I really enjoyed the conference yesterday. I learned a lot about what the actual presentation process consists of. The hardest part is not necessarily the presentation itself, but in fielding questions after the presentation. The critique can be helpful, but its delivery can be a bit abrasive. Since my research interests are still not clearly defined, it showed me what some of the current areas of study are. One thing that I noticed, in terms of technology, is that everyone had created a fairly similar powerpoint presentation, and everyone read directly from it. This seems to be the standard in the field, but I found it is kind of boring and unimaginative. The study that most interested me was Luke´s study reporting on the quality of study done in the field.
I believe that his rationale was valid, though it was met with some opposition. I think it is important that statistics be reported completely and accurately. I believe there is a problem with the over-generalization of small samples findings to whole populations. This is true in SLA and Linguistics in general. Once, I was critiquing the inadequate sample size of a sociolinguistic study and the answer that I received in response was that it is hard to find good samples. I acknowledge that this is true, but I still believe that "it´s too hard" is an unaceptable excuse.
I am not sure what study that I would have done differently, but I am very interested in the work that Solène is doing with gesture. I would love to see the study expanded (better yet, conduct different studies) that look at the use of gestures by the same people in different situations. It would be interesting to see if the same gestures used in teaching are used outside of the classroom and in what contexts they are used.
It was very good to see both experienced and inexperienced speakers at the conference. It proves that when I present in the future, I need to practice in front of an audience first. I also need to know everything possible about the current topic and my study so I can accurately address questions. It also seems like presenters sometimes spend too much time speaking of previous research and too little time (the become rushed) on their own results. Time management is a vital skill in presenting.
1 comment:
Sorry to grab onto your coattails, Daniel, but I still need to be made a contributor to our blog.
I really enjoyed the part of the SLS Symposium I was able to attend. I thought Montrul's keynote was very interesting. The one question that remained for me was how results might've been different if they had also looked at learners of Spanish who were L1 speakers of a language that DOES include noun genders, like French or German, instead of only English. I realize this is a different question than what was really being looked at in the study, I'm just personally curious.
I enjoyed Solène's presentation on gesture, too. It made me wonder how often I, myself, use gesture in teaching, and whether my students ever do. I felt bad for Solène that there was a slight technology snag...I know how frustrating that can be, but Solène handled it wonderfully.
I also enjoyed seeing these presentations, as they were much different than what is normally done in the field of German culture studies (i.e., reading papers, word for word). It's nice to see a true presentation for a change, as opposed to a reading.
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