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.