language Learning through Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning: A Preliminary Investigation'. I developed an intellectual framework for analysing critical thinking language learning. Addressing the bigger picture, the model proposed three aspects, namely, (1) communication, (2) reason, and (3) self-reflection. I created a learning environment called the Bamboo Enterprise in order to put the conceptual framework into practice. Within the Bamboo Enterprise, the participants engaged in group projects under the common theme `the environment'. The study also analysed the potential of this learning approach in fostering critical thinking in language learning. In short, the approach I have proposed is not an approach to teach 'about' critical thinking, but 'for' critical thinking.

The approach has the potential in enhancing critical thinking in language learning.

The keys identified were collaboration and support. Groups that did well were those that were successful in their collaboration. Support was found to be very important, especially at the task level.

Ladies and gentlemen, this should be more than enough for me and my study. How I wrote my last chapter? This morning I would like to base my talk on the performer’s model of critical thinking in language learning. I should like to share with you a bit of my experience. What does my experience tell me?

Projected on the screen is a simplified version of my intellectual framework. Let call it the ACA model.

Let me invite you to consider a big picture based on the model. What does my experience tell me?

Firstly, my experience tells me that conventions matter. By conventions, I refer to both linguistic conventions and rhetorical conventions. As an Asian student, I need to adjust my logic and rhetoric to suit the host country of my degree. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to adhere to the ‘cannons’ of my field. I believe that the good writing of my predecessors, their classic studies and comments are valuable. I think we are writing for the public, so we need to learn and use the public language, the language that is appropriate to the academic language, the language that appropriate to our discourse community. Such language, ladies and gentlemen, can be found in our teachers’ writing. They are models. We need to use appropriate rhetoric.

Secondly, my experience keeps telling me that my aims are important. We all have aims, our preferred messages and our intentions. While we learn and appreciate our teachers, we need to keep our own voices (in a Bahktinian sense). I often ask myself: What do you want to achieve? For me, and I think many of you in this room, I would like my finished thesis to have its place in a library. I would like it to be useful and on book shelves of as many libraries as possible. Of course, one of our aims is to graduate with a degree we prefer.

My experience tells me that I need to take my audiences into serious considerations. Who are our audiences? We are writing for our peers and a few examiners. The examiners may prefer that we adhere to certain conventions I mentioned a moment ago.

The three aspects above, as you can see, are closely inter-related. Lastly, I’d like to draw your attention to the centre of Dr Sofo’s hourglass model of thinking: group, cooperation or collaboration. I have my own term, which is ‘talk to people’. According to Sofo, the group is where we get to test our ideas and reasons for our position. It’s a means for us to be more open-minded, which is the highest value. The group can bring out all facets of thinking: mental-total awareness, observation skills

how we value differences, capacity for empathy, openness to new ideas and values

ability to balance emotion and cognition.

My experience tells me that ‘talking to people’ would enable me to better understand my audience, their expectations of my work. Talking to other people is a means to better adjust my aims, an avenue for me to test my understanding. Needless to say, we can cooperate to learn about conventions. Let me end this talk with the quote from James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA: ‘Nothing new that is really interesting comes without collaboration’.

In sum, I wore my last chapter in ways that suit my audience, my aim, and appropriate to the conventions. My vehicle is cooperation or ‘talk to people’.

What have your experience told you? Let’s share.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here.

This is a modified version based on the talk at the Research Workshop Program, the University of Canberra, on Thursday, February 3, 2005.