{"id":270,"date":"2015-04-17T14:38:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T14:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.blogs.soton.ac.uk\/ethnographicencounters\/?p=270"},"modified":"2015-04-17T14:38:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T14:38:48","slug":"year-abroad-testimony-rachel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/2015\/04\/17\/year-abroad-testimony-rachel\/","title":{"rendered":"Year Abroad Testimony: Rachel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1395828_10152389160957481_1445136103_n\"<\/a>
\nI went to France as a British Council Language Assistant and worked in a secondary school 37km from Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My project title was \u201cA Study in secondary school French students\u2019 pronunciation of English, analysing several common errors made by students and the effect of phonetic training on pronunciation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first motivation I had for writing my\u00a0project was that I had touched on aspects of second language acquisition in the second year module “Psycholinguistics” and general aspects of phonetics in “Elements of Linguistics” in first year.
\nSecondly, I had done some data analysis\/small research projects in my first and second year in linguistics which interested me a lot.
\nThirdly, the situation I was in (teaching in a school with many second language learners) was perfect to conduct a study like this \u2013 especially as one element of my project was whether teenagers are more capable than adults in acquiring pronunciation, or whether they had already \u2018bypassed\u2019 the stage where acquiring pronunciation is \u2018easier\u2019.<\/p>\n

I began to collect my data towards the end of January 2014\/mid-February. My data collection consisted of two sessions of recording students\u2019 pronunciation and a six week \u2018phonetic training course\u2019 based on a similar study with adults by Aliaga-Garcia. I recorded all of my students\u2019 pronunciation \u2018pre-training course\u2019 and then once again when the course had ended in order to establish whether their pronunciation and perception of English sounds had improved (a hypothesis proposed in the area of second language acquisition is that improved perception leads to improved pronunciation).<\/p>\n

My project received a high grade which I was really pleased with because I worked hard and planned everything carefully \u2013 it was very encouraging to see this hard work paid off”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The main challenges I faced with\u00a0project was the time in which I finished gathering data (end of March) and handing it in (end of April). Planning my data collection, gathering a group of candidates who could commit to 6 weeks and clearing ethics with the school, parents of candidates and receiving all the signed consent forms before starting my data\u00a0collection required ti\"eiffelme and patience. Another challenging aspect unique to\u00a0year abroad research project\u00a0is that the project has to be written in your second language, which can make writing more time-consuming (particularly if you ask\u00a0a native-speaker to comment on\u00a0your work, which has to be planned in advance).<\/p>\n

Conducting the research was interesting and I got to know my group of students well during this time. I enjoyed spending time with them as they were a motivated and interesting group of students and it made me more aware generally about how to go about teaching pronunciation (which I was able to apply to other classes in teaching hours). My project received a high grade which I was really pleased with because I worked hard and planned everything carefully \u2013 it was very encouraging to see this hard work paid off.<\/p>\n

the ability to work independently and keep to your own personal \u2018time-management schedule\u2019 is important in the workplace, particularly, I found, with a job like teaching.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The skills I learnt during\u00a0project were centred on time management and how to write and conduct a research project. Time management is especially important for a workplace, as I discovered the summer after handing\u00a0the project\u00a0in when I worked as an English teacher in a summer school in the UK. Time management is important in conducting a research project because you are working independently.<\/p>\n

Each stage in a research project requires more work than you would think! The data collection part is particularly time-consuming. Writing up the project can be done in a relatively short space of time (one or two months for my project) BUT the writing up stage may require a lot of \u201cfull-time\u201d days, especially as you need to check your work, make sure all your information is in the right chapters, referencing, appendices, etc. This kind of thing, the ability to work independently and keep to your own personal \u2018time-management schedule\u2019 is important in the workplace, particularly, I found, with a job like teaching.<\/p>\n

I have two pieces of advice for anyone undertaking a research project abroad:<\/p>\n

\u2022 One \u2013 try and get your data collected\/analysed\/out of the way SOONER rather than LATER. Getting the data and analysing it (transcribing interviews, doing charts, etc) can take quite a lot of time, but what\u2019s more is once you have a look at results and you start to see interesting things in your interviews\/questionnaires\/recordings etc, it automatically gives you more to write about. Then the writing stage will start to appear in a more clear-cut way.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Two \u2013 Never ever panic \u2013 it gets you nowhere, but also even if things are not going well at all, there is always a way to salvage things if you keep a clear head. With a clear head, you can at least make a plan! With a panicked and unclear head, you can\u2019t do anything!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to France as a British Council Language Assistant and worked in a secondary school 37km from Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[345],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year-abroad-testimonies-how-to-ethnography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/test-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}