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1VuHongDuyen - Portfolio 5
1VuHongDuyen - Portfolio 5
PORTFOLIO 5
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Question 1: Find a report of a case study research in applied linguistics and
give your comments.
* Procedures:
(1) First, the students arranged in permanent groups of five or six members
each, were presented with some kind of comprehensible input in the form
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of reading material, video-tape, tape-recording, among others, featuring
the target form they would then have to generate in the output session.
(2) Once the students had been introduced to the input session, they were
then put to work on collaborative tasks in pairs or in their fixed groups.
At that point, guided by the input given, the students were expected to
complete the task set by using their interlanguage resources at hand.
(3) As the task was performed, the students were made to notice gaps in their
outputs which were filled out in subsequent sessions where they were
asked to analyze and usually compare their own performance with the
material used in the input session.
(4) Then the students reported their findings to the class and at that moment
the target language focus was formally introduced.
(5) After that, the students were put to work on a similar task which required
them to consciously use the same target form introduced in the previous
activity, but on this second time a different context was used. This last
sequence was generally used as a means to test their level of
internalization, if any, of the new target form.
(6) A final discussion and reflection section followed after each task aiming
at raising the students' awareness of how language operates when they are
engaged in tasks that promote oral speech.
* Types of data:
- Collecting data about a specific group (268 third-year college Chinese
students)
- Using multiple sources of evidence: Self-assessment reports and
questionnaires.
- The data were systematically collated using a range of qualitative elicitation.
* Type of analysis: the results obtained were interpreted and explored in depth.
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- In this evaluative case study, data have been collated from two different
sources, interpreted and critically analyzed: “On looking at the matrix above, it
can be observed that 78.54% of the 256 students participating in this study
claimed that after taking their spoken-English course they noticed they had
made significant gains in their oral skills …”; “On analyzing the findings
obtained, it was found that 30.47% of the students acknowledged having met
their expectations fully while 49.61 admitted that their course main aims had
been sensibly accomplished. Conversely, 17.58% of the students indicated
having met their expectations to a degree, while only a 2.34% completely denied
having done so”; etc.
* Further research: The article is also concerned with further research: “The
result of cross-referencing information coming from different data sources, as is
this case, may help to strengthen the validity of this study. However, in order to
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claim that this methodology which combines both types of tasks - fluency with
accuracy - is really effective for teaching oral skills, much more research would
be required”.
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Question 2: Propose a list of research topics in applied linguistics that you
think appropriate for case research and give a rationale for your choice.
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Question 3: Work out a research plan for one of the proposed topics and
report it to your Tutorial group.
This is a research plan for the topic “A case study of changing motivation in
foreign language learning”