Logan Anderson - ENGL6401-50

 As we approach the end of the turn, I continue to consider how I can best address my research purpose and research questions. One point of interest that will change one of my main points is the idea to include an analysis of each branches style guides. I think there could be value in this especially considering it firmly roots my paper in the TWDR discipline. I'm also looking as to how I can better highlight English Language Learners so that my collaboration with the education department is more than just a footnote in my research. I also want to orient my conclusion to be more of instructional recommendations and proven instructional methods. I think this will allow my paper to be more open to presentation so that I can possibly present the material at a conference. So much to consider as the semester continues its slow crawl to the end.

The research gap I am trying to close is how universities can better prepare veterans for the academic setting. There are already plenty of institutions that want to cater to veterans just to soak up the GI Bill funding, but with a graduation rate of less than 15% many veterans are not completing their degrees and they are losing the benefits they worked so hard to gain. I am not aware of what the standard student graduation rate is, but I have to believe that if colleges were only graduating 15% of their student body that that college would not be keeping its doors open for very long. Failing to ensure students are adequately prepared is just as much a failure on the institution as it is on the pupil. My hope is to find what resources have helped push foreign exchange students to succeed in academia and how those resources can be offered to the veterans as well. Every class of student deserves a fair and equitable education regardless of background or experience.   

  As we begin to draw closer to having to put rubber to the road, I have had the chance to really consider the angle I want to take in my thesis. I know that my thesis will be on the linguistics of transitioning veterans but the direction is a little less fleshed out. I have compiled articles below of the different approaches I think would be effective, but I am still not really certain of just how I want to approach the actual research component of my project yet. I think there is value in showing the correlations that can be drawn between foreign exchange students and military students by showing the level of “Code Switching” taking place or through an analysis using multiple literacies theory. Overall, still have a lot of details I need to finalize before I can really set on any one direction. My (tentative) 10 sources: 1.        1 .  Becoming a better military writer by Todd Greg Airpower Journal   This article describes how a members deploym...

 As I began to reflect on what possible topics I could research, I kept coming back to what I would like to do my thesis on. The topic that interests me is on the linguistics of transitioning military members from active duty to the academic realm and how prepared (or really unprepared) they feel when entering academia. I've been thinking more and more how I will approach this subject and the best way to accumulate data to best write my final product. I think in this pursuit, I will be working mostly with qualitative research data collected from veterans both on and off campus.  I also would like to further a goal with research with working with the school system but that's a bit harder considering the students are minors. I know there is potential still with working with the staff and faculty, I would just need to think what that would look like some more.