Seventh session

Section 1: Introduction

Research question

A research question should focus on only one problem. For example, one of you states the following research question:

1. What are the difficulties in implementing X and how to solve them?

This question asks two problems, namely, the difficulties and the solution. It is better to split the question into two because these two problems are completely different and result in different answers.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a tentative answer to the research question. You write a hypothesis in the Introduction only if you ask a yes-no question. If you ask a research question using wh- question words, you don’t need to write a hypothesis.

The significance of the study

The significance of the study explains how the readers of your skripsi can get benefits from the results of your research. Who are going to read you skripsi? Probably teachers, lecturers, researchers, curriculum developers, textbook writers, headmasters are, but definitely not the students of English who become the research subjects. Therefore, there is NO need to explain how the results of your study will benefit the students.

Section 3: Methodology

Research design

When you explain the research design at the beginning of section 3, please detail how you are going to design the study. The research design should include the overall procedure of conducting your study, but one of you explains the instruments and how to use these instruments instead. Using the instruments is a small part of the research design, i.e. in the data collection.

Sixth session

Section 1: Introduction

Research questions

Look at these research questions:
1. How can X be used to teach Y?
2. Does X influence Y?
To answer the first research question, you conduct a descriptive qualitative study because you want to describe the use of X in the teaching of Y. To answer the second research question, you conduct a quantitative study, i.e. experimental research. It is possible to conduct a mixed-method study like the above, but it better for a beginning researcher to focus on one research methodology.

One of you states two research questions but there is only one objective of the study. If you state two research questions, there should be two objectives of the study.

Definition of key terms
Please do NOT use a dictionary to define the terms in section 1. You should write an operational definition of the terms. You can read what an operational definition is here. You should:
avoid using a dictionary to define the terms. The definitions in the dictionaries are written for laypeople rather than researchers. Read a lot of books and journals to find out how experts and researchers define those terms.


Section 3: Methodology

Instruments

Many students include ESL Composition Profile developed by Jacobs et al as one of the research instruments in their proposal. This is simply WRONG. The ESL Composition Profile contains the criteria of scoring essays, and it is not the tool that you use to collect data. The instrument that you use to collect the numeric data in the form of scores is of course a WRITING TEST. Please read this.

A checklist that you use in observation results in some data in the form of numbers, so you cannot use a checklist in a qualitative study. Instead, you should use field notes to obtain data in the form of words.

Sampling

If you conduct experimental research, you usually do not use simple random sampling. It is more complicated if you use simple random sampling because you select the potential subjects one by one from several classes. As a result, the experimental group may consist of students from two or more classes and it will be harder for you to group them into a single class due to time constraints. The same applies to the control group. The more appropriate type of sampling is cluster random sampling, in which you list the classes and then draw two classes as the sample rather than drawing individual students for this purpose.

After you draw two classes as the sample, many of you who are going to conduct experimental research do not explain how you are going to assign the two classes into an experimental group and a control group. Please explain random sampling AND random assignment.

Fifth session

Section 2: Literature Review
One of you reviews several approaches to teaching writing, such as the controlled-to-free approach, the free-writing approach, etc. Out of these approaches, you have to mention explicitly which one you're going to use in your research.

Section 3: Methodology

Instrument
When you conduct experimental research, you use a test as the instrument and you administer the test twice: before and after the treatment. If the test is administered before the treatment it's called a pretest, whereas after the treatment it's called a posttest. Please avoid viewing it as two different tests. Actually you have only ONE test, but this test is administered TWICE. The pretest and the posttest must be exactly the same, so it's considered as one test.

Fourth session

Section 1: Introduction

Definition of key terms
Define the terms that you use in the title of the skripsi and the research questions. Please view a certain term as a term, and avoid considering a term as consisting of several words. For instance, 'reading comprehension' is a term and you have to define it as 'reading comprehension'. Do not define it as 'reading' and 'comprehension'.

Please do not include terms that you do not use in the title and the research questions. For example, you don't need to define the terms 'TEYL', 'TEFL' or 'audiolingual method' in section 1 if you don't put them in the title and the research questions, although actually you conduct a study related to those concepts.

Section 2: Literature Review

You may not write anything about the experimental group in literature review. Instead, you should review theories and previous studies relevant to your research. You should describe the experimental group in the methodology section.

Section 3: Methodology

Instrument
Multiple choice & short answer tests are objective tests. You don't need to have two raters because the results are always the same.

Be careful in selecting the instrument. The instrument you use depends on the the research question you state in section 1. For example, if the research question is "Is there a significant difference between X and Y?" you must use a test to collect data in the form of scores. You cannot use observation as the research instrument.

If you use interrater reliability to estimate the reliability of your instrument, you use correlation
to find out the relationship between the results obtained from both scorers. Please choose one of the formulas that is most suitable. Do not write both Pearson r and Spearman r in your proposal.

One of you want to use split-half reliability to estimate the reliability of a reading test. This consists of one reading passage and ten multiple choice items. You cannot use split-half reliability for a very short test because you will possibly obtain a low coefficient. Split-half reliability is more suitable for longer objective tests, such as those consisting of 100 items.

Third session

Section 1: Introduction

One of you writes the following research questions:
- What is the effect of X on Y?
- What are the mean differences between X and Y?
The hypotheses are written as follows:
- There is an effect of X on Y.
- There is a mean difference between X and Y.
Again, the two research questions actually asks the same thing: the effect of X and Y. If there is a difference between the mean of X and the mean of Y, it means there is an effect of X on Y.
In addition, you use a questionnaire as one of the instruments. A questionnaire seems to be an inappropriate instrument if you conduct research about language skills. A better instrument to measure the students' ability in using language is a test.

Section 2: Review of literature

Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive domain has been used by language teachers all over the world for decades. However, you may think of using another taxonomy which is more suitable, especially if you conduct research about reading. Barrett devised a taxonomy of reading skills, and it may be more useful for you if you conduct research about reading.

Section 3: Methodology

Research instrument

Make sure you use the right instruments for your study. If you conduct a qualitative study, don't use an instrument which is more suitable for a quantitative study, and vice versa. For example, you conduct a qualitative descriptive study, and to collect the data you use observation as the instrument. In this case, you may not use a checklist when observing your subjects because a checklist results in quantitative data in the form of numbers.

Students' task is NOT a research instrument. If you give them tasks to complete, it means you use a language test as the instrument.

Second session

Topic

One of you wants to investigate the effect of pantomime on the accuracy of the students' speaking. It is important to have a theoretical basis before you test whether the theory is true or not. In the above example, you have to find out whether theoretically pantomime can actually improve the accuracy in speaking. Common sense tells us that pantomime, which is a silent theatrical performance, may not directly related to improvement in speaking, especially its accuracy (grammar and pronunciation). It may be better to choose another type of media which is directly related to speaking, such as movies.


Section 1: Introduction

Research questions

The research questions in quantitative studies are usually written in the form of yes-no questions, for example:

• Is there a significant difference in vocabulary size between thrid graders who are taught using songs and those who are not?
• Is there a significant correlation between grammar competence and writing ability?
• Are songs effective media in the teaching of vocabulary to third graders?

Sometimes they are wh- questions but only a limited number of wh- question words could be used, such as:

• How far can the university students guess the meaning of unknown words?
• How much do the tenth graders use a monolingual dictionary to get the meaning of unknown words?

The other wh- question words--when, where, how, what and why--are usually used in qualitative research.

One of you stated these research questions:
1. Is there a significant difference between X and Y?
2. How effective is X?
They actually ask the same thing. If the answer to the first question is "yes, it means there is a significant difference between the two conditions and the technique/media/material you use in the treatment is effective. But if the answer is "no," it means there is no significant difference between the two conditions and the technique/media/material you use in the treatment is not effective.

Definition of key terms

As the name suggests, you have to define the most important terms related to your study. One of you have this as the title of your proposal: "Teaching Speaking to Tenth Graders through Application in Facebook --Uploading Video Clip." However, in section 1 you only define these terms: recording, uploading, and Facebook. Because you are students of English Department, you should put more emphasis on language learning and the terms you define should be related to language learning, too. Rule of thumb: define the terms you use in the title and research questions.

Section 3: Methodology

Instruments

It is possible to conduct qualitative research for your skripsi and gain in-depth understanding about a phenomenon. The more instruments you use, the better and deeper your understanding about the phenomenon. However, you must ensure that you will be able to manage a huge amount of data and do comprehensive analysis on them. It is good to use five instruments in one qualitative study, but will you be able to analyze a huge pile of documents, field notes and interview transcripts? If you are able to do so, will you have the time to analyze them all? It's better to take these into consideration before collecting the data.

First session

Section 1: Introduction

Definition of key terms

Be careful when using terminology in your thesis. You may not coin a new term for your research proposal. For example, one of you wrote 'Full English Class' in your research proposal to refer to an English class in which the teacher and the students spoke English most of the time. However, it may cause misinterpretation and be understood as an English class which is full of students. Now you know the importance of reviewing the literature when writing a research proposal: you learn the know the right terms for certain concepts.

Background of the study

You should explain the academic and scientific reasons for conducting the study. Please avoid giving personal reasons such as:
... because the school is where the writer used to study.
... because the writer knows the teacher very well so permission to conduct a study will be easier to obtain.

Research questions

When you write research questions, please think about the possible answers so that you know that the questions are researchable. For example, one of you asked these questions:
1. Is there any correlation between X and Y?
2. What is the correlation between X and Y?
Look at the first question. If the answer is "yes" (after you analyze the data), you may proceed to the second question. However, if the answer is "no", you will have trouble answering the second question.

Section 3: Methodology

Setting

One of you is going to conduct quantitative research for your skripsi, and in the methodology section you write "Place and Time", in which you describe briefly the school where you're going to conduct the study and the time. Actually it's more appropriately stated as "Setting". However, you don't need to describe the setting when you conduct quantitative research. You just collect data in the form of numbers, analyze them using statistics, and report the results without relating them to the setting. On the other hand, when you conduct qualitative research it is very important to describe the setting because you have to understand the subjects in depth. To find out how, when, where or why the subjects behave in a certain manner, you must take the setting into account. The place where the subjects study or live could play an important role in shaping their behaviors. This is why setting must be described in qualitative research.

Instruments & Data Collection

They are two different things. Instruments are tools that you use to collect data. Data collection is the process of collecting data in the field. I will write the examples of both here so that you can see the difference clearly. (To be continued.)

Presentation schedule

Odd semester 2011/2012

Session 1: Speaking
Putri Gayatri
Agus Priyanto
Dedy Tri (moved to the Session 7)
Dedy Bastian

Session 2: Speaking
Nur Laili
Ratna Ayu
Prytana
Ardi Yuda

Session 3: Reading
Yogi
Rati
Puguh
Prativi

Session 4: Reading
Dea
Fitria
M Mas Har
Retno (cancelled)

Session 5: Writing
Diah Ratnwati
Urifa Nikmatul H
Nanik Vidiana
Fatma (cancelled)

Session 6: Writing
Achmad
Leny
Nur Laela
Ayu

Session 7:
Arisma (cancelled)
Dania
Diah Ihdini