Research method

After toying with an idea of conducting a questionnaire (quantitative) and analysing the data in a qualitative way, I have now decided to use yet another tool to gather the data: 

It's going to be a diary.

I have been trying to find a research method which would be suitable for a qualitative approach to a study but would not be too time consuming for my participants and for myself but still produce sufficient results.

In literature, I have come across the following methods for qualitative study:

- interviews 

- observations

- diaries / reflective journals

I reckoned the first two are not manageable for this small-scale project for two reasons: I couldn't possibly interview 16 students (this is how many there are in class) in the time available after class. Observations, on the other hand, are practically not possible - I would have to act as both teacher and observer at the same time, which I believe wouldn't bring the desired effects.

While reading about methods to conduct qualitative studies, I came across diaries as a common tool used to gather data. 

Advantages of diaries:

- It is a flexible tool in terms of time - students can decided when during the day they want to write down their thoughts

- it is private - students are encouraged to write down what they liked and didn't like on a particular day and there is nobody who puts pressure on them to answer the questions. Interviews, for instance, can be stressful in that respect.

One important aspect of a diary is giving students clear and precise instructions of how to use the diary and what to write down. In other words, the design of the tool will be critical.

I created the following framework for this research method:

My students will have one week to write about their experiences in the course. 

Each will receive a notepad with daily entries and questions to answer.

Instructions will be inserted on the first page.

 

Sample questions I want to ask them will be the following:

Day 1:

 

1.    What is your general impression about the classes today?

Did you enjoy the class?

Why? Why not?

2.    Was there an exercise which you really liked? What was it and why did you like it?

One exercise I liked was the one where we (describe what you did during this exercise)

I liked it because...

It helped me with...

Thanks to this exercise I learned...

3.    Was there an exercise which you didn’t like? Why not?

One exercise I didn’t enjoy was the one where we (describe what you did during this exercise):

I didn’t like it because:

What would you change about this exercise next time?

I feel this will be a great way for me to see what my students like and why in the lessons. It sounds really good!

After a break, back to the research proposal

After a break, I'm coming back to my blog to review what has happened so far and what I'm heading for in the next couple of weeks.

I'm trying to organise my thoughts around my project and it is being rather challenging.

1. How far am I?

I have done a good deal of reading on the basic concepts like worldview, strategies, literature, use of theory.

I feel there is a lot of the reading I don't quite grasp such as the quantitative research methods and all the statistics around it - can anyone understand it just by reading about it?

My worldview:

The worldview I want to adopt will be the humanist one as this will allow me to describe students' perceptions, beliefs and reflect on them.

My research topic:

I have also chosen and formulated my research topic:

EFL students' perceptions and expectations of an intensive English course.

I have reviewed the literature on my topic and found some great articles.

 Interestingly, most of the literature on the topic focuses around quantitative methods studying students' perceptions, employing statistical analysis of questionnaires, surveys, inventories.

2. What is there ahead of me?

 In contrast to what I've read, I intend to carry out a qualitative study in order to explore students' perceptions.

The main dificulty for  me at the moment is deciding on the research method and methods of data collection.

Considering time constraints and the size of this study (a small-scale study) I have identified the following to be within the range of my possibilities:

1.    action research – because suitable for small scale research (Newby, P., p. 623)

-       it is a mechanism for engaging people with their work and has  the benefit of increasing commitment and motivation ;

-       makes use of reflective practice, which suits my research problem well

or

2. research question –  because: we can try and understand how our learners prefer to learn and adapt/change out teaching methods accordingly.

The research question could be: 

How do German learners of English prefer to learn this language in an intensive,

10-week long course?