(Solved): TMA04- a comparative analysis of texts

than 30 March 2017. TMA 04 is a plan for the project which will form the end-of-module assessment (EMA). For the EMA project you are asked to make a comparative analysis of texts (the different options available will be discussed in a later section). TMA 04, the project plan, is a formative assessment, so there are no marks awarded for it. Note, though, that the EMA asks you to respond to the feedback your tutor gives on your plan. Ten per cent of your overall examinable component score (OES) will be an assessment of how you have responded to the feedback. For TMA 04, you should write no more than 1500 words, excluding references and appendices. The appendices should include two of the texts you plan to use in your EMA. At the end of your TMA, please indicate the number of words you have used (excluding the bibliographic references and appendices). Before you start this assignment, refer to the general guidance on writing assignments in the Assessment Guide [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip) ] , including the marking grid in Appendix 2. You should also read through the EMA rubric, as this TMA is intended to be your project plan for the EMA. Please submit your TMA as a single document in .rtf, .doc or .docx format. Previous: TMA 04 Guidance notes for TMA 04 For TMA 04, you will set out your plan for your EMA project. The EMA project provides an opportunity for you to apply some of the analytical tools, skills and ideas that you have acquired in the module, to relate them to your own particular interests in grammar and language use, and to give you experience of, and insights into, the realities of analysing linguistic data on a small scale. Your tutor will comment on the appropriateness and feasibility of your plan, which should help you to develop your project ideas and improve the quality of your project work and report. For your EMA, you need to be willing to make significant adaptations to your project aims and design in the light of feedback. Therefore, to help your tutor envisage the scope of your proposed project, please provide two texts of between 500 and 5000 words, which can be in a ‘raw’ state (i.e. without line numbering or formatting). You should be prepared to be flexible regarding your choice of texts for the EMA as your tutor may suggest that you choose different ones. Please note that your tutor cannot find different texts for you, but can only advise on the general principles for identifying appropriate texts. The more coherent and detailed your plan, the more substance your tutor will have to comment on to help you successfully complete the EMA. Previous: Using the corpus tool Organisation of the project plan Your project proposal should address the following areas, which are discussed in detail in the sections that follow: title the rationale and main conceptual themes for the investigation the aims of the investigation a description of the data you have begun collecting, and how you have selected and will collect it two of the texts you intend to explore the methods you expect to use to analyse the data you collect, including any use of the corpus tool the timetable for the proposed project any ethical issues you have to consider/have already considered during text collection references. You should read the EMA rubric to get an idea of how the EMA itself should be structured, and of how the plan relates to the project. Title This should be a concise description of your proposed project. The title should show how the ideas from the module can be related to a specific investigation which is of interest and/or practical and immediate value to you, the analyst. Previous: Title Rationale for the investigation Here you should discuss the significance of the project you are proposing and your reasons for this choice. You should discuss these issues in personal and/or professional and/or practical terms, by answering questions such as: Why have you chosen this topic to investigate? What aspect of it is interesting to you in a personal capacity? What aspect of it is interesting to you in a professional capacity? Previous: Rationale for the investigation Aims of the investigation Here you should set out clearly what you wish to find out through your project work. Project aims are often most effectively expressed in the form of one or more specific investigative questions. When such questions are posed in a suitably clear way, they will help you and your tutor to reach an understanding of the purpose of your project, and help you to evaluate your completed project. These questions need not be formal hypotheses which you aim to prove or disprove; they may be expressed in exploratory or open-ended terms. It is essential that you formulate your aims clearly at the proposal stage, so that you will be in a position to evaluate the success or otherwise of your project in meeting its aims at the reporting stage (the EMA). It is in your interests to be as clear and specific as you can at this point, as this will put your tutor in a much better place to provide you with valuable feedback that can benefit your EMA. Draw on your intuition and think about what kinds of differences are likely to emerge between your texts. You do not need to write about your predictions in the assignment, but it might help you to identify which features are relevant to focus on. Previous: Aims of the investigation Main conceptual themes for the investigation You should discuss these issues in academic terms, by answering questions such as: What are the relevant lexicogrammatical features in the module materials which lend themselves to your investigation? Bear in mind that in your EMA you will be assessed on the extent to which you demonstrate understanding of E304 materials, so it is a good idea to be specific about this in TMA 04 in order to get feedback from your tutor. Ten percent of the mark in the EMA is awarded specifically for your response to tutor feedback, as part of Criterion 7, Skills of independent study. Give careful thought to selecting texts that will best help you to answer your investigative question but which, at the same time, can feasibly be collected in the time available and in the settings to which you will have access. Your choice of texts is crucial as it will be the basis for your analysis and thus provide the evidence upon which you base your conclusions. You should give clear reasons as to why these particular texts/corpora have been selected and relate these reasons to the aims of your investigation. Written texts If you decide to collect unpublished written texts, such as student essays, business reports, email correspondence, etc., make sure that you have the permission of the writer(s) and, if necessary, protect their identity by making them anonymous (see also the later section on ‘Ethical issues to consider’). If the texts are from a published source, note down the precise reference details, including the copyright holder. Small corpora In Application C in Block 1, you were given precise instructions on how to compile your own small corpus. Make sure you follow these instructions if you decide to put together your own small collection of texts for corpus-based analysis. Available corpora If you are intending to analyse an existing electronic corpus, you will need to give details of how you will obtain it, what it contains, how many words there are and why it is suitable. Possible additional data For some projects you may wish to collect data that you will not analyse grammatically but which will provide you with an additional perspective on the same phenomenon. For example, in a project involving student essays, it might be useful to collate the written comments by the tutor/teacher on the students’ work, i.e. their judgement of the quality of the writing. This will give you useful insights into, and possible explanations for, the grammatical patterns that you observe in the data. Previous: Description of the texts Guidance on collecting data The notes that follow provide general guidance on collecting different types of data. More detailed information about data collection is provided in the EMA. You will need to refer to the EMA when planning your project work in more detail. this stage you need to indicate what methods you expect to use in analysing the data you collect. If you are not using the corpus tool, this section will be very brief. If you do use the corpus tool, you should describe the coding schemes and provide a rationale for using them. This will enable your tutor to provide detailed feedback on how appropriate the schemes are. Note that you should refrain from undertaking any analysis at this stage. This should not be done until you embark on the EMA itself. Previous: Methods used to analyse the texts Timetable Indicate when you will finish collecting your data (if you need more than the two texts submitted with this proposal), when you will begin your analysis, and how long you expect each stage of the project to take. Ensure you build in time to read your tutor’s feedback on this proposal, and be aware that they may suggest you collect different texts if the ones you have are unsuitable. The timetable will enable your tutor to evaluate the feasibility of what you are proposing and to help you design a project of the right scale. Note that students are often advised to scale down their EMA plans. Previous: Timetable Ethical issues to consider Depending on your project topic, you should include some comments on issues such as data confidentiality, copyright, and ways in which you will respect the privacy of individuals and the confidentiality of data relating to them. You should also read the guidelines drawn up by the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), ‘Recommendations for good practice in Applied Linguistics student projects [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip) ] ’, which can be found in the Assessment resources page. If you have collected texts from individuals, you will have to get their permission and clarify that you have done this in the TMA. Previous: Ethical issues to consider TMA appendix Your TMA appendix will consist of the texts you plan to investigate for your EMA. These could be: two texts, of between 500 and 5000 words. If your texts are longer than 500 words, you only need to attach a sample of up to 500 words of each of them. two sets of texts (e.g. five news items from a tabloid paper compared with five news items from a broadsheet). For this option you only need to provide one from each five with your proposal. one text and a larger reference corpus. The corpus could be one of the four corpora used on the module (these are lab reports from the field of food science, blogs about food, history essays and telephone conversations). For this option you only need to provide a sample of up to 500 words of both texts. Bear in mind that your tutor may advise you, in broad terms, to collect different texts – or to shorten your texts – so don’t spend too long selecting or working on the texts for your EMA until you have received feedback on your proposal.

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