After looking over Alison's comments on our previous post, we agreed that our question is too wide, and we could achieve a more detailed research project if we made our question more specific. Therefore, we decided to focus primarily on child directed speech in televised programs, and how it has changed throughout the years. However, after further discussion we soon found fault in this question, as it was still rather wide spread. Further discussion finally led us to our revised question:
What are the features of child directed speech in televised programs?
Within this question, we still wanted to look more closely into structure, pitch and paralinguistic features, as these factors tend to vary depending on the program.
Secondly, we discussed our proposal, planning in more detail our methodology and readings. We found it imperative that we split the data collection fairly, ensuring that each person does an equal amount towards the project. Therefore, we decided on each watching two episodes of a different program, analysing it as we go along. Some of the children's programs suggested were: In the Night Garden, Winnie the Pooh, Sooty and Sweep and Pokémon. Within the process of choosing these, we wanted to select a number of old and new programs, which contained speaking and noises from the main characters of the show.
Finally, we discussed some readings which we would like to look at throughout our project. We all had a few readings ready for discussion, however some overlapped. Our temporary list of readings found so far for our project are as follows:
- D Lemish - Television as a talking picture book: A prop fro language acquisition
- DL Linebarger & D Walker - Infants' and toddlers' television viewing and language outcomes
- M Rice - The role of television in language acquisition
- M Rice & L Woodsmall - Lessons from television: Children's word learning when viewing
After planning the proposal together, Hannah kindly volunteered to write up the notes into our completed proposal by Tuesday of week 3.
Agenda for the next meeting: Friday 18th of October
- Look further into what readings to include
- Talk in detail about what programs to use
A lot of progress here - very encouraging. I don't know the readings you've found, so well done with that. (I do suggest that you format the references in the standard way whenever you write them down; it's a good habit to get into, it's good practice for you to learn the system, and it should help to ensure you do it appropriately in any final writing up.)
ReplyDeleteI suggest that you try to identify and make explicit some criteria for including any given broadcast in your data. I also suggest narrowing your question even further - 'televised programmes' isn't really an accurate description of your intended data, and I predict that you will find it easier to identify features of interest if you compare one kind of programme aimed at children with another one.
So I suggest that you consider perhaps either change over time (broadcasts from the 1960s, 70s, etc) or change acording to the age-group of the intended audience (e.g. babies, pre-schoolers, 5-8 year olds, etc.). If you keep as many of the parameters as you can constant, the features of CDS that may be relevant, and the differences between your two types of data, should be easier to identify and analyse. E.g. comparing an American cartoon for 8 year olds with a British drama for 11 year olds is much less likely to work than comparing programmes with puppet characters aimed at pre-schoolers from two different time periods.
Hope this helps - and keep up the good work.