How to Write a Dissertation Proposal
The Outline
1) start with a broad topic
Reading instruction for example
Use the key words that they use in the industry
Go from the big picture down to your focus
Mention the gap in the research that you are filling
*There is a wealth of existing research on ___, but _____ has yet to be the topic of review. Color coding sight words and treating them as any other words
How will I be original?
2) research aims and questions
The purpose of this trial is to identify the key instructional methods that bring about the greatest fluency and accuracy scores for 1st graders.(for example)
Scope is what you are going to cover - and what you are not going to cover
The research on ___________ is diluted, but the area pertaining to ________has largely been left unexplored.
3) - literature review
Demonstrate the understanding of current state of research
Demonstrate that your work will be filling a gap in the research
Show that there is a need for this research
Inform methodological decision making design
What did other researches do before - borrow from them or improve upon their process
Use analytic writing, not descriptive writing
4) methodology - research design
How are you going to do it
Philosophy
Quantitative
Sampling
Data to collect in what form
Collection method
5) - reference list
Use referencing software, such as mendeley
I mean you could type up the reference list on your own, like by hand, but why?
I got this information off of a YouTube Video I watched when I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to write this proposal.
Honestly, the University has a stock load of templates, but they didn’t help me on how to get started. After I asked for a new Dissertation Chair, things went a bit better. The new Chair actually had a few Zooms with me and another professor that was, well, from my region of the world. Then I saw the video and make an outline, and said, damn. I can’t be the only one struggling with this, so sharing is caring. Please let me know if you feel it is useful.
My Dissertation Proposal - in regular words
There are many components to reading instruction in order for it to be effective. Phonemic awareness and decoding, fluency and comprehension, and vocabulary and writing, to name a few. Phonemic awareness involves knowing the little parts of the words and the sounds that the letters make in order to sound out or read words. Fluency is the rate at which one reads the words. Comprehension is understanding what you are reading in the first place. And then there is also accuracy, the percentage of words read correctly. Writing, handwriting and spelling are also an important part of learning to read. However, nothing is as important as motivation.
Phonemic awareness and decoding are the smallest parts of reading, but have the biggest impact. There are 26 letters of the English alphabet, which make 25 consonant sounds, 19 blends, and a lot of two and three letter sounds (called digraphs and diphthongs, lord knows why). Imagine how difficult it is for children just figuring out their speech to now put the sounds to letters, it's an uneven matching game.
If the children are able to sound these letters out in time, and with some sort of confidence, it’s called reading. Being a fluent reader, is being able to read 200 words per minute with feeling and sort of like how you speak when you’re having a conversation. To be perfectly honest, the 200 words are for high school. Since most newspapers are written between 8th - 10th grade level, this level is considered fluent. Keep in mind that 200 words per minute is the goal, but as students are moving toward this level in their school career, it is important to have an accuracy rate above 90%. Anything less than 90% creates frustration for the reader and they no longer want to try.
Being able to match word thought to pen and paper is also a major part of learning to read. This Is where vocabulary and spelling come into play. Knowing the right word to use (you see that pun?) and how to spell it are important in becoming a fluent reader. But how the heck do teachers expect students to spell, have good handwriting, find the right words, when they are still learning to read? Including these components as a part of being a fluent reader is like defining the word with the word. It's overkill, and doesn’t really make lots of sense. If the process doesn't make sense to a student, it might be hard for them to keep trying.
Where do you get the motivation to read? Teachers read and re-read, and play games and have activities all themed around learning the alphabet sounds, and blends and decoding words. But is it enough? After 30 years of teaching reading, students haven’t gotten any better at reading. I mean the 4th grade average for reading on grade level is still a little over half. Like you mean to tell me that there are all of these smart ass people in the world, there are people that can read, and read well, and still we can only reach half the damn students? Like what is happening with all of that research that seems to be floating around?
Where is the research that says which method is best so we can get on with the business of teaching these students to read? I figure maybe they are focusing on the wrong thing. So the english language has about 170K words, and the smallest parts are supposedly ‘unsoundoutable’. So why not try to sound them out, along with the other 169,800 words that are decodable. Instead of trying to teach by memorization and games for the sight words, maybe they should try and decode them instead.
Sight words comprise less than 1 percent of the words in the English language. The list was derived from the American Heritage Book and Dolch and Fry took their list largely from this book. Mr. Dolch focused on the words that KG to 2nd graders would see in their reading and narrowed it down to 220 words. Mr. Fry derived his 1000 word list by looking at the words that are used the most in books, and those words are from 3rd to 9th grade. Remember how I said that the newspapers and everything is written on a 9th grade level? Well that means that students would have to master these 1000 words, be able to read them fluently, getting 9 out of 10 words correct, and reading with feeling (teachers call this prosody). Now imagine if a child can’t read the smallest of these words, the sight words. The sight words are the most read words that they will come across and it is super important to get these right.
There are lots of articles and papers on how best to teach reading, with word families, whole-word, with or without phonics. But there aren't any articles on how to teach sight words. There aren't papers on how to teach the smallest part of the English language, so that students can go on to conquer the rest of the words successfully. You know how all the teachery people say that the real work starts in 3rd grade? And that before 3rd grade you are learning to read and in 3rd grade you start to read to learn? What if that is a made up line? Like what if they only say that because of the lists or something just as ridiculous.
I was reading at 3, with no games or anything. I just read. I used to cry because I couldn't read, and I really wanted to, so I was already motivated. My family just read to me and pointed as they were reading and I just got it. It wasn’t until I was much older, and running a school that I realized that not all children have that internal motivation, or support system for their dreams and desires.. I just feel like if we are starting with young children and teaching them to read, we should start with what they do know: colors. Even children as young as two know their colors. Well, colors and Fast Food Logos, but that’s another dissertation. Color coding has been used to organize everything from project boards and papers to grade to traffic around the world and everything in between. And don’t get me started on highlighters! The people I work with know exactly where I’ve been, by the trail of color-coded papers, labeling and emojis. Honestly the world is made better by color coding and why should learning to read be any different? I just feel like it cannot be a coincidence that I love math, organizing and color-coding, and that there are 44 sounds in the English language and 22 colors of maximum contrast.
Research Questions
Does the word family method of teaching sight words result in greater fluency than any other method?
Do games and activities for sight words result in greater fluency than any other other method?
Does color coding the sight words result in greater fluency than any other method?
Does coding vowels and consonants for sight words result in greater fluency than any other method?
All the articles and books I’ve read about teaching sight words and learning how to read are pretty much the same. They all state that these words should not be decoded because they don’t follow the usual pattern of words. The suggestion is to use repetition and a host of activities so that the children will become familiar with the words upon sight. Even though professors told me that the research shows that color coding doesn’t work, I really couldn’t find anything that put it so plainly. What I did find were articles that showed how color coding helped with math, writing, and organizing information. One article even showed that you can study with the colors and then take the test in regular old black and white, and there was no difference in the result. And I think this was a study on learning German or something. This was my biggest worry, because I know that teachers don’t have access to colored printers and the world was not about to start printing words with color-coded letters in books if this thing turned out to be a good method.
The school where I will be performing the study has an enrollment of just over 500, and serves grades Pre-K to 5th grade. There are about 100 first graders that I will approach for the experiment. Across the district it's not hard to find a school that is performing under par. However traditionally, the schools at the far north and far south of each district are the hardest to find teachers for. And as such, the school that I want to work with is in the southernmost part of the district and has had a history of less than legendary reading (and math) scores. It is 98% low income and the students have difficulty with reading. Not the diagnosed reading difficulty, but it is just hard for them. Some have been to pre school, but not all. Parents are struggling to survive, and do not have the resources or time to read to them every night and build their at-home library.
Specifically, the school I'm looking at has 5 classes of first graders. I’m guessing about 20-25 students each. Now, since I know that most of the teachers use the games/memorization/repetition method to teach the sight words, at least one of these teachers will be using this method. I’ll use one of the classes as the control class, and do nothing, just whatever the heck the teacher is already doing. One or two classes will use the method with the blue and red letters, and the other class will use the method I’ve devised of color coding the phonemes.
This Is going to be a quantitative study, because I just love numbers. Each student in the study will take the same pre and post test. The test has all of the words on tit that overlap from the Dolch List and the Fry List. There are 85 words that overlap. I’m thinking about asking the teachers what they use to teach sight words, and identify that method in the experiment. The problem is: what if they don’t know what they use, they just teach it? Then I’ll lump them all together as the teacher method.
The study will last for 20 school days, or 4 weeks, only for 10 minutes a day. I want it to be an easy method for others to replicate, no matter which is successful. Each day, teachers will focus on 5 sight words, which will be given the day of, and not before, that way the teachers aren’t able to help the students out ahead of time.
Getting these scores may present a challenge. I was thinking about testing the student every monday and friday, to see if there was an optimal time for the learning to set in, perhaps to the most words retained, you know like a bell curve situation. Or maybe to see if there was some learning loss over the weekends. Either way, I have to get someone other than the teachers in the study to do the testing. Y'all know I have trust issues. Plus, I saw how the teachers at the afterschool program were marking the scores less than actual, so that they would be able to run the program the following year and receive funding, and I don’t have time for that kind of foolishness. So maybe 6 words a day and then the test every friday, would be better, and still be within the guidelines. Clearly, I am just thinking as I type. I’m just going to give the students 2 minutes to read as many words as they can, and I’ll check and circle them on the paper. 5 columns of 17 words, and the column order will rotate weekly. I’ll do one even better. Every week, I will randomize the words using the random number table. This way, they will not be memorizing the words in the order they saw them previously. Told y’all - trust issues!