美國教育類博班心得隨筆

居然讓金光大此等高人點名，小弟真是受寵若驚啊！！！

首先說明，雖然本人博士論文處理有關遊戲在語言學習上的運用，不過小弟主修是語言學，

分在課程教學所下面的，所以對教育科技的了解沒有金光大多(捂臉

從申請上來說，美國教育類的博士班的確可以直接申請，不需要碩士。不過課程設計上會

變向強迫你再拿一個碩士。以TAMU為例，學士畢業直攻博班需完成96個學分，而有碩士

學位則是修64學分(51個in-class hours, 13個research hours)。所以強者我朋友趕著四年

畢業的結果就是找教職的那學期都還在修課，因為他就是大學畢業直攻博班。(不過他強到找教職可以拒絕港大兩次，其實也沒差了XD)

小弟當年雖然想讀博士班，不過原先想研究的方向偏向理論語言學，後來陰錯陽差到

TAMU讀書，老闆剛好對語用學(pragmatics)，尤其是L2 Pragmatics(developmental aspect of communicative competence in nonnative speakers, Bardovi-Harlig, 2013)特別感興趣，所以碩論寫了有關英語為第二外語學生請求行為發展之研究(Interlanguage pragmatic development in requests in emails).而博論走上遊戲則是因為有一位同學正在做相關的題目，他研究學生打魔獸世界時對詞彙和溝通能力的發展過程。所以小弟老闆就指定我做相關的題目，把重點放在L2 pragmatics。

另外關於教育科技方面，小弟系上新開了一個教育科技方向的program,裡面有一位松田老師(Dr. Noboru Matsuda是從CMU過來的，做的是人工智慧在教育上的應用。細說就是研究人員優化smart tutoring agent(不知道中文怎麼翻),然後再由機器去指導學生(SimStudent project).另一位

老師則是做閱讀教育的研究。教育科技的好處就是好拿funding，這兩個老師分明手上有IES 200萬與300萬美金的計畫。但是，基本上教育科技和HCI一樣，需要各式各樣不同的人才，所以想進

入這一塊定位要清楚。不過如金光大說的，只要你能證明有基本的研究能力，進到博士班後方向

都還可以改，小弟也沒想到選來選去居然會做遊戲相關的題目啊(茶

最後，怎麼能證明有基本的研究能力？基本上要把paper投上好的journal難度很高(教育類頂級的journal都標榜80% rejection rate)，所以一般申請博士班老師也不會期望你有這種record.但是統計能力就是一個佐證研究能力的方法。雖然教育研究有質化與量化研究，但是大部份的老師還是以量化為主。統計能力強在設計研究時有很大的優勢，因為你很清楚那些方法有什麼優缺點(e.g., ANOVA只能用balanced design,然後如果violate homogenity of variance結果要仔細驗證)。不過其實你有公費，只要老師相信你的潛力願意收你，其他的東西都可以進來再學。以上...再次感謝金光大點名!希望金光大和小弟的拙文能引出更多高手指教!

翼鵬

德州農工大學

丙申年仲夏書於潛龍齋

Book Review of Ex Libris: Confessions of a common reader

Anne Fadiman’s book Ex Libris contained eighteen exquisitely crafted essays which chronicled the author and her family’s dedication to their books and bibliomania. The first impression the book left me is its Latin title and its lists of low frequency words which conveyed the author’s erudition on reading and writing. Indeed, it is only natural that Fadiman would have an excellent command of Latinate words, with a long pedigree of writing in the family (a renowned television personality father and World War II correspondent mother). Fadiman (1998) wrote her family “viewed all forms of intellectual competition as a sacrament” (p. 14) as she and her family would complete for the now defunct weekly television program “G.E. college”, a show where two teams of four students representing different universities went against each other for scholarship money. Self-described as Fadiman U., she confessed they only lost to Brandeis and Colorado College in six years of competition.

            This is definitely a book for people who cherish books and like to read a book about books as Fadiman (1998) recounted her family’s unbridled love to books and editing. Specifically, “Insect a Carrot” described about one time when the Fadiman sat down in a restaurant for dinner, they could not help but fervently start proof-reading the menu as if the act of editing would have satiated their appetite. Or in “The Catalogical Imperative”, where Fadiman confessed her love of reading and editing Nordstrom catalogues even though she should have no business receiving those catalogues. Another topic which may interest bibliophiles is Fadiman’s description of other famous authors’ book collections in “My Odd Shelf”. For example, George Orwell collected ladies’ magazines from the 1860s and he enjoyed reading them in his bathtub. Moreover, Fadiman’s classification of carnal and courtly book lovers would definitely bring a smile to many people interested in underlining, making marginal notes, tearing pages out or continuing reading books until they fall apart.

            Despite these accolades, there are still some limitations to this book. First of all, this book reads more like a collection of autobiographical essays whose purpose is to present a bibliomaniac’s life-long love affair with her husband, her children and her books. Therefore, readers who are specifically looking for guideline on writing will definitely be disappointed because the only tip they can get is to mimic Anne Fadiman’s style, which is helpful to some extent, but nevertheless is not the same as to read a writing guide. In addition to its content, some of the essays are commissioned pieces that Fadiman wrote in a column called “The Common Reader” in Civilization Magazine (Lehmann-Haupt, 1998). Although Fadiman did bring some age-old topics such as secondhand books, reading aloud and plagiarism a new life, lack of a central theme make these chapters disjointed. Finally, readers not familiar with Western literary works would find some part of the book unreadable due to lack of prior knowledge on the subject. Although more familiar authors like George Orwell or John Updike were mentioned, authors like Ernest Thompson Seton and Father O’Reilly are less familiar to the general public. The unfamiliarity may impede comprehension of what Fadiman (1998) was trying to get across in those passages.

            Overall, Fadiman provided witticisms and entertaining details on a seemingly mundane subjects like editing and reading. If you are an avid reader who enjoys Western literature and are undaunted about the sometimes trifling task of looking up some esoteric words that you have never before encountered in your life, this is the right book for you.

翼鵬

德州農工大學

乙未年仲冬書於潛龍齋

Linearity of Time and Education

Lo thy dread empire, Chaos is restored;

Light dies before thy uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch lets the curtain fall

And universal darkness buries all.

(as cited in Doll, 1993, p. 86)

Introduction

   As an international student pursuing a doctorate in a foreign country, my friends constantly asked me whether they should go for a doctoral degree after they receive their master’s. Their concern is that the time spent on getting a Ph.D. degree will not be worth the investment. It is as if an educational process is a linear timeline, which you start from your bachelor’s degree and end in the culmination of Ph.D. Their thinking always baffles me but the above quote from Pope helped me put their thinking in perspective. In essence, as Slattery (1995) has argued, the philosophy of modernity has resulted in a rejection of chaos by emphasizing the manipulation of time through expert time management and quantifying the achievements through finishing “assigned tasks” (e.g., finishing your Ph.D. degree in three years with a number of good publications). This concern for racing through your life courses has resulted in popular metaphors such as time flies and carpe diem, as if time is an entity that can be controlled. Or alternatively as Huebner (1975) opined that the belief in the linearity of time exerted pressure on educators to establish clear and verifiable goals. In this paper I attempt to first describe a linear perspective on time and what postmodern perspective on education can offer an alternative understanding of time.

Modernist Perspective on Time

   According to Slattery (2013), the modern mechanistic view of time has its origins from the Seventeenth century and the Newtonian vision of the universe as a giantclock system with time marching forward like a stream in a trajectory that is irreversible. Thus because time is conceptualized as never-ending and irrevocable, there is also an incessant motivation for a goal-oriented constraints because you simply cannot waste your time. Slattery (1995) opined the solution to this constant constraint on time for educators is to develop technology and organizational structures that will allow for more efficient allocation of time. However, these technological innovations did not fundamentally solve the problem of the thinking that human progress can be conceptualized as linear sets of events which can be broken down, segmented, isolated and then evaluated. This perspective as culminated in the policy of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which stipulated observable students’ progress through standardized tests.

   However, as Dewey (1938) wrote, we are always living in a historical present and it is the present moment that is the focus of our experience. The Buddha also cautions in Diamond Sutra that you cannot own hearts of past, present and future because they are all illusions and has nothing to do with your Buddha nature. Happily, postmodernism has offered us a way out of this impasse by integrating the fusion of the past and the future into the existential present. In other words, the past and future are combined when we are living at the present. The following section elaborates on how a postmodern perspective on time can offer us a way out of current deadlock.

Postmodernist Perspective on Time

   Slattery (1995) has explained that a rejection of the assumption of concrete, historical time in favor of a process-oriented view of education, or in Deweyean sense, experience. As Hueber (1975) emphasized so convincingly “The very notion of time arises out of man’s existence, which is an emergent. The future is man facing himself in anticipation of his own potentiality for being” (p. 244).

   The implication for post-modernist perspective on time is Doll’s (1993) vision of curriculum as a process and learning and understanding results from dialogue and reflection. Alternatively, Pinar (2013) conceptualized curriculum as consisting of four stages, the regressive moment, the progressive moment, the analytic moment and the analytic moment. Or as Slattery (2013) argued, “Reconceptualized curriculum theory understands time and history as proleptic- that is as the confluence of past, present and future in the synthetical moment” (p. 68). The implication for educators is a focus on learners’ autobiographical experience and the interconnectedness of all experiences. It rejects the strict adherence on quantifiable results and linear progression of time with an eclectic celebration of chaos. As Doll (1993) has explained, chaos is not purposeless and destructive but quite complex and orderly. It is a complexity best exemplified by the butterfly effect, which M.I.T. climate scientist Edward Lorenz discovered in his simulation of weather patterns. As Slattery (2013) argued, this dynamic pattern exists in the classroom and every teacher recognizes this reality. Therefore we have to lament that we are trying to use an unfit model to a reality that only exists in our imagination.

Conclusion

   So what is the response that I gave to my friends worrying about whether a doctoral education is worthy of investment? I used my personal experience as a reference point. Being a career A-minus student, I am not so brilliant that I entered the doctorate program straight out of college. I have applied and been rejected by graduate programs of linguistics, in which my passion lies. It took some twists and turns and some fortune on my part to finally land a spot working on linguistics in an education department. However, the time lapses actually did not affect my study. In fact, I not only gained more experience with linguistics by reading papers by myself but also gained practical work experience when I spent two years working as a English teacher in Taiwan. Therefore my advice to them is think long and hard before you make a decision, and if you decide to pursue your doctorate, dedicates yourself to your study. If you work hard enough, the time lapses actually would not harm you!

翼鵬

德州農工大學

乙未年仲夏書於潛龍齋

Prosody of Multiple Englishes

Prosody of Multiple Englishes Lecture Notes

Guest Lecture by Lucy Pickering at Language Matters Working Group, April 17, 2015

Prosody: Suprasegmental features of sounds such as stress, intonation and tone

Multiple Englises (Kachru, 1992): The recognition that English comprises of three different circles used by people of different ethnicities

Inner circle: Native Speaker Model (e.g., American English, English English)

Outer circle: Institutionalized varieties of English (e.g., Indian English, Singaporean English)

Expanding Circle: Emerging varieties (e.g., China English, Japanese English)

Functions of Intonation in English

Rising—Inclusive, shared understanding (e.g., The pope is Catholic?)

Falling---Assertive (e.g., Time is up)

Level----Neutral (e.g., The assignment is due on Monday night)

The problem of prosodic cues in the speech of international teaching Assistants

No use of rising intonation for rapport-building similar to Gumperz’ (1982) study of Indian waiters

No Contrastive stress

E.G.,

Zhuo: The phone number is 979 4225143

Wei: 9794224143?

Zhuo: No 979 4225143

The lack of contrastive stress led to linguistic penalty (Roberts & Campbell, 2006)

翼鵬

德州農工大學

乙未年孟夏書於潛龍齋