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Who's afraid of the data question?
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Fri, 03/13/2009 - 20:28
I'll be presenting a talk at the conference in Cardiff about writing data commentaries at university and how similar or different this type of writing is to that expected in the IELTS writing question 1.
I've just posted my slides and handouts on the programme page and would welcome any feedback. You can find them by using the search function with my name and the date of the presentation: 2.04.09
Let me know what you think.
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 09:19
#2
Hi Fliss,
Nice to meet you again on this forum. I think we had some interesting discussions last year.
Thanks for the tip about the slides. I agree, they probably are a bit too heavy for the presentation. I was trying to find a balance between too much text and not enough text for the people who might only read them online. Plus to be honest :-) I'm still trying to teach, prepare end of semester exams and start supervising some MSc students for their dissertation research so I probably didn't have time to make them as interactive as I should have.
I'd be interested to hear how you get on with data commentary and whether your students found these ideas useful. Let us know.
Olwyn
Fri, 03/20/2009 - 12:41
#3
Dear Olwyn
Your materials provided on this site are of great help both for teachers and students. It's a pity I haven't them when descibing graphs and charts while doing the research. For me it was a great challenge to describe the visual reresentation of the statistics data + interpret them.
As for your presentation I agree with you that it's Ok for online, but to use it with face-to face audience it would be better to make some changes in the slides content. You were absolutely right to make it 'heavy' keeping in your mind the users of the Forum, I hope. Sure you'll keep in mind your listeners too.
Personally I will share your ideas with my students as most of them are future Engineers and at our classes we often describe figures, schemes and graphs, so now thanks to you we can widen the range of visualities to be described.
I wish you good luck at the Conference. Pity, I won't be present. At this time we will be learning with students how to comment data:)
Wed, 04/08/2009 - 15:26
#4
Hi Zira and everyone,
The video of my session is now available in the programme so you can see whether I managed to convey the idea, even with too much text on my slides :-)
There were actually some interesting comments from the audience, which may not have come through well. It was suggested that IELTS did not mark candidates down for appropriate interpretation of the data but only if the comments given did not relate in any way to the data promp.
It was also suggested that the data question is a good one because it is virtually impossible to pre-learn it from web-based writing examples.
What do you think?
Olwyn
Wed, 04/08/2009 - 19:56
#5
Hi Olwyn
I've just seen the video of your presentation using the support materials downloaded in advance. So, it was easy for me to follow the presentation. Frankly speaking, all the materials including slides 'became alive' with your comments. For me they work all together helping to catch the main ideas of your talk. Now I understand why there is much text on the slides :-). Your presentation was effective and highly professional as it makes to think.
I'm impressed by the work you've done. I mean analysing and critical thinking on Theories and experience, sorting cases, classifying and designing some kind of a system of rules and/or tips. I liked your idea of sentence frame for tables very much. Planning to try with my students the innovative ideas kindly shared by you. If you are interested in the feedback whether they work, I am ready to share.
I agree with the comments on learning how to deal with data questions by doing instead of pre-learning from the writing examples that I think many teachers and students do.
As for IELTS I am not sure whether it's right to focus only on the relevance of comments to the data prompt without paying attention to content. I think content should be also assessed and hope it is assessed, isn't it?
Wed, 04/08/2009 - 20:36
#6
Hi Zira,
Thanks for your nice comments. I'm glad you think the materials will be useful. I would very much like to hear your comments about how they work with your students.
I agree with you that content is also important in the IELTS question. In my presentation I tried to say that the moves: locate the data and highlight the main finding give us an organisation for the writing but of course these also contain the content. If the content was incorrectly described then the student would lose marks, even if they had followed the organisation correctly.
Olwyn
Great Olwyn! You've taken a very real problem and provided some good 'take home' solutions. The contrast between IELTS/non-IELTS move structure is very clear and useful, and thanks for the reading list!. The 'claim + evidence' v 'evidence + claim' examples are likely to be very useful for IELTS students (given the tendency to provide either evidence OR claim ;)) as are the structured questions to help students understand the chart. One comment - your slides were great for downloading and reading, but some might be a bit heavy on text to read during a presentation. I'm about to 'do' data commentary with one course soon, so you've given me some great ideas!
Fliss Hope