Practical Project Design

Practical Project Design > Unit 2 > Practice section

Join Song Qin, Li Yue, or Wen Jing

Are you with Wen Jing? Yes? Start from here now.

Do you remember her problem? Wen Jing's problem is: .

Wen Jing finds it suitable to adopt Analytic Method, Socratic Dialogue and Questionnaire. She enjoys working with boxes and tables. So she has designed three of them. You help her by completing the tables.

Analytic Method

Reminder

Analytic method is a close examination of the way the problem is stated. With such a method, you can explore the consequences and implications of the problem.

Wen Jing examines her problem statement carefully and underlines the parts which need a close examination.

My problem statement reads: Most of my students do not do the oral practice I ask them to do after class.

My thinking	My Notes
I have underlined three key elements. I think I need to ask myself questions on these three elements. In other words, I need to consider the following three 'vs.'s -- a) most of my students vs. only a few students b) written homework vs. Oral practice c) in class vs. after class Now I should write down my questions in the column on the right --	Why Why Why

More reflections: My students know the importance of oral practice and are willing to do more practice. Then if they do not do the practice after class, they may not know how to do it. Then my problem is caused by myself, not by my students.

Tentative conclusion:

Now Wen Jing and you have finished examining the problem by Analytic Method. Try to give it a further examination by making a Socratic dialogue.

Socratic Dialogue

Reminder

By making a Socratic dialogue, you ask yourself a series of intelligent questions and try to answer them at the same time. You often draw analogies to see if there are fatal contradictions or inconsistencies in your thinking or to see if you can learn anything from analogies.

My problem is that I cannot get my students to do oral practice after class. Now I write down some questions in the column on the left and write down my arguments in the column on the right.

My questions	My arguments
Q.1 What do I mean by 'Oral practice'? What sort of practice do I expect of them?
Q.2 Is it possible for an individual student to take a dialogue as an example and create new situations by himself or herself?	Well, I've told my students it would be most desirable that they do the practice in pairs.
Q.3 Then do they do pair work ?
Q.4	Different students had different plans or arrangement after school. Some needed to go back home at once (since their home were far away from school); some preferred to have sports activities together; and some would like to work on problems on maths or physics or chemistry together.
Q.5 So is it feasible to ask my students to do oral practice in pairs after class?

By using the analytic method and making a Socratic dialogue, Wen Jing has come to realize that it is not feasible to ask all students to do pair work after class. She thinks that it will be much better to design a questionnaire to find out students' opinions on the matter before she takes any action.

Wen Jing's Questionnaire

Reminder: How to Use a Questionnaire

1. Choose the informants.
2. Work out a list of things that call for students' opinion.
3. Design a draft questionnaire.
4. Try the draft questionnaire out with a few students.
5. Revise and finalize the questionnaire.
6. Distribute the questionnaires.
7. Collect the questionnaires.
8. Process the questionnaires.
9. Evaluate the findings.

It is your turn to materialize the 9 steps.

Now go to Working Section to do Stage 2 of your own project. If you have chosen Wen Jing's project as your own, you can either copy those parts you did with her that you find useful as part of your own project, or do your own project in your own way.