Sunday 25 May 2014

My Conceptual Framework!

This is quite hard as I could not find any conceptual framework related to my study from the references. So I decided to set this up on my own. I do hope that it is valid and understandable....



and some explanation about this conceptual framework....

Integrated Strategies Approach is built up from the two approaches; reader response theory and stylistic approach. The Reader Response Theory will assist the interrelation between student and texts and to help the student to construct their own meaning and derive their own conclusion of what they are reading which is also referred to as tentative response. While the Stylistic Approach is used to seek evidence for their own response in order to ensure that they are following the similar interpretive conventions of the texts and this is represented by the modified or reaffirmed response.

Friday 23 May 2014

Continuation on How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education by Fraenkel/Wallen and Hyun

Let's hit the book and let's do some practice on note taking skills again! hehe.... this time on Variables!

ok. well there are two types of very common variable

Independent variable also known as predictor also known as variable
Dependent variable also known as criterion variable also known as constant

Quantitative variables usually will assign  numbers to different individuals or objects
It can also be used to describe height and weight (basically it involve numbers!)

Categorical variables will be qualitatively different. (there is no degree)
For examples are eye color, gender, religious preference, occupation, position, treatments or methods.

Independent variable=presumed or possible cause
Independent variables may be manipulated (researcher creates). Also called treatment variables/experimental variables.
Selected =(researcher selects variable that already exist) example gender...it can not be manipulated of course! hihi...
Most studies that have 1 quantitative  and one categorical variable are studies comparing methods  or treatments.

Dependent= presumed results
When it comes to treatments or methods,so, the dependent variable will be called outcome variable

Moderator variables
independent variable (secondary independent variable)\
in order to determine if it affects or modifies  the basic r/ship between the primary independent and dependent variables.

Mediator variable
attempts to explain the relationship between two other variables

Extraneous variables
influence of other variables that exist
should be controlled to minimize the effect
the examples are:-personality of the teacher, experience level of students, time of the day class taught, gender of teachers or students, age of teacher, ethnicity of class, length of class.

one way to control is to hold them constant.

O.k done with variables!
A little bit on hypotheses...

Hypotheses
-prediction of the possible outcomes of the study.
-hypotheses will force us to think more deeply and specifically about the possible outcomes of the study.
-directional hypotheses (specific and decided)
-non directional hypotheses (admit that there will be a difference but not specific)


ok....till then, cya!

Saturday 17 May 2014

My Operational Definitions!

Phew, this was pretty hard and confusing but I managed to find the operational definitions for all the terms used in my research title. And here they are!

By the way my research title is


'The Effectiveness of Integrated Strategies Approach in Teaching Short Stories in ESL Classrooms"


*The highlighter terms will be defined.

Effectiveness
According to Oxford Dictionary (2005), effectiveness is defined as the degree to which something is successful in producing the result that is intended. While, according to Cambridge Dictionaries (1999), effectiveness means successful in achieving the results that you want. Additionally, effectiveness is also defined as producing result that is wanted.
From all the definitions given and to relate it for the purpose of the research, the term effectiveness actually refers to the students' improvement in understanding and learning short stories after the application of integrated strategies approach.

Integrated strategies approach
According to Divsar and Tahriri (2009), an integrated strategies approach is a linguistic approach which contain, exploring texts, stylistic analysis, literary and non-literary from the perspective of style and its relationship to content and form of the text. The integrated strategies approach also involves a very analytical and meticulous analysis of the stylistic features of a text such as  the structure of the text, the register used and also the vocabularies used in the text. This approach stresses not just to find out the meaning of the text, but how the reader themselves could suggest what it means to them. To sum it all, this suggested approach integrates reader's interpretation of the text together with the linguistic element of the text. The strategy is not as mechanical, meticulous or critical as the stylistics approach and this approach could be applied to all levels of language proficiency as long as the texts are carefully selected. A number of phases for example linguistic consideration, cultural consideration and communicative consideration need to be taken into account when teaching using the approach.

Short stories
According to Pruden (2013), the short story in structural terms is defined  as a brief fiction, ranging from 50 words to 1,700 and must contain formal plot of a storyline, namely characters, setting, climax, conflict and resolution. It also has great pedagogical potential like, questions of style, imagery, structure and narrative strategy can be addressed through a single text and, due to the length of the texts, these literary features can be taught and examined efficiently.  Teachers usually have no problem to cover entire texts and students’ level of engagement is also easily to be monitored by the teachers.
While according to Aziz (2012), short story normally contain only a single plot with non complex explanation of setting in order to give a much clearer view toward the story. Short story is always considered a workable text for the learners of English language to understand it as the plotting is usually simple and once the student started reading and understanding the text, they will start to dwell in, as  the story will build up their  interest and they will keep reading in order to know the whole storyline.
The short story that will be used for this study is “Flipping Fantastic” which is one of the selected short stories for Form Two students based on the Malaysian English curriculum syllabus.

ESL Classrooms
An ESL classroom is defined as an English classroom where English is considered dominant language but in a country which has many other nationalities. Outside the ESL classroom, normally, students will have an explicit, practical need to learn English, and ample opportunity to use the language. Students will be greatly exposed to English speaking culture, even though their proficiency level might be limited depending on their language skills (Bell, 2011). In this study, ESL classrooms are referring to the two classes that represent the two treatment groups from selected urban school and rural school.


Till then... C'ya!

Friday 16 May 2014

Continuation on How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education by Fraenkel/Wallen and Hyun

Hi! 

Let's continue with the short notes from this book,

Next, through my reading, I came across this term "Constitutive definitions". Well, this is pretty easy. as you can find the definition of the terms straight from the dictionary. Another one is called "Operational definitions". This one is a lil' bit complex. As whatever words that you are using in your title need to be defined specifically to what you are trying to measure. 

Here I found two versions of the steps involved in conducting literature search. Almost similar! Choose whichever you think is easy to remember!

1st version.
6 steps involved in literature search

1. Define the research problem
2. Look at relevant secondary sources
3. Select and use one or two appropriate general reference works
4. Search terms key words or phrases
5. Search for relevant primary sources
6. Obtain read, note and summarizes.


2nd version.
6 steps involved in literature search
1. Define the research problem as precisely as possible
2. Locate relevant secondary sources
3. Select appropriate textbooks
4. Formulate search terms (key words/phrases) pertinent to research problem.
5. Search the general references for relevant primary sources.
6. Read and summarise key points in the sources.

Ok got to go! I need look for the operational definitions for all the terms used in my title of study. Will include that in here soon!

Monday 12 May 2014

My Type of Research and My Instrument

After i did the summary from some of the chapters from the book, what can I conclude from my study is.... the study that I will be conducted is actually an Experimental Research. It is because the reason I conducted this study is to examine the effectiveness of a treatment or a method or an approach which is in this case is the Integrative Strategies Approach. This study will be applying a quantitative approach as the instruments for this study will be pre test, post test and also questionnaire that they all involve numbers.

Sunday 11 May 2014

How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education by Fraenkel/Wallen and Hyun

The reference that is suggested by our lecturer, Dr. Teoh for this course is How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education by Fraenkel, Wallen and Hyun. It is a very comprehensive book and I would like to share my short notes that I did with u throughout my reading...

The nature of research

-Why do we need to do research? basically whenever we wonder about something, and we want to know more about it, we can actually run a research to get a clear answer. Why do we need to do it ourselves?. Because if we only rely on what we have today, there's a possibility that even experts may be mistaken source, document may contain no insights of values, colleagues may have no experience in the matter, one’s own experience or intuition may be irrelevant or misunderstood.

-For accurate and reliable information we need to do a scientific research.

-If we are wondering about something, or something has been bothering us, and we decided to a lil' bit of research. Here are the steps that we can take;-

 Identify the problem
Define more precisely of the problem
Determine what kinds of information would solve the problem
How we organize the information that we obtain
Analyze the information

Types of research

-there are quite a number of types of research, and I really have problem in memorizing all of them. Before that, research is defined as any sort of careful systematic patient study and investigation in some field of knowledge. We have heard of basic research right? Basic research is to clarify underlying process with the hypothesis usually expressed as a theory. While applied research is to examine the effectiveness  of particular educational practices.

We also have heard the term quantitative and qualitative.

-Quantitative derived from the word quantity so it involve numbers and fact and feeling can be separated, it is to seek establish relationships between variables while qualitative derived from the word quality involve words  and the world is made up of multiple realities and more concerned with understanding situations and viewpoints of the participants.

Researcher role for quanti is as detached observer; experiment, generalize

For quali , researcher tend to become immersed, ethnography , no generalize, leave to  readers to assess


Types of experimental research

 -Experimental research – effectiveness 
Strategies independent variable, scores dependent variables, age ability, level, material,  teacher characteristics extraneous variables.

 -Single subject research – intensive study  of a single individual/ single group of special characteristics.

      - Correlational research-determine relationships among two or more variables and to explore their implications for cause and effect. (to make more intelligent prediction). also to investigate  the extent to which one or more relationships of some type exist.

Causal comparative research
 -Determine the cause for or the consequences of differences between groups of people
 -Determine whether  students from single –parent families do more poorly in her course than students from two parent families.
 -Interpretations are limited
 -Only identifying possible causes

-The difference between correlational and causal comparative is

Correlational – 2 or more variables in 1 group, scatter plot or correlational coefficient

Causal – 1 variable tested in two groups, compare average use cross break tables


Survey research
Uses questionnaire or ability test, ask the same set of question to large number or people
Crosssectional servey (one time) longitudinal serveys (information collected at different times)

Difficulties
1)make sure the questions are clear and not misleading
2)respondents answer thoughtfully and honestly
3)sufficient number of questionnaire completed and returned

Interviews are better (greater confidence in response, in depth, follow up questions can be asked)

Ethnographic research
get a more complete picture of educational process
qualitative
documenting or portraying  the everyday experiences by observing and interviewing them

other examples of qualitative research are-ethnographic, biography, phenomenal, case study (mixed method) , grounded theory

       historical research
aspect of the past is studied, by overusing document and interviewing individuals who lived during that time.

Action research
Generalization is minimal importance
Get information that will enable them to change conditions in a particular situation.

Evaluation research
Formative -  to improve the object being evaluated needs assessment report
Summative – examine the effects or outcomes. outcome or impact evaluations.

General research types are:-
1.       Descriptive studies
Most common is survey (researchers summarizes the characteristics)
Other – ethnographic, historical

Identifying/describing
2.       Associational research – research that investigates relationship
e.g correlational and causal comparative (between groups of people)

3.       Intervention studies
Particular method or treatment is expected to influence one or more outcomes.

4.       Meta analysis
Attempt to reduce the limitations of individual studies by trying to locate all of the studies on a particular topic and then using statistical means to synthesize the results of these studies.

The research process
1.       Research problem
2.       Hypotheses or questions
3.       Definitions
4.       Lit. Review
5.       Sample
6.       Instrumentations
7.       Procedures/design
8.       Data analysis


Research problem

Characteristics of good research question
1.       Feasible
2.       Clear
3.       Significant
4.       Ethical

There you go....sorry if my notes are a lil bit jumbled up....i just write whatever that I think is significant and easy for me to remember. Till then, c'ya!


Saturday 26 April 2014

Yeay! Finally my research title has been accepted!


So this will be my research title, ROs and RQs.

Topic Area: Teaching Literature (Short Stories) in ESL Classrooms. 

Research Problem: Effectiveness of Integrated Approach to teach literature (short stories) in ESL classrooms. 

Research Objectives:
1. To study the effectiveness of using integrated approach (based on gain score) in teaching short stories in ESL classroom.

2. To examine the students' perception of the use of integrated approach in teaching short stories in ESL classroom.

Research Questions:
1. Is there any differences on the gain score between using the integrated approach in teaching literature (short stories) in ESL classrooms compared to using the traditional approach?


2. What are the students' perception of the use of integrated approach in teaching literature (short stories) in ESL classrooms?