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Research Paper Writing Session 3: Evaluation, Proposals & Presentations

Get guidelines for mini proposals, RiP presentations, BA paper evaluation, and methods in linguistics. Understand the dichotomy of qualitative vs quantitative studies with case studies.

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Research Paper Writing Session 3: Evaluation, Proposals & Presentations

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  1. BA Research Paper Writing • Session 3 • Dr. Jolanta Šinkūnienė • Vilnius University & Vytautas Magnus University

  2. Outline of session 3 • Who Has Already Done What with Whom? • Mini proposal • Requirements & schedule for RiP presentations • BA paper evaluation aspects • Some methodological frameworks in linguistics

  3. Who Has Done What with Whom?

  4. Annotated Bibliography - Reminder • On October 18 – submitted to Jolanta • Submission guidelines: • Please send annotated bibliography by e-mail (i.e. no paper copies) jolanta_555@yahoo.co.uk

  5. Mini Proposal • By October 25, 2013 mini proposal has to be submitted to your supervisor • Guidelines on how to write mini proposal are in: • Katkuvienė, L. E. & I. Šeškauskienė. 2006. Research Matters. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press. 2nd edition. Pages 65-66; 108 • The form of mini proposal  webpage

  6. RiP presentations • Tip: Take full advantage of thesis workshops to get feedback on yourproject. They offer: • Evaluations from workshop convenors • Opportunities for you to discuss your project • Comments from fellow students about your work • A constant reminder that you must convey your ideas to others (Lipson 2005: 81)

  7. Requirements for the RiP Presentations • Format: .ppt • Length: ~6 min (Pr) + ~ 5 min (Q & A) • Content: whatever (general picture, major issues, theoretical framework, data, methods, hypothesis, samples, areas of concern, etc.)

  8. Schedule for RiP Presentations (1) • October 18 • Miroslavas & Vaidotas • Jelena • Domantas • Kristina • Alina & Juliana • Rasa • Lina • Pavel

  9. Schedule for RiP Presentations (2) • November 01

  10. Schedule for RiP Presentations (3) • November 15 • Ieva • Kornelija • Julija • Ina • Laura • Akvilė • Sandra • Darius

  11. BA paper evaluation aspects • Evaluation form

  12. Methods (1) • The famous dichotomy: • Qualitative methods vs Quantitative methods • Less rigid in the last few decades  • Mixed methods & triangulation approaches  • Simultaneous use of qualitative & quantitative methods

  13. Qualitative vs Quantitative • C: daddy is coming down too • M: who’s coming down too? • C: daddy • M: daddy? No. where’s daddy? • C: me want – daddy come down • M: working sweetie • C: no, no. Find his cheque book • M: finding his cheque book • (Peccei,1999: 95)

  14. Qualitative vs Quantitative • C: daddy is coming down too 5 words • C: daddy 1 word • C: me want – daddy come down 5 words • C: no, no. Find his cheque book 6 words • Total number of words: 17 • Number of utterances: 4 • MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) =17 / 4 = 4.25

  15. A case study: synchronic perspective A case study: Actually – frequencies in real use. Table I: Frequencies of three stance adverbs (from Biber et al. 2000: 869). Occurrences are per one million words. 14

  16. A case study: synchronic perspective 2. Positionally – great syntactic mobilityIt / was/ not/ as enjoyable/ as / it / might / have / been / (Clift 2000: 247) The impact on meaning: Actually = manner adverbI grew bored and actually fell asleep for a few minutes. Actually = discourse markerActually, I think it’s a great idea. 15

  17. A case study: diachronic perspective Present day actuallywas borrowed from French actuellement. French adj actuel(13th century) adverbial form actuellement(14th century) English adj actual (14th century) adv actually (15th century) Developments and shifts in the syntactic position, semantics, etc. etc. 16

  18. Induction (1) • Qualitative studies are, by their very nature, inductive: theoryis derived from the results of our research. • Inductive reasoning: • Come where the food is cheaper; • Come where the plate holds more; • Come where the boss is a bit of a sport; • Come to the joint next door.

  19. Induction (2) • At the joint next door:Item 1: the food is cheaper.Item 2: the plates are bigger.Item 3: the boss is fun.Therefore: the joint next door is a superior joint. • Study on linguistic ‘crossing’: Rampton(1995) • South Asianadolescents growing up in the United Kingdom & code-switching betweenEnglish and Punjabi to indicate their social and ethnic identity. • Interviewdata from interaction between teenagers of South Asian descent. • Identified particular patterns behind code-switches the underlying ‘rules’ with regard to use of a particular language and constructionof identity. • Inductive qualitative approach: theoryderived from (textual) data.

  20. Deduction • Based on already knowntheory we develop hypotheses, which we then try to prove (or disprove) in thecourse of our empirical investigation. • Example: second language acquisition research. • Hypothesis: second language learning becomesmore difficult the older a learner is. • Comparison of 2 sets of values: proficiency & age • Hypothesis either wrong or right

  21. Comparative aspects of quantitative research • Comparing numbers: raw frequencies, relative frequencies, normalized frequencies • Distribution of adverbial galbūt in CorALit • Raw frequencies: • B: 57H: 331P: 68S: 208T: 37

  22. Comparative aspects of quantitative research • CorALit size: • Biomedical sciences (B): 1 638 444 wordsHumanities (H): 2 028 906 wordsPhysical Sciences (P):1 510 981 wordsSocial Sciences (S): 1 527 455 wordsTechnological sciences (T): 1 964 827 words • Normalized frequency (per 1000 words): • B: 0.03H: 0.16P: 0.05S: 0.14T: 0.02

  23. Comparative aspects of quantitative research • Statistical tests: χ²-test(chi-square test), LL (log likelihood) test

  24. Comparative aspects of quantitative research

  25. Comparative aspects of quantitative research

  26. Comparative aspects of quantitative research

  27. Quantitative Typology 26

  28. Questionnaires • Questionnaires must be perfect beforewe distribute them. • What data do I want my questionnaire to give me, that is, which of my researchquestions should it answer? • 2. Which questions do aim at answering my research questions?

  29. Questionnaires: sample • Research question: the impact of learners’ motivation on their L2English development. • Key question in the questionnaire: • ‘Do you think the students are interested in learning English?’ • ‘On a scale from 1 to 5, whereby 5 indicates “very interested” and 1 indicates “notinterested at all”, to what extent do you think your students are interested in learningEnglish? Please circle your answer’ • 1 2 3 4 5

  30. Corpus based studies • Many studies use contrastive corpus based methodology • Types of corpora • Existing corpora vs self-compiled corpora • Some research is not possible • For example: Diachronic development of iš esmės as a discourse marker, the use of personal pronouns in CorALit • Assessment of your technology skills, willingness to get involved • Existing corpora yield numerous results: limiting the scope of data

  31. Types of Reliability • Inter-Rater or Inter-Observer Reliability Test • Intra-Rater Reliability Test

  32. Examples of methods used (1) • In this chapter, we draw on two methodologies not always seen as complementary, corpus linguistics and conversation analysis. These have much to offer each other as they provide both quantitative and qualitative insights respectively.

  33. Examples of methods used (2) • The methodological issue of identifying humour in the corpus was addressed as follows. The meetings of which the corpus is comprised were analysed for the phenomenon of laughter; where it was identified, the cause for the laughter was isolated, as shown in Table 3. If only one speaker laughed, the tenor of the laughter was analysed to get at its actual meaning. Group laughter was taken to indicate that the group interpreted an utterance or sequence as humorous, and this was the most obvious starting point. Other cues which helped to identify whether or not an utterance was intended humorously included “smile voice” (Crystal 1969). • Ultimately, the phenomenon was tagged in three different ways:

  34. Examples of methods used (3) • For the quantitative analysis, the software program Monoconc Pro 2.0 (Barlow 2000) was used to collect tokens and provide frequency counts of the four adverbs in the L1 and L2 student corpora. For the qualitative analysis, tokens were extracted from the corpora using Monoconc Pro 2.0 and saved as text files. Each token was then analyzed in context to identify its function. In some cases, functions were identified by reference to previous work; in other cases, substitution of synonymous forms was used to identify the functions of each lexical item. These functions were primarily identified by the researcher. In cases where there was some confusion or potential overlap between possible functions, another applied linguist was consulted before the final classification was made.

  35. A quote for the coming fortnight

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