June 8th Class (Please post your reflections and questions under this topic)

Dear All,

Our course has ended. Hope you learn a lot and I also learn a lot from it. And thank for your kind help. This will be a precious memory for us. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

Be open-minded, read more and think more. Hope all of you enjoy your MA career.

Also please remember to post your reflections and questions under this topic. Thank you!

Best,
Wendy

Reflections:
These days, we have learnd so much such as what is quantitative research and qualitative research, and how to write different parts in an article or thesis(abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, discussions and conclusions) by analyzing some articles.
It's pretty useful for us to have such a course, but of course we need to read more to understand and absorb what we have learned.
I appreciate Dr. De Costa' classes and lectures which were all informative, detailed and often gave me inspirations and some moments. And also thank Wendy!
Thank you.

Hey, Peter! & Wendy!
I guess both of you have been in home these days.
Since this is the last chance for writing the reflection, perhaps all of us will say"yeah, we leart a lot from this course". It is true. I bagan to have a clear knowledge about the process of wting an article, and what content we should put in each part.
However, I have to say, what I have learned from you and Wendy, most importantly, is the learning style and habit. Before we discuss something, it is necessary to read some rekated articles carefully and try to grasp the key points. Wendy's ability of capturing the important information really surprised me.
These days' learning is a good memory for me, I hope we can have more teachers just like you. Just as I said that day, hope to see you next time!
Fighting!! And, thank both of you~

Reflections:
In the last class, Peter have introduced some tips on how to write discussion and conclusion part of a theis. Of course it is really helpful as before. What I have learnt is as follows:
1) When writing conclusions, we should include a statement of significance of this research and restate our research objective and display the research results.
2) When we find research gaps, we should know what the gap means to be and what we are going to deal with this gap.
3) Discussion part should be long enough and well-elaberated while the conclusion are expected to be more concise.
Of course, what i have learnt is far from the above points. I have to say, I really learn a lot form this lecture. So I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Peter as well as Wendy! All in all, nice to meet you!

In the last lesson, Peter began with the introduction of how to write discussion and acknowledge parts, and then went over the whole process of writing an academic paper again, during which he mentioned some small useful tips as usual like always taking notes when doing the literature review, and suggested, in his view, the optimal order of thesis writing. During the eight-day seminar, I have learned a lot about how to write a standard academic thesis. Thanks to Peter, his assistant Wendy and Mr. Ma who invited them here.

Lucy.

Dear Peter,
I'm not sure if it's too late to write this to you. How's your voice？The last two weeks must be strenuous for you, I notice that you almost talked yourself hoarse. Wendy said that you got up every morning about 5 to check our reflections and questions. When I heard this, I got a big "wow" in my mind, "you're quite an early bird". Once I read a book talking about education, it said that education is what is left behind when you forget all the things that the teacher taught you. I'm not saying that I forget all the things about academic thesis writhing we discussed during the classes and lectures, I just want to stress one of the most significant things I learnt from you--careful academic working attitude gains the trust and respect. I really appreciate all your effort and sharing, deep from my heart.
Have a nice day
Evelyn Lu

Today we have the last class of thesis writing, the teacher introduced the final steps of writing the thesis including the discussions and conclusions, abstract and acknowledgements. The professor made a conclusion of what have learned before and gave us some suggestions about writing thesis. After the two-week classes, we have really learned a lot about thesis writing and know the whole process of writing thesis. Thank you!

Reflection for the 8th Day:
Today is the last day of the this course. As usual,we have learned some knowledge and acquired some new ideas, for example, conclusions are statements of the significance of what they found out and when writing a abstact, we'd better not to use the same words, and we need to paraphrase it. Besides this kind of idea, what i really want to say is the word "thanks" to Peter, professor Ma and Wendy for all your serious attitudes and great efforts. I really have learned a lot from this course. Thank you again!

Reflections on the 8th lecture
Firstly, I have to say that we all learned a lot from the eight-day lectures and we are all gratitude for Pro.Ma, Pro. De Costa, and Wendy as well for their hard work and efforts.
The last lecture dealt with some sections left, the abstract, discussion, conclusion and acknowledgments. Peter had shared with us some skills or tips in thesis writing, like the recommended proportion of each chapter in an article and always keep in mind your research questions while writing your article and etc.
Till then, we have finished the learning of academic thesis writing, we have both a macro and micro understanding of how to initiate a research and how to turn the research findings into an article.
Finally, wish you every success in your work!

We had 8 lectures of Approaches and Methods in AL Research these days. I appreciate it very much.Mr. Costa always can give us a well-designed course setting, offering us not only informative content but also well-arranged construction. He always divides us into several groups to have a general understanding of the long article, each group having one part, in order to lesson our reading burdens. We can understand most of the abstract content because he really demonstrats and interprets them logically. The ppt was also clearly designed. And he also gave us rich examples for the difficult parts.
A lot of thanks to Mr. Costa and Windy!

Hi Pro. Costa and Wendy!
I guess you must be in America now, right? I’m not sure when we will meet next time, but I’m pretty sure that I gained a lot during the two weeks from your lectures, this unforgettable experience do benefit me a lot. THANK YOU! From every sample, we can analyze the thesis in terms of different views, which acquires us a broader horizon. Every data should be strict with, which might affect the research result. And in the last two lectures, I had a clear mind of introduction, discussion abstract, etc. which are the main parts of every thesis. So due to the collective work we did in the last week, all of us can follow the step of more specific process, and I do believe that only we do those basic tasks in the very beginning, can our thesis be qualified. Thanks again!