Transcription of TESL-EJ Publications
1 TESL-EJ 2012 Dale T. GriffeeeBook edition 2012 All rights reservedNo part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Author or in the United States of EditionLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in- publication DataAn Introduction to Second Language research Methods: design and Data / by Dale T. Griffeep. 21 x 28 cm. 213 bibliographical referencesISBN 10: 0-9823724-1-8 ISBN 13: 978-0-9823724-1-8 (eBook)1. research Methods 2. Education 3. Language and Languages Study and Teaching About the AuthorDale T.
2 Griffee directs the International Teaching Assistant (ITA) program at Texas Tech University where he teaches ITAs, academic writing, research methods and program evaluation. He holds an MAT in ESL from The School for International Training and an Ed. D. from Temple University, Japan. He was the series editor for the JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers) Applied Materials series, and with David Nunan edited Classroom Teachers and Classroom research , (1997) a compilation of articles on classroom research . His most recent publication is as fourth author of English Communication for International Teaching Assistants (Waveland Press, 2010). He welcomes questions and comments at This book is set in Cambria font. Editor: Sokolik, University of California, Berkeley 2012 Dale T.
3 Griffee and TESL-EJ Publications An Introduction to Second Language research Methods: design and Data Dale T. GriffeeTESL-EJ PublicationsBerkeley, California, USA _____Griffee 5An Introduction to Second Language research Methods: design and DataPART ONE: Getting Started .. 6 Introduction: My Approach to research .. 7 Chapter 1. How to Get Started .. 9 Chapter 2. Structure of a research Paper.
4 18 PART TWO: design .. 42 Introduction to research design .. 43 Chapter 3. Survey research design .. 52 Chapter 4. Experimental research design .. 71 Chapter 5. Case Study design .. 96 Chapter 6. Action research design .. 109 PART THREE: Data.
5 127 Introduction to Data Collection Instruments .. 128 Chapter 7. Data from Questionnaires .. 135 Chapter 8. Data from Interviews .. 159 Chapter 9. Data from Observations .. 177 Chapter 10. Data from Diaries and Journals .. 199 PART ONEG etting Started _____ 7 My Approach to research MY APPROACH TO RESEARCHF irst of all, congratulations! You graduated from various schools and now you are interested in research . At some point you decided to be a language teacher. I m an ESL teacher myself, but whatever language you teach, congratulations again and welcome to the club.
6 In college, especially as undergraduates, we learn knowledge or knowing, but we also learn action or doing. For example, in drama departments, students learn the history of the theater (knowing), but they also learn how to put on a play (doing). In second language teaching there is the same relationship between knowing things and doing things (Dunne & Pendlebury, 2003). Our knowing includes how language is processed and how it is acquired; our doing includes teaching and answering questions. My approach to research is that we should not concentrate on doing things to the point that we forget that doing is ultimately based on knowing. Always thinking about doing at the expense of knowing blinds us to the relationship between what we know (our theory) and what we do (our practice).
7 Teachers usually get it half right and half wrong. We get it that knowing without doing is pointless, but we don t always get it that doing without knowing is teachers know that a classroom is an active place. In fact, many teachers and students are often doing multiple things at the same time. Our brains are constantly engaged, and it is hard to stop, record our actions, and reflect on them in the midst of teaching. Yet despite the buzz of activity in a classroom, all our actions are done for a purpose, and the purpose contains within it a reason. This implies that every action we do has a rationale--a theory that guides the action by providing a motivation to the actor for the action. What we do is dependent on what we know. Teachers often call this what works for me because we know what we think, but we do not know how or even if it applies to other teachers.
8 How does this practical stance come about? Where did we learn it? The answer is our background and experience. I watched my teachers and tried to remember what they did. I also learned to teach by reading and listening to the advice of others, but most of all I learned by direct and usually painful experience in the classroom. So, for me and maybe most teachers, action is supreme and tends to crowd out knowing. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Action requests of knowing that it has a connection to teaching, and that the connection between them be made explicit. But, if it is true that what we do is, in the final analysis, based on what we know, then we ignore knowing at our peril. I think teachers are correct in insisting that knowledge (ideas, principles, theory) be relevant to doing (teaching).
9 The trick I want to learn is how to articulate my own theory and how to integrate that theory with those of others. And one way to do this is through research . I am on a journey and you are, too. As undergraduates, we were students who took knowledge acquisition as our job. We studied, sometimes, what we were told to study by authorities (college and university teachers), and we usually believed that what we studied was true. We studied _____Griffee 8vocabulary, which contained other people s definitions and other people s theories.
10 Now we are participating in the construction of that knowledge. For me, two of the shocks of becoming a graduate student were the realization that each definition I learned was actually a low level articulation of a theory, and second, in many cases there were fights over the meaning of those words (because definitions are actually competing theories). In other words, we are in a world in which people fight over words and their meanings, and knowledge is created, not taken for granted. I once heard a story about three baseball umpires that illustrates this point. They were being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who wanted to know how they called balls and strikes. What the reporter didn t know was that one of the umpires operated out of a classic philosophy, one had a modern theory, and the third had a postmodern theory.
