Tuesday, February 07, 2006

I feel validated

I am pounding away on chapter 2 of my thesis, which, for those of you who have not had the, ahem, joy of writing one, is the literature review. This is where you are supposed to summarize and tie together relevant research on your topic to show where the holes are and hence where your piece fits in.

So since I do language teacher training, I am updating and beefing up my lit review by reviewing first the textbook that was used to teach the language teaching methods course that I took as part of my French teaching undergrad. And it's kind of fun. (Too bad I didn't feel like reading this textbook was "fun" when I was enrolled in the class...) (Wait - you mean things we don't like or see the relevance of at one point we might like, refer to, and even depend on later?! No way! This shakes my whole view of the world!) I am finding statements and descriptions and charts and activities that are EXACTLY what I have been telling the language teachers that I train. !!! So cool! I feel like I want to take this book to the next workshop with the teachers and be like, "Look! I'm not an idiot! It says so right here!" :)

I think those ideas crept into my head because of my having read so much of this book several years ago when I was in the class, and because of the fact that I work for and with the professor who taught me that class using this book, so those ideas seep into all our projects, but it is REALLY NICE to find that I have not just been making things up :) over the last couple of years as I trained language teachers, but that I have been doing just fine.

So there. Go me. hmph.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah. I saw one of last semester's dance majors - a major not known for liking my tech class where we cover, among other things, digital video as a teaching tool - checking out a video camera from the lab in the McKay. Kinda' validating.