The Next Graduate: Progress

We met in the afternoon to discuss editing and comments about his methods section. Before lunch, I emailed a scanned copy of the chapter with my comments. The student was concerned that much of what he had written would need to be discarded. In reality, we consolidated two redundant sentences with their neighbours, and my substances questions generated replacement sentences of approximately the same length. (The student is being evaluated on the word length of the thesis in his home country.)

As we worked through the text, on several occasions we strayed far from my suggested edits since the student had made good suggestions when I pointed out the issues. This is good. (I had forgotten the usual "this catches my attention, please address it in some way, but not necessarily in the way I have suggested" that I inherited from my previous supervisor.)

We worked on singular/plural agreement, in/definite articles, it[']s (he was taught they were the same, but was himself looking for the distinction), shorter/clearer sentences, and formal and informal writing. (We also covered some technical details of writing about equipment and terminology from the field. I pointed out that he would have to learn some of that from the literature and from his proper supervisor. Even though I studied in the same discipline as the student years ago, our specializations do not overlap enough that I would catch everything specific to his specialization.) I pointed out that some of of his sentences ordered clauses in ways that followed the taught rules of English and would have been commonplace perhaps a few centuries ago, but which we don't deploy presently.

He showed me his notes (in his own language) taken while reading papers since our last meeting. He says that note-taking helps him connect and remember ideas among papers! This is good. He is now distinguishing between writing text from notes about literature for this thesis, and saving writing and notes that would be relevant for his next phase of research.

The student reports success taking notes about important passages (from English texts) in one of his other languages, and then successfully paraphrasing from those notes into English. He would like to do an all English process. I will need to devise or Google some possible techniques to help him with this.

As a start, we worked on some composition. Since our last meeting, he learned some more details about a potential source of experimental error. I had him write (first on paper and then on the computer) a sentence connecting the observation, inference, and consequence of the potential error. (I'm ramping up to the formal warrant argumentation structure.)

We repeated the exercise for a tricky part of the procedure that I did not fully comprehend (he explained in person that the experiment branched). His revised text made more sense to both of us, and was shorter! Hopefully some of those idea to writing skills will help him with paraphrasing. I think that asking/teaching him to take good notes in English will complete the circuit.

I suggested that we meet his local supervisor here. He mentioned a name I did not recognise (my fault for not being great with Finnish names...).

The student mentioned differences between writing up his methods section (easier because it's from memory) vs. the literature review (easier because someone else already did the research). I'm glad he recognises some differences there. He expects that his review chapter will get fewer red marks (I used blue!). Of note, the student tried to take notes about English as we reviewed his text. I pointed out and explained the usage notes I had included in my comments ("it's", etc.) so he didn't take that many notes. I might not write in the usage notes details the next time I provide comments, and instead relay them verbally so that he has the opportunity to take notes and learn from doing so.

We used online translation dictionaries several times to ensure that new words that I was suggesting meant what the student had intended. It appears to be a great way to learn new vocabulary. I wish I had thought of that last year.

I've also been thinking about formalities. I recognize that because I will have no role in evaluating this student's thesis, I have the opportunity to be differently critical of the writing and perhaps of the research. I don't know what to do with this yet.