I used my blog as a reflective tool while doing my dissertation project – the final component of my M.A. in ELT –  hypothesising that this would make it an even more effective learning experience for me, by mapping it, enabling me to look back on my thought processes and decisions and see what effect these had on the project development. (Other posts in this series can be found here) Now it’s over, so the reflection begins…

“Over? But it’s only now the 13th,” I hear you say. Well, I haven’t got a strange time machine, but I did submit it a day early. Which means today I get to have lunch with my CELTA tutors and visit a friend (and my goddaughter) instead of frantically finishing, printing and binding as was the case yesterday. Happy days! 🙂

It came together in the end (on about Wednesday lunchtime actually – that was when I knew everything would be ok, finally).  I was/am happy with what I submitted.  Be a while till I know what H thinks though! I expect she’ll find plenty to pull apart – she’s clever like that. But at least when I get the feedback it will be another final bit of learning that I can get out of the course. And meanwhile, nearly 4 months since the first tutorial and longer since I wrote the dissertation proposal,  here I am looking back over it all.

Of course, the big question is, did the blogging help?

The answer – yes. Particularly in the planning stages. Reflecting on the literature and my ideas, the tutorial content – it all helped the picture of what I wanted to do emerge. And in those early days, H also found it useful – she was able to see the thought processes behind the half-baked stuff I handed her!  And, the posts where I talked about the theories I was using and how they related helped me get my head around all that, which then fed nicely into the 5000 word rationale. Once the planning/early stages were over, it was most useful after tutorials, to synthesise the content and get my head around what needed doing.

Latterly, though, there was no time for it. The last couple of weeks have been 100% dissertationing. It was definitely point get on with it! And now it’s point get on with everything else that I haven’t been getting on with for the last couple of weeks…

As for this “Dissertation Diary” project, the next thing for me will be once a bit a of time has elapsed, reading back over this set of posts, reflecting on them and seeing what emerges from that…

So, bye bye little dissertation! I hope you enjoy eating someone else’s hours now!! 😉