Megan's+Wiki+3.2

One of the most important things that I’ve learned from researching my topic (why Alamance County needs a secondary Spanish language immersion program to complement the Splash! programs in a few of the elementary schools) is how to research. It sounds silly, but for me, research projects have never been difficult. I’ve always known what to search for and have been able to do a simple search on a journal database like JSTOR that will return every source I need. When I don’t find everything I need from a database search, I perform a Google search. Finding information for this topic, however, has been incredibly difficult. Last week at this time, I had no idea where to even start. I searched //immersion//; I searched //immersion education//; I searched //bilingual education//; I even searched for some big names that I knew, like Krashen. I found next to nothing. As it turns out, all the research I did in TESOL didn’t really get me far in this search because I was trying to find programs that focused on teaching native English speakers an additional language. Luckily, I went on a field trip last week for Teaching Fellows to Jones Elementary to check out their Spanish immersion program. It honestly couldn’t have come at a better time! The assistant principal there gave me an entire folder of information and sent me information about organizations like CAL (the Center for Applied Linguistics) that have devoted a great deal of effort to topics related to foreign language immersion education (yeah, searching for that in Belk’s article search doesn’t return anything useful either…). As I began reading through the resources that I received (AND THEIR BIBLIOGRAPHIES), I found small keywords to search for, like //additive bilingualism// and //French immersion in Canada//. I ended up finding a TON of resources that I could use, but only because I began reading bibliographies, typing potential article names into an article search, and reading the results I got (I found almost none of the articles I explicitly searched for…). The research that I’ve done has framed some of the questions that I am asking parents and immersion teachers as part of the interviews I’m conducting. Of course, I’m not always going to have an epiphany of a field trip that will help me begin my research, so in the future, I’ll be able to find resources on topics a bit more easily by using general keywords, reading those resources and bibliographies, and trying to find information that way. Just in terms of research, this has been an eye-opening project. Questions: 1. At this point, what do you think of a secondary bilingual program in ABSS? 2. Have any of you had any difficulties finding information about your topic? If so, how have you changed your research practices to find information?

Kelly's Comment: Megan, I often have trouble with research. It seems to be the part that always takes me the longest because I get caught up reading all sorts of information that is not relevant. I guess it’s really just a learned skill. However, one thing that has helped me is refworks. Refworks is a tool in Elon’s library website which shows all of the sources that have cited an article and all of the sources it cites. This makes it very easy to find more information related to your topic. It also shows how credible a source is because if it has been cited in lots of other scholarly work than you know it is reliable.