Universidad de Jaén

Universidad de Jaén

RESEARCH PROJECT OUTLINES Below you will find a number of more developed ideas for your Research Project. These outlines, which provide a rough guide to the steps you will need to take in order to investigate specific topics, have been adapted from Projects in Linguistics (Wray, Trott and Bloomer, 1998). Note that each outline relates directly to material covered in the various courses of the Master, where you will find suggestions for further reading.

-Collect the work of some of your EFL learners over, say, the last few months. Look for evidence of the successful and unsuccessful incorporation of, for example, verb forms into their free writing (a) immediately after the form has been taught, (b) several weeks after, and (c) several months after. Compare the order of acquisition given by Ellis(1994), Lightbown and Spada (1993) or some other authoritative source. Remember that the single example of a form being used correctly is not necessarily evidence that the learner has mastered it. -Collect examples of carer talk (“motherese”), if possible, of an English-speaking parent to his/her child. Also, collect examples of an EFL teacher (preferably yourself) addressing lower level learners in English (“foreigner talk”). Compare the two samples for: range of vocabulary, use of any special words, the complexity (or absence of it) of the grammar, any non-adult or non-standard grammatical forms, pronunciation, intonation, volume range and so on.

-Compare the views held by yourself and by several different groups of learners about what ’knowing’ a language means. You will need to ’collect’ your own views first (e.g. by means of devising a detailed questionnaire, and getting a colleague to interview you, while recording your answers), then those of your students. If the responses of teacher and students do not fully match, consider what implications this might have for the success of the teaching and learning process in that class. -Use units from different beginners’ course books with a very low level group over a number of weeks. At the end of this period, interview the informants (as a group and individually) to find out, for example, how easy, interesting or useful they found the approach, whether they thought they learnt anything, and what motivated them most to carry on. -Consider to what extent your teaching could be labelled ’fully communicative’ or ’grammar-driven’, or rather, where your teaching would fall on this

Universidad de Jaén

continuum. To do this, observe your teaching focus over a number of lessons, considering how much time is spent on formal grammar instruction and practice activities, on communicative activities, on skills development and so on. Supplement this information with interviews with students. Ask them what they felt the balance between ’communicative’ and ’grammar-based’ activities was in the lessons they experienced, and consider the significance of any mismatch. Also consider to what extent your approach is laid down by institutional constraints. -Choose among your students one who is a good language learner. Conduct a case study of the learner and see how easily he/she fits into Naiman et al.’s (1978), or Rubin and Thompson’s (1982) categories, by carefully identifying and categorizing his/her approach to different aspects of the learning process.

-Record a number of your classes and analyse how and when you correct students: which errors are allowed to pass by uncorrected? Consider why and in what circumstances you choose to focus on certain errors and not others. Then collect information from these same students in order to investigate their attitudes to error collection. How far do your and their criteria match up? What are the implications of a mismatch?

RESEARCH PROJECT TOPICS Below you will find a list of topics/titles: Students' diaries: is it a step towards learning autonomy? Learning strategies: to what extent can they be taught in the classroom? Analysis of teacher talk (e.g. use of questions, the use of repetition, use of foreigner talk, the main patterns of interaction in the classroom, how much L1 is used, etc.). Contrasting students' and teachers' perceptions in the language classroom. Improving speaking through communicative activities. Increasing oral fluency through pair work. Developing the methodology of one particular skill. Designing a proposal for integrated skills. Exploiting literature in the EFL classroom. Exploiting newspapers and media broadcasts in the EFL classroom. Evaluating the effectiveness of existing published material and adapting it for a specific class. The use of dictionaries to foster learning of the foreign language. Materials and motivation. Input and learning – how does the former affect the latter?

Universidad de Jaén

  How to deal with discipline in a particular EFL context. Establishing the basis of autonomous learning in a mixed ability group. Exploiting theatre: an experience with young learners of English. Teaching English through songs. Classroom dynamics and interaction. The use of CALL materials in the classroom. Using e-mail with students: an evaluation. Improving young learners' autonomy through developing project work. Do communicative tasks really help students ‘learn’? (e.g. do they really result in negotiation of meaning? etc.). Continuous assessment: does it work? Design, elaboration and application of an ESP course having specific aims. The sociocultural content in the EFL classroom. The course book as a cultural construct. NOTE: Most of these topics can be applied to a variety of learning contexts, i.e. primary, secondary or adults.