Research project.doc

此文档收集于网络，如有侵权，请联系网站删除Research projectIntroductionThis research project aims to do a report on the process of how one written task was completed. It is a case analysis which requires writing about an organizational change effort in an organization by briefly describing the intended change and its rationale, by analyzing the impact that the change had upon the culture of the organization or work-group affected and the effect that the pre-existing culture had upon the intended changes, and by evaluating the way in which the change was conceived, planned and implemented. For the purpose of clearly presenting my writing, an interview with the lecturer from the chosen unit of study was also done to provide some supportive evidence. There are many factors needed to be considered when doing a written task, however, in this paper, only five of them will be mainly concerned. This paper will roughly be divided into five parts, each of which will discuss the issues around one specific factor referring to some real examples of the chosen assignment. The first part designates the factor of Audience of the assignment. The second part mainly concentrates on answering some questions about the Purpose of the assignment. The factor of Discourse Community Expectations is the focus of the next part, which seems to be a new term for me. Then, in the fourth part, the Language Features of the chosen assignment is illustrated in terms of the issues like vocabulary, objectivity and hedging. The last part exhibits the Structure of Text by briefly exemplifying how the chosen assignment was structured. AudienceWhen referring to the word Audience, some specially appointed terms will appear in my mind, such as drama, film, performance and speech, all of which are related to both the visual and aural senses. Although a written assignment cannot be aurally sensed, it still has audience, which is also discussed as readership in this part. The topic of Audience in writing is not new, and it has been discussed controversially mainly concerning with the question who and what the Audience actually is. In the field of writing, the Audience deals with the question how people can learn to adapt their text to the assumed readership and at the same time learn to write for their readers. Before learning to adapt the chosen assignment of mine to the assumed readership, it is better to define the term readership first. Readership means “The number or type of people who read a particular newspaper or magazine”. According to this definition, it is easy to identify the readership as the specific lecturer from this unit of study who reads and grades my assignment. As the lecturer of this unit of study, he is assumed to know the knowledge of change very well. However, in terms of new knowledge, the lecturer expressed his expectation that “not only understand the change process, its impact on the organization, but also the literature and research about it”. Thus, background introduction to the situation of the school, process of the intended change are both discussed in my assignment. As for the issue of audience awareness shaping what I need to explain and how to explain it, regardless of combining the literature and practice of culture and change together, more emphasis is put on the research into the intended change in order to meet the expectations of the lecturer.In the specific context of completing the assignment task of our study, the readership of our writing is limited to the lecturer or the tutor only, or probably our classmates. However, when writing the case analysis, except for the lecturer, the intended readership is also assumed as all the stakeholders of the school where the change happened. Because the intended readers may not possess necessary theories to understand a fact or concept, the writer must sometimes provide this information to the reader, and the writer will also worry about the matters which shape the readers interpretation of the information. For the stakeholders, including the principal, teachers, students, even the government and so on, they are assumed to have knowledge on the rationale of making the change, i.e. they know why to change, but they expect to know how to make the change, which is seen as their expectations of new knowledge. For example in the chosen assignment, the stakeholders do not have the knowledge of the mutual impacts between change and culture, thus they are not aware of the theory that change will not be successful as the culture remains unchanged. For this reason, the knowledge of the literature is briefly explained and integrated into the case analysis to assist them understanding of the way of conducting change in the school.PurposeAs mentioned in the introduction part, the chosen assignment is to write a case study about the change effort. It aims to describe, analyze as well as evaluate how the change is conceived, planned and implemented in the school. Except for the description of the intended change and its rationale, it also requires the analysis of the impacts and relationship of the intended change, the people and the culture of the school. We are also required to evaluate the way how the change is made and to refer to the organizational culture and change literature in the analysis and evaluation. Thus, in my opinion, we are expected to discuss both the literature as the theory and the change effort as the practice. Before discussing the literature and change effort, it is important to have an introduction to the situation of the school for the purpose of better conducting the analysis and evaluation of the change effort. When describing the situation of the school, the theory is seldom used and the lecturer also agreed that there is no point to refer to theory when stating the actual facts of the school. However, referring to analysis and evaluation, theory must be referred to.According to the interview with lecturer, we not only are expected to refer to theory simply, but also “to demonstrate, have the capacity to analyze and evaluate the theories critically”. In my point of view, the concentration of his expectation is on “critically”, not only to agree or disagree, but also to present our own ideas and comments, which can be seen as a kind of writer voice. Grabe & Kaplan argued that writer voice is “an individual academic style.” Writer voice also shows the identity, point of view of the writer. For example, in the third part of the chosen assignment “Literature: Analysis of the mutual impacts between change and culture”, not only the actual situation and the theory of change and culture is illustrated, but also my own ideas are integrated into the discussion. Theories are used to explain and support the situation, and my own ideas are used to comment and complement the insufficiencies of the theory. However, the writer voice presented in the third part of the chosen assignment just plays a tiny role in discussing the culture and change. On the contrary, in the “Evaluation” part of the chosen assignment, writer voice plays an extremely important role since most of the evaluations are based on my own experience and knowledge with the assist of some references. No matter what and how important the role the theory and practice play in writing an assignment, their common goals are the same as to provide a clear and convincing case analysis to the readers. Discourse community expectationsBefore discussing the problem of discourse community expectations, it is needed to know what the discourse community is. The concept of discourse community is very important to the research of students writing since it provide means of exploring the social factors that shape them. Swales offers six comprehensive criteria regarding discourse communities: A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community had acquired some specific lexis. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. Ramanathan & Kaplan argues that it is more valuable if the term “discourse community” is taken to refer to particular academic disciplines. Referring to the criteria and the definition of discourse community as well as the reflection of the chosen assignment for this research project, the name of my discourse community can be regarded as Organizational Culture and Change, which has the assessment criteria as a particular academic disciplines and mechanisms. When being asked about the shared values of our discourse community, the lecturer simply answered “able to have discussions”. It is true that we have discussions nearly every lecture either in the form of free discussions or group discussions about the setting questions after the presentations. Through discussions, we are able to communicate and share ideas together. It is noticed that in the Unit of Study Outline there are grading criteria, which are used to assess students assignments. However, they are just some general requirements for a good assignment without any specific instructions of writing. Except for the grading criteria, there should be some standards or contents assumed by our lecturer for grading the assignments and these assumptions can be seen as the discourse community expectations. Odhiambo states the assumptions as “collect your ideas, proper referencing, high distinction which can be published at Masters level, in depth of discussion.” In terms of the assignment, he also argues that “it is not just about the writing itself, but also the process of conceiving, planning, and implementing the change; the steps of small and big changes; how to relate the change to the literature and research; how relevant the theory to the change around us; reflecting on this issues, reflections; and integrate the change with the literature.” For the chosen assignment, although it cannot meet all the assumptions due to the limitations of time and length, it is regarded by me as a good model for my own writing since it not only presents the whole process of the change effort in that school, it also explains the initiatives, the hinders, the motivations, the steps as well as the comments and suggestion of the change. It is the combination of theory, practice and critical review of the literature. In addition, it contains some discussions which are valued a lot in our discourse community. Language featuresReferring to the language features of the chosen assignment, this part mainly concentrates on three issues: vocabulary used, objectivity and hedging addressed by discussing the role both academic and technical vocabulary play in the chosen assignment and how objectivity and hedging are applied with some real examples. VocabularyAccording to Hirsh, there are four types of words: high frequency, academic, technical and low frequency. For the chosen assignment, the vocabulary used will be only discussed in terms of academic and technical. Nation argues that a technical word occurs frequently in texts in one subject area, but not frequently in other subject areas; an academic word occurs frequently in a wide range of academic subject areas in arts, commerce, law and science, but not so frequently in other types of texts such as novels and newspapers. From the above notions of technical and academic vocabularies, it is probably very hard for me to identify the roles they play in the chosen assignment of mine. For example, when describing the curriculum of the school, some technical vocabularies such as physics, politics, chemistry and geography are used, but just for once. In addition, when talking about the literature, some academic vocabularies such as evidence, motivation, significance and attribute are used, but also not frequently. Thus, it may be concluded that it matters a little in the roles of technical and academic words play in my writing. ObjectivityThe issue of objectivity is probably hard for students to achieve when writing. According to Hirsh, objectivity means that ideas are based on facts rather than on personal feelings or beliefs or motives, while subjectivity is totally opposite. From this interpretation, some parts of my chosen assignment can be regarded as objectivity since they just indicate the facts and situations of the school. For example, when describing the background of the school, no personal feelings, beliefs or motives can change the nature of the school, thus, it is easy to address the issue of objectivity here. On the contrary, when doing the evaluation and making recommendations to the intended change of the school, subjectivity cannot be avoided. In addition, as discussed in the previous parts, writer voice or subjective opinion is used to critically comment on the change effort. Thus, when doing a case analysis and evaluation, it is impossible to totally address the issue of objectivity. HedgingWhen first facing the issue of hedging, I am a little confused. According to Lewin , hedging is a concept that evades definition. Hyland views hedging as the expression of “lack of complete commitment to the truth value of an accompanying proposition”, however, in my country, statements are usually made completely for the purpose of clarifying ones position. Thus, it took a period of time for me to address hedging in my writing. Before expressing my own ideas, others possible opinions would be considered first. For example, when evaluating the intended change of the school, some words like appear, seem, likely and possibly are used to achieve hedging of my writing.Structure of textAs for the structure of the chosen assignment, no guidelines can be referred to since the lecturer always expresses his attitude that assignment should be structured to meet the needs of presenting different understanding and opinions of different students. However, when writing the chosen assignment, the rough structure of it can be analyzed out of the detail of the requirements for the case analysis. For example, the chosen assignment is divided into five parts from the aspects of background introduction, intended change, change effort, evaluation and conclusion, which constitute the structure of my writing. In order to be readership friendly, subheadings are used all the time. Being asked about the number of subheadings appropriate for the assignment, the lecturer just stated that “there is no specific requirement” , which again emphasizes his expectations of the structures of our writing. Not only for the chosen assignment, but for all my writing, it is appreciated a lot the functions of the paragraphs, each of which is used to present or solve one specific issue with both the connections to the previous and following paragraphs. When writing the chosen assignment, many important decisions are made to achieve the goal of presenting a good assignment, such as the sequence of the subheadings, the connections of t