Week 5: Digging Deeper

Now that I have refined my research topic to the knowns and unknowns of the spelling rule ‘i before e except after c’ I have begun to search for both scholarly and popular sources. The scholarly sources I have found are from Google Books, Google Scholars and JSTOR and the popular sources I will use will be news article and reference sources.

Google Books will be used to locate dated spelling books or manuals of English spelling online that make reference to this spelling rule to understand when it was primarily introduced and to identify who created the rule and Google Scholars and JSTOR will be used to find journal articles about the rule’s use in history as well as modern day English education and also to retrieve scholars’ opinions on this rule’s use in teaching. In JSTOR I have narrowed my search to The English Journal, English Education and The Journal of Educational Research to retrieve journals that are specific to the discipline that will be relevant to English, spelling and grammar. Also, I previously cited in my research plan that I was going to use the database called Literature Online but I have found that the search result that I received were not as helpful as I had thought they would be so I have chosen not to use it and I will be looking for another database instead. In terms of texts I also expect to find books as source aside from eBooks that are mainly spelling books and manuals that include explanation of the spelling rule or citations of its originator.

The news articles I plan to use are reports on the concern of the rule’s use in academia, similar to the article I have retrieved called “Schools to Rethink ‘i before e’” which is from BBC News. It discusses the issue of England considering removing the ‘i before e except after c’ spelling rule in teaching. I hope to find alternate articles like this from newspapers and literature or education magazines and news clips. I hope these popular sources will add depth and will contrast the expositional aspect of the podcast. The references sources I have already made us of are dictionary definitions from the online dictionary called Dictionary.com and the Oxford Canadian Dictionary 2nd ed. to define terms that I will explain. I also plan to use the online encyclopedia on Britannica.com to retrieve information on concepts of the spelling rule that I will explain in the podcast episode.

I am sure there will be other scholarly and popular sources that I will come across in the research process that I haven’t listed, but here are the sources that I have considered using for the final podcast.

References

 

BBC News. (20 June 2009). Schools to Rethink ‘i before e’. BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8110573.stm

Reed, Alonzo (1884). Word lessons: A complete speller adapted for use in the higher primary, intermediate, and grammar grades. Clark & Maynard.  

 

Sever, Franklin Pierce. (1892) The Progressive Speller: A Complete Spelling Book. D.C. Heath & Company.

Tallant, Anne (1834). The practice book; containing lessons in dictating, with questions, intended to remove difficulties in English instruction, and to communicate interesting historical and natural facts (2nd ed.). London: J. Hatchard & Son.