Concept-Paper.doc

Concept Paper1. What is a concept paper?Its a concise version of a proposal. The concept paper is a brief sketch of a project idea that serves as an advance organizer for the full proposal and provides a medium to assess the idea in a number of contexts.2. Why do you need a concept?a. It helps to organize, think through, and refine your idea/s so that it can be shaped into a fundable proposal.b. By reducing proposal writing to an intermediate, smaller, more manageable task, a concept paper can prepare you to develop full proposals with more assurance, self-confidence, logic and timeliness.c. As you map out the foundation for your research project, you will anticipate problems, weaknesses, needs, and evaluate the relationship between the problem statement and solution.d. Before committing yourself to a project idea, you can in effect test out its feasibility and significance.3. How long is a concept paper?3-5 pages4. What questions should be answered in your concept paper?a. What is the problem? (What are you going to work on?)b. Why is the project needed? ( significance )c. How are you going to conduct the project? (methodology)d. What results do you expect to achieve? (findings)5. What is the structure of a concept paper?a. Problem statement (what is the problem)b. Research plan (method & objectives)c. Subjects/ participantsd. Data collectione. Analysisf. SummaryA sample concept paperThe Acquisition of Word Knowledge in Beginning ReadersProblem StatementAs an obviously essential part of reading, word recognition processes have been a major concern of psychologists since before the turn of the century through present times (e.g. Huey, 1908; Estes, 1977). The research literature has, of course, added to our understanding of these processes, especially in pointing out that factors like quality of visual stimulus, word frequency, orthographic regularity and contextual constraints all contribute to word recognition (Spoehr, 1978). However, the relative contribution of each of these factors to efficient reading and their importance during the various stages of memory and processing remains somewhat of a mystery and the subject of current investigations.On the other hand, the application of the results of such studies to the field of education is seriously limited by the nature of word recognition experiment designs and conditions:1) Studies tend to focus on words in isolation. Context is usually defined in the narrow sense of surrounding letters or letter combinations, at most in terms of a given phrase or sentence.2) In tachistoscopic presentations the readers processing time is restricted externally and there are time pressures for rapid response. There are qualitative differences between having these limits imposed by an experimenter and controlling them oneself in reading (Spoehr, 1978).3) Subjects tend to be skilled readers (college students). Whether the same processes operate in the same way in learning to read remains open to question.4) Even when school-age subjects are used, studies are rarely longitudinal, and so they have little to say about how word recognition abilities are developed.In summary, although tachistoscopic studies have helped identify the factors involved in word recognition, they have failed to address directly a chief concern of educational researchers and teachers-how do non-readers, particularly school-age children, develop, over an extended period of time, the ability to recognize words quickly and efficiently as they engage in the process of gaining meaning from text. In the proposed study, this concern will be addressed by examining more specific, related questions:1) What are the stages non-readers go through in acquiring proficiency in word recognition?2) What dimensions of childrens word knowledge contribute to their reading achievement?3) How do differences in dialect and/or instructional method affect stages of acquisition?Related LiteratureWhile there seems to be a wealth of current worthwhile projects examining both comprehension and isolated word recognition processes, the study of the gradual acquisition of word knowledge has received relatively little attention, evolving theories of childrens stages of oral reading errors (Blemiller, 1970), spelling development (Henderson, 1978), and metalinguistic concept of word (Papandropoulou and Sinclair, 1974), as well as several recent investigations of the relationship between instructional techniques, and particular aspects of childrens word identification strategies (Barr, 1975; Cohen, 1975; De Lawter, 1975; Richek, 1978). (see attached bibliography. Of course a more comprehensive review would be included in a full proposal). What is needed at present, and what I am proposing, is a comprehensive investigation of the acquisition of word knowledge which incorporates all of these dimensions in an examination of beginning reading.Research PlanThe project will attempt to address this issue in several ways. The aim of the study will be to examining childrens acquisition of word knowledge at its most crucial period-during the first year of planned reading instruction, first grade. Furthermore, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding, childrens acquisition will be examined simultaneously across several dimensions discussed in the current literature: patterns of oral reading errors, number of sight words, stage of spelling development, and metalinguistic awareness of word.In addition, through some sample selection, the study will provide evidence about differences in development of word knowledge due to instructional and dialectical differences. (However, it must be understood that in this regard the aim of the study is Not to produce an evaluative comparison of methods of teaching reading, but to acquire information about how children under different teaching conditions differ in their word attach strategies and their conceptions of how words work).SubjectsChildren from three different first grade classrooms will be used in this study:Class 1 Class 2 Class 3Middle class white middle class white middle class blackDialect-midland dialect-midland dialect-black EnglishTeaching method- teaching method- teaching method-Language experience basal reader language experienceFifteen children matched for socioeconomic status and reading readiness (early readers will be excluded) will be selected from each class to participate in the study.Data CollectionData will be collected four times during the school year: the third week of school, December, March, and May. Data to be collected will include: number of known sight words, analysis of oral reading errors for selected stories ( two readings of each), stage of spelling development as determined from a short spelling test and samples of free writing performance on Concepts of Print Test (Clay, 1972) and stage of metalinguistic awareness, as determined from analysis of a brief interview (for a possible format see Papandropoulou and Sinclair, 1974 and Zutell, in preparation).During the May collection period, level of reading achievement for each child will be determined using the reading subtests of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test.In addition to this formal data, teachers records and examples of childrens performance will be collected on an on-going basis. Towards the end of the project, case studies nine subjects (one from each class on each of three ability levels) will be generated from a combination of formal and informal data.AnalysisAs noted above, stages of development along these dimensions of word knowledge have been tentatively established in the research literature. The aims of the analyses of data will be:1) to provide evidence either supporting or denying the validity of the sages within each dimension, an, if appropriate, to offer alternative models,2) to compare the validity of stages across teaching and dialect condition,3) to determine if there are significant correlations in development between the various dimensions of word knowledge,4) to determine whether these correlations are affected by teaching and/or dialect conditions, and5) to determine how much performance on each dimension contributes to the difference in reading achievement at the end of first grade.A mixed model MANOVA and a multiple regression analysis will be used to investigate the related hypotheses.SummaryCurrent models of reading and supporting research have failed to provide adequate information about readers acquisitio