A2 lesson work - data analysis

Now is the time to evaluate your data. Use these questions to help you and post your thoughts to your blog.

1. Do you feel it is a representative sample of the whole data pool?
2. Does it offer enough data to analyse/test your hypothesis with/write 1500 words about? Is there too much data to handle and how will you select from within that data pool if so (you don't have to closely analyse each piece of data - just the significant aspects of the whole data sample in context - but you will have to be able to go through it all to count whatever it is you need to count/quantify).
3. What can you quantify/tabulate?
4. Are there any more useful aspects of your data that you were not originally going to look at? Do you need to change the focus of your investigation as a result (- see me urgently)?
5. How does the theory you have read so far illuminate your data (what does theory tell you to look for that you have found or found the opposite)?

Choose which frameworks and/or other sub-headings will be most useful for testing your hypothesis e.g. for examining sociolect you might use lexis and grammar.

Start annotating your data but keep a clean copy. Annotate it with what jumps out at you as interesting/unusual/significant first of all, then go through it again with theory in mind, again with frameworks in mind and then again with your hypothesis in mind. Get to know your data really well. Then revisit questions 1-5 again before you start to write up your analysis.

I will want your introductions, methodologies and analysis drafts in on Monday the 4th November. These need to be redrafted and polished several times before I see them. Use test readers, read it aloud, check any grammar you are not sure of. If I get something shoddy in, I will not mark it and you will forfeit your chance to get detailed feedback. You need this feedback to do well, I assure you. Sometimes big changes need to be made, once we can see how it is all working together. This, I am afraid, is part of the process and why the draft deadline is so early. We will start the media texts when the analysis is well underway and I will set the deadline for the draft of that when I know what is reasonable. After the October holiday, we will be writing conclusions and evaluations, so I can see those and get them back to you before Christmas. I will give the investigations and media texts together a final check over before the fixed deadline for coursework submission of 20th Jan.